From Rome, With Love

Yesterday morning I received a most unusual email (via blackberry) from an editor who wrote to inform me that she was interested in publishing one of my poems (thanks, Nancy!).  I wrote back immediately thanking her for this interest.

Seconds later, I received yet another email from her (via blackberry) that read:

"I'm writing this from Rome, Italy.  It's lunch time here.  But it must be incredibly early where you are. What are you doing up at this hour?"

Ah, yes . . . the old "what are you doing up so early" question.  Since we were obviously having a conversation via the internet, I wrote back, and in succinct wording told this editor that I am up most mornings before dawn, writing my guts out, and that is why she could trust me to produce high-quality work and to display the high-minded persistence necessary to succeed for her magazine.

She responded by telling me that, with lines like these, she would be honored to publish one of my poems.

This "conversation" on Tuesday morning, however, made me feel old.  I'm still getting used to e-mail and only last week learned how to press the "SEND" button.  I have no idea what this "blackberry" thing is (is it the device with the teensie-weensie buttons that my big, thick fingertips can't navigate?).  I have no concept of how the internet works or why I'm even using the crazy thing.  It was fun "talking" to an editor . . . she sitting in Rome and me in Brownsburg . . . but I would have been just as much at home trading handwritten letters with her or talking on the phone.

Blackberry?  Raspberry?  Gooseberry?  Huckleberry?

What does it all mean? Can't I just write?