"Ours is a perishable age. We have cup of soup meals and entire relationships. We talk on the phone. We say, 'I love you. I miss you,' but, as the truism correctly has it, actions speak louder than words and the act of putting it in writing says as much, and more, than the words themselves. Writing is old-fashioned, but it helps us to survive and connect in a modern world.
"This morning I received a one-page fax from Europe. It was handwritten, block letters, a note really. No big deal, but I loved getting it. It was real as salt.
"'Put it in writing,' we say when we are talking about contracts. Our human contracts are contracts too, but we seldom put them in writing anymore, and when we do, the shift it creates can be astonishing.
"'Never put anything in writing,' a Mafioso once told me — hilarious advice to a writer but good advice for a thug who didn't want to get caught in his thuggishness.
"I would say, 'Do put it in writing.'
"'It' being whatever 'it' is.
"'Let me write it down for you,' we say about recipes, and writing 'it' down can be a recipe for a far tastier, far more savory life.
"Recipes are precise, even if their language is offhand, 'A pinch of salt.' Writing out how we feel and what we think is also precise — even if what we are writing is 'I'm not sure about what's going on between us right now.'
"Writing is a way not only to metabolize life but to alchemize it as well. It is a way to transform what happens to us into our own experience. It is a way to move from passive to active. We may still be the victims of circumstance, but by our understanding those circumstances we place events within the ongoing context of our own life, this is, the life we 'own.'
"Owning something also means owning up to something. It means accepting responsibility, which means, literally, responsibility. When we write about our lives we respond to them. As we respond to them we are rendered more fluid, more centered, more agile on our own behalf. We are rendered conscious. Each day, each life, is a series of choices, and as we use the lens of writing to view our lives, we see our choices."