The only things that arrive in my mail box are bills and things I buy which are usually followed by bills or at least me writing the cost of said things into my balance sheet of the checkbook.
Once upon a time I used to get mail in there, well sometimes I would get mail, occasionally …I would … I have the letters if you want to read them… well some of them … you can see the post cards.
The thing is we don’t communicate the same any longer. Letters were and are if you get them a window to a time gone by, a day in the life of another person. They are the conversations over a span of time. There is a connection to the person in the letters.
It starts with the writing you are putting a piece of yourself there on the page. You hold the page and then you write your thoughts out and ask questions, describe events and express emotion.
Then you send that letter out into the world and wait for a reply. That is part of the process. Yes emails work the same and text messages as well, but there is a disconnection in the modern process. You are not really connecting to the other person you aren’t holding anything from theirs give to you just electronic blips. You have your computer, your cell phone, your other device and nothing of the other person.
The waiting too is part of the process. The anticipation and looking in the mail box for a letter.
Then one day it, the reply, arrives as a letter, a card or other piece of mail sent from one person to another.
Holding in your hand something they held and thought of you. Inside the envelopes are all of humanities capacity for emotion. Love, sadness, joy, happiness, anger, regret, woe, mourning, desire, longing, hope and all the others.
There is the connection to that person there and then and when ever you need to have that feeling.
I have letters from many people, some who are long dead and gone from my life but I can pick up those letters and I hold something of them again. Something they touched and sent to me. They thought of me when they put words to the page. Some letters are from my father, from my aunt, grandparents. Friends from other places, and other times in my life most are happy letters, some are erotic letters, some are letters of new beginnings, some are announcements of events and many other things in the lives or those I’ve known in my life.
We still connect and reconnect in this electronic age but we can disconnect all too easily and delete the existence of friends from out lives with the click of a button. It’s all gone then there is nothing to hold in your hand, no faint scent of perfume that once adorned the page, a doodle in the margin, the stains of tears or a coffee cup sat on the page, a smudge a crossed out word that you can just make out what the person was going to say and changed it to something else.
A letter lets another person into our lives. You can keep them or toss them out but in a moment you have something from them. Letters can help you span time. When my daughter turned 18 I gave her a letter that I wrote to her when she was 6 months old. She needed me for so much when I wrote that letter, the day she read it she didn’t. She got to know a dad that she didn’t remember who was happy and scared and looking toward a future day when a baby who couldn’t read the words when they were written would one day be able to read those words and connect and in another 5 years my son will read the letter I wrote to him. You can’t bridge those years with an email or a text message. You can’t make that connection.
In other news
I still smile a good bit
Litter box thought… dang it.
That’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow
Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday
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Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.
Ciao,
Listening to: TV
Gamer Tag: invisible don
PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015
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