Snail Mail
March 17, 2002 | 12:00am
Last August, while on vacation, I received a handwritten letter from a friend. Wow, I thought, just like the old days. (Ooh...a stamp!) He could have e-mailed me but he knew, without being told, that an actual letter would warm my heart. But he couldn’t have known how much. I literally floated to the nearest chair. With trembling fingers, I pried open the envelope and extracted its precious contents. I realized then that I had never seen my friend’s handwriting. Imagine that. It was beautiful! I smoothed out the pages, flipped them over carefully and read until I had nearly memorized every paragraph. For days after, I carried it with me. Each time I lifted that V-flap and slid my letter out, I sighed. Snail mail!!! Ahhhhh... the forbidden pleasure of ink on paper.
Just the other day I cleaned out my files. When I opened a file labelled "letters," I sank to the floor. Stayed there for years. The sight of those pages sent vivid memories gushing forth. The big, loopy, thick-tipped green ink on puppy-bordered paper– that was Mary Jane. "A" (for Angela). That’s what my Amazon, dog-lover friend called me. "Hey A!," was a mini melody that played for me every work day for almost two years. Tiny, uneven, scrunched together squiggles on nature motif paper was Phillip. I remember receiving a letter from him once that still smelled faintly of cigarettes and immediately remembered him lighting up– cupped fingers reaching out of coat-sheathed arms, shielding the precious little flame from the sharp winter wind. Linear, heavy, gravity-defying, left-veering black letters on thick, sky blue paper was Walt – the boss who would rather be boyfriend but became very good friend instead, when the little spiel in the parked car was met with my loud, hopelessly insensitive, surely-you-jest yodel.
So many stories there... so many pictures awakening in my mind and heart. I spent hours reading them, inhaling invisible time-warped molecules, remembering who I was when I received them. You cannot imagine the emotional ride I took as I riffled through those browning pages. How can anything compare?
Unlike its one-dimensional, ultra-flat electronic counterpart, a handwritten letter is alive. How many times have you, after reading a letter, instinctively held it to your heart? I don’t recall ever wanting to do that with my laptop. No matter how much you experiment with color and font and whatever other tool there is, an e-mailed note is just letters on the screen – a screen you can hide behind. There is no trace of you in it – no fingerprints for the crime lab to lift, no telltale signs of life, not even a whiff of perfume for the neighborhood pervert to inhale – literally, nothing. It is a note in its barest, practically anonymous, most soulless form. That’s all it will ever be.
A handwritten letter–now that’s something. There is much to be gathered from the way the letters spread themselves out on paper–so much to be gleaned from a smudge. Was it a watermark, perhaps from a blotted tear or was it heavy, oily, a remnant of a hastily eaten meal? Were the letters uncharacteristically unsteady, suggesting a newly acquired emotional scar that has begun to change the course of one’s life? Was it rushed? Written in anger? Anticipation? A handwritten letter always offers a better story because it holds so much of its author in it.
A handwritten note tells its recipient she is cared for, was given the time of day. There is a process there – the careful selection of stationery, choice of pen, the clearing of space on which to write; time purposely set aside for the task, the putting together of thoughts, the pauses, hesitation, sometimes the drafts, the coming together of just the right words to express your sentiments and finally, the movement of your hand as it dances on paper, bringing words to life. There in the loops, crosses and dots created by your living hand a good, solid part of you is laid down for eternity. And when you write your name at the end of every letter, you confirm your full, undivided presence. You are there. It is a gesture that brings you back into your soul and out again. Isn’t that something?
I appreciate e-mail and welcome the global gaps it closes and the speed with which it does it, but I do mourn the passing of the handwritten letter. I miss the hours specifically set aside for writing them, flexing my fingers after hours of writing, loving the way that perfect pen glides and slides across meticulously chosen stationery. I miss holding that letter, knowing that some time ago, a friend had touched the very same page; that it was just on that little kitchen table on the other side of the world, sharing space with her rarely washed coffee mug.
