Aftermath of Phone Books

I doubt one can still find those thick phone books which told you the telephone number and street where a person lived. Not only that but they doubled as cushions to raise toddlers high enough to sit at a table with grown-ups.

Those large unwieldy objects are objects of the past, but small personal phone books have not given way completely to lists on a phone that you can carry around with you. There’s nothing quite as handy as that small collection of pages stapled together that fits into your pocket.  It’s like having a private group of friends

They are names, but we also have their voices, we have that essential part of them that is a voice. John Looker (Shimmering Horizons) compared it to Ulysses talking to the dead –  a woman marooned in an airport, had only her phone. It was filled with messages…out of sequence, with voicemail bringing the presence of those she loved and missed. With the voices of those who were dead speaking even now in her ears, she was lost in a world beyond place or time listening for an inner voice, one that felt whisperingly close.

There are also what we call agendas, tracking our day to day activities. What medicines we should take, our various appointments and meetings with people we might otherwise forget. Internet, the computer. But in order to find them and their voices, one needs to remember, to know their names. I listened to a marvelous reading of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Since I now live in Italy, Italian is the language I generally use. I want to know more about the man who gave them life, I want to find his voice again. The first time I was entranced by his reading, I jotted down his name on one of the pages of a yearly agenda. I could never find that name scrolling through youtube or in my personal memory. When I find his name, Glauco Mauri, I can listen to him again and again.  As well as finding out who he is, or was. The internet tells me that he is almost 90 years old and about to take on the part of Lear in Shakespeare’s play.

If, as James says, their names remain in your private phone book, maybe you can still call them,—- It is somehow a sign they still exist. But only as a memory I can recall at will.

Some date back to years. My memory sometimes fails me, but I know where to look. I can find them thanks to my agenda. Romeo and Juliet were presented in their balcony scene by two well-known actors, Paola Gassman and Ugo Pagliai.  Married in real life, they were in their 70s and 80s. Their dialogue and the love in the looks they exchanged were utterly believable even if Shakespeare’s lovers were teen-agers. Their names turned up in one of my agendas of several years ago.

When I do find names and addresses, they are transformed into voices. It may be a phone, a voice, bridging the ocean, bridging time. The phone rings. I lift the receiver and recognize the speaker. Jean, Giulio, George, Leo. They are still there in my head and I can’t help wondering who will remember them, who will say their names when I am gone. Of course, as my son says, they don’t give a damn. They are just one of the infinite combinations of who a certain person at a certain time was, now and then.

Personal phone books, agendas, lists on my phone. Aids to my memory. Voices from the past. My memory is still there but not quite what it used to be.