letters

I love letters. I really do. I think letters from other people are some of the things I treasure the most, of everything in my room. I love how each piece of paper you find captures the person who sent it - and for a few paragraphs, you get a sense of how that person was at the exact time he wrote it. His chosen words, his handwriting, the formatting, the paper even. I find it fascinating.

It's too bad letter writing is no longer the art form it was before. I imagine people would be more civil, more precious even, if they took the time to really think about what to say, if they committed pen to paper and not just merely banged a couple of keys on their computers.

I was reminded of letters and letter writing in general after I saw You've Got Mail for the Nth time this month. As always, I got teary eyed when Meg Ryan realized she had been writing to Tom Hanks all along. I felt my insides churn when I was privy to their innermost thoughts about the inanest of things. It was a beautiful exchange. So full of the personality that people often forget to have when they're talking to people they are actually familiar with. I mean, admittedly, it's true for me. I find I am truest when I am with new people. I feel like I have no standard in their heads that I have to live up to. It's strange really, how there are voids between the worlds in which I can feel familiar and unobtuse. Like there is this brief window of time in my relationships wherein I can be myself (sometime between newness right before actual familiarity). After that I just became stranger and stranger to the point where I am so strange that I am just too much to fathom.

But when I write, I somehow feel unhinged, but in a good way. Like for once, I can be free to say as I think, without being constrained to consider how I sound, or how I look when I say it. Ironic that what I like about my own writing is what I dislike about the way other people write now. (I imagine this thought process now only makes sense to me). Maybe it's more accurate to say that I enjoy how people are better versions of themselves in letter form than they are when left to their own thoughts & wit, real time. With the exception of me of course. It is a well-known fact that I can almost never say what I think when I am in the moment. My end of conversations are completed only when I am already in the car, halfway home after they are actually had. I wonder why that is? Over dinner the other night, my friend said she thought I had whole conversations in my head as the actual conversations were happening, and the reason why I was so quiet was because I was already prejudging in my head what the other person would be thinking of my unsaid & hypothetical responses. (more on that terrifying conversation on a different day, or maybe later, as it seems obvious i am in a mad frenzy to write gibberish tonight - FINALLY!)

but i digress. I don't know if I love writing more because it is one of the very few times I can really reveal who I am at the exact moment I am feeling things, or if it is because I feel it is the most real and personal people can get - because no one but the receiver is privy to what they say.

i was going to post part of what was the last remaining email of someone i wrote a lot to way back when I thought I knew who I was. But, as it turns out - everything seems too personal to share, and all the others, have been deleted from my inbox. in retrospect, I wish I hadn't deleted them. all I have now are letters from my side of the conversation. It's strange to be thinking about those letters now, but I find it refreshing to remember that there was a part of my life that was shared mostly through conversations like that - in letter form, documenting things we read, things we saw, things we thought. and undocumenting things we felt. it feels very strange indeed. dare i say, i miss it. I don't know what about it exactly, but I do miss it.

i've been reading and rereading that last letter for quite some time now. strange how i keep coming back to it. really strange.