I am spending the evening reading. I thought I might read a little then write a letter but as the evening wears on I feel I will do better to write a better letter in the morning. A friend awaits a letter and I do not wish to shortchange him. After reading from Jane Eyre (you can read about this in The Reading Corner) I moved on to Writing Letters With Pen & Ink which introduced me to essayist Sven Birkerts. I have only the briefest acquaintance with Mr. Birkerts but thus far I have reason to like him. Mr. Birkerts writes letters to people by hand as many of us do because he likes "the feel of it." Such pleasure needs no explanation to anyone who puts pen to paper. More than that, and this is where I find inspiration, he prefers to walk his letters to the post office to mail them instead of driving. He writes, "And never mind that there are a thousand things I could be doing with the time-- I take the extra half hour and walk. The do-do list gets longer, but never mind. I get an unexpected purchase on my thinking." I appreciate the value he places on mental space, my term for room to think. A few slow minutes of thought has greater value than attending to a multitude of trivialities. I find that in writing letters I buy time and space for thought. As the world spins round ever faster such space gains value. I suspect I am not alone in this experience. I suspect also that the rapidly moving world is behind the desire of so many to recover letter writing not only as an art but as a discipline. Letter writing lends itself to balance.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. Here is the element's original content
|
Letter Matters
|