Writing Letter

From "The Loss of the Personal in a Technological Society" by James M. Houston

"The thrust of the letters is the same strong desire to communicate the personal dimension… Today, we are recognizing the need to recover personal communication at various levels... As a form of real communication, the letter addresses an absent friend to foster further relationship, by reflecting the personality of the writer, and in sharing one side of a dialogue... In all, it opens up the reader to an extraordinary wide range of personal perspectives, and of entering into very diverse vicissitudes of the human condition.”

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Dear Alex,

Letters seem lonely and regressive.  Perhaps pitiful.  I seldom write them.  In this era of instantaneous alerts, why delay the pace of self-expression in words when they could be spat out in texting?

A long time ago in high school I received my first real letter tucked in a pink perfumed envelope.  It came with her wallet-sized portrait inscribed and signed at the back.  My best friend wrote to me.  We had just met after my transfer to a new school.  I saw her daily in English and History classes.  We ate together on virtually every lunch hour at school.

Still she felt the urge to speak on paper, her thoughts coming to shape in words, creased and sealed, its secrets to be unveiled in the solitude of my reading.  I talked back in ink, unfiltered and anxious over my penmanship, diction and meaning.  The next day I surrendered my letter, heart and all to her.

Nine months later she vanished.  An unexpected accident.  I have her letter and photo now.

Since then many of my personal letters have become furiously pensive, dyslexic at times.  Because time is dissipating.  Half of my life or more dismissed.  And I need to feel and do better.

Writing helps me to preserve, illuminate memories, visions, people.  Or does it?  Sometimes for me, writing is a paradox: you want to mark thoughts down to maybe bridge an idea, a point, sentiments but to whom? Absent ears, pulseless.  The moon ends the narrative in slumber.  Time ticks on.

So letters become a kinder friend to speak to another.  In thought and inquiry.  Let’s chat about it, about us.  And talk back, upward and sideways.  Imagine with me.

Yours, Kate

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Dear Kate,

Friends exchanging letters, in long, beautiful sentences, a lost art, we say. But was the art ever there? In my generation, during the "simpler" yesteryears?

My pastor emails a letter to the congregation every Tuesday, a "love letter," I call it, and it speaks more about him than almost everything else he has done to and for us. And of course everything he does speaks about the authenticity, truthfulness of the letters.

What and how we speak to our friends speaks about the friendship and, even more so, about ourselves.

Now I am letting my cynical side do some speaking: Well, we somehow get used to the weekly letters. Get used to, three very evil words. Take for granted. Consider the act being less than human, less than loving, less than a reflection of God. Somehow we let the dehumanization happen. Words of love somehow become business correspondence, things "relevant" and "useful" we glean, and there might even be gossip and speculation between the lines to satisfy our "curiosity."

I am not saying this is what happened in our congregation. I was only speaking about myself. When my heart stopped to respond to those letters in a personal way, I've started to see my pastor as less than a person, someone I claim though to love deeply and care for a great deal.

So here we are, Kate, writing letters. It is a way we speak to each other, even a form of protest, an act of defiance, don't you think, to go against our own death-seeking ways? May I never take for granted your words.

Yours, Alex