Email

The internet is a wondrous place. Stray thoughts ride on radio waves, coasting from brain to brain. Deep connections made in this space may be rare, but in the off chance they occur, they’re freeflowing and instantaneous, with all the finer points of human interaction — body language, tone of voice, physical mannerisms — unwrapped and set aside. What’s left is an exchange of pure thought; an entanglement of abstractions in the brain.

I made a new friend some months ago. Her name is Yufei, and her head is full of wonderful reinterpretations of the world. We met at the International Science and Engineering Fair, or, in her words, “a temporary container of chaotically creative minds that allows and celebrates random collisions of curiosity.”

The nature of the fair creates interactions that are like minnows: numerous, but scant. Most conversations scraped only the surface, which was why I spent the fair securing email addresses, hoping, that by collecting these threads of contact, I could extract deeper stories on the lives that had clustered in Pittsburgh that week.

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Truth be told, before the emails began, I only had the lightest impression of who Yufei was. We exchanged a few words about my notebook, later met for a few minutes at my poster, and once waved to eachother in a crowd. Which is why, when I clicked her response to my first email, it felt like floodgates had opened, pouring out a blend of intelligence and vast creative wonder. Since then we’ve communicated in long blocks of text, our exchanges touching upon Charles Bukowski’s “Style”, specialization vs. breadth, Mushishi, “the potential isolation of the [artist] from any real-world problem, purpose, or audience,” procrastination, patterns of thought in different geographical locations, etc — the kind of things that people think about, but rarely talk about in real-time conversation.

These ‘collisions’ are not elastic. Ideas do not just bounce off. Instead bits and pieces infuse and weave themselves into the correspondent. Perhaps Spotify is the best representation of this exchange: songs from Yufei’s profile have found a place in my own, and likewise her activity has included one of my playlists as well. Despite living across oceans, both of us can be certain the other has listened to at least one of the same songs. Every one of our interactions leaves fingerprints in other people’s lives.

All this has left me thinking about how email is different from other communication mediums. There is not so much of a set etiquette to personal emails. There’s more time to ponder without interruption before moving onto the next topic. Schedules and timezones do not have to align. There is nothing implied if a personal email doesn’t receive a reply straight away. Plus something about not having to think instantaneously, not having a face to speak to, encourages topics that weigh a little more. In Yufei’s words, “Time does not flow in emails; they unfold and wait for repeated reads and interpretations. They are patient.”

And Yufei is not the only correspondent. I’ve found research mentors over cold emails; Serena sent me a passage on her family history; every once in a while people who will shape my trajectory cross through my inbox.

In the past there were letters, pen-written and delivered. In the digital space, we have emails. From our inbox we string text into threads of thought and wrap the globe in human connection.