Sure, let’s keep the e-mails going but let’s not deprive each other of the real thing. I can’t imagine my children growing up to nothing but electronic mail. What a tragedy! Let us put pen and paper together as often as we can. It is a practice that must be kept alive in the face of all the technological substitutes that threaten to kill real human communication. The best letters are the ones that enliven the senses; that tell a deeper story simply because you are there.
E-mail: myspace@skyinet.net.
Just the other day I cleaned out my files. When I opened a file labelled "letters," I sank to the floor. Stayed there for years. The sight of those pages sent vivid memories gushing forth. The big, loopy, thick-tipped green ink on puppy-bordered paper– that was Mary Jane. "A" (for Angela). That’s what my Amazon, dog-lover friend called me. "Hey A!," was a mini melody that played for me every work day for almost two years. Tiny, uneven, scrunched together squiggles on nature motif paper was Phillip. I remember receiving a letter from him once that still smelled faintly of cigarettes and immediately remembered him lighting up– cupped fingers reaching out of coat-sheathed arms, shielding the precious little flame from the sharp winter wind. Linear, heavy, gravity-defying, left-veering black letters on thick, sky blue paper was Walt – the boss who would rather be boyfriend but became very good friend instead, when the little spiel in the parked car was met with my loud, hopelessly insensitive, surely-you-jest yodel.
So many stories there... so many pictures awakening in my mind and heart. I spent hours reading them, inhaling invisible time-warped molecules, remembering who I was when I received them. You cannot imagine the emotional ride I took as I riffled through those browning pages. How can anything compare?
Unlike its one-dimensional, ultra-flat electronic counterpart, a handwritten letter is alive. How many times have you, after reading a letter, instinctively held it to your heart? I don’t recall ever wanting to do that with my laptop. No matter how much you experiment with color and font and whatever other tool there is, an e-mailed note is just letters on the screen – a screen you can hide behind. There is no trace of you in it – no fingerprints for the crime lab to lift, no telltale signs of life, not even a whiff of perfume for the neighborhood pervert to inhale – literally, nothing. It is a note in its barest, practically anonymous, most soulless form. That’s all it will ever be.
A handwritten letter–now that’s something. There is much to be gathered from the way the letters spread themselves out on paper–so much to be gleaned from a smudge. Was it a watermark, perhaps from a blotted tear or was it heavy, oily, a remnant of a hastily eaten meal? Were the letters uncharacteristically unsteady, suggesting a newly acquired emotional scar that has begun to change the course of one’s life? Was it rushed? Written in anger? Anticipation? A handwritten letter always offers a better story because it holds so much of its author in it.
A handwritten note tells its recipient she is cared for, was given the time of day. There is a process there – the careful selection of stationery, choice of pen, the clearing of space on which to write; time purposely set aside for the task, the putting together of thoughts, the pauses, hesitation, sometimes the drafts, the coming together of just the right words to express your sentiments and finally, the movement of your hand as it dances on paper, bringing words to life. There in the loops, crosses and dots created by your living hand a good, solid part of you is laid down for eternity. And when you write your name at the end of every letter, you confirm your full, undivided presence. You are there. It is a gesture that brings you back into your soul and out again. Isn’t that something?
I appreciate e-mail and welcome the global gaps it closes and the speed with which it does it, but I do mourn the passing of the handwritten letter. I miss the hours specifically set aside for writing them, flexing my fingers after hours of writing, loving the way that perfect pen glides and slides across meticulously chosen stationery. I miss holding that letter, knowing that some time ago, a friend had touched the very same page; that it was just on that little kitchen table on the other side of the world, sharing space with her rarely washed coffee mug.
Sure, let’s keep the e-mails going but let’s not deprive each other of the real thing. I can’t imagine my children growing up to nothing but electronic mail. What a tragedy! Let us put pen and paper together as often as we can. It is a practice that must be kept alive in the face of all the technological substitutes that threaten to kill real human communication. The best letters are the ones that enliven the senses; that tell a deeper story simply because you are there.
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