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.
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I commonly experience the phenomenon of missing time. Does this happen to you? Typically the missing time scenario follows the pattern of 1) make a plan to carry out a desired task, 2) embark on task, 3) remember something else that needs doing, 4) "quickly" accomplish the other thing so task can be carried out with singleness of mind not distracted by the thing remembered, 5) repeat steps 3 and 4 several times, 6) finally come back round to the original task only to realize the time is much later than it was just a few minutes ago.
And so it happened that I rushed to the post office ten minutes before closing time so I could send off a letter to Kathleen. Some letters just seem to take longer to write than others and she has been waiting for a while now for my response. With extra pages and an enclosure I wanted to take this one to the post office for mailing in case extra postage was required. When I got there the postal clerk, who is normally at ease and always pleasantly smiling, seemed as though she too had been in a rush. She gave the impression that a small whirlwind of some sort had blown through and though she probably wasn't suffering from missing time, she admitted to being glad it was closing time. It seems that in this letter writing adventure I will always have room for improvement. I hope that over time not only will my letters become more conversational, more enjoyable to read, and generally more worthy of keeping, I also hope to improve greatly in the discipline of sitting down, writing, and putting a letter in the mail. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? Now to sit down and read the letters I found in my mail box today. But first, just one more thing.... The past few weeks have been hectic and writing letters has existed mostly on my to do list. I regret this, of course and admit that I am entirely to blame though I would like to cast blame on a hectic schedule. I see from my last post that lately I have really had a problem sitting down to write. I find that when I am content to let a good deed remain a mere good intention, having good intentions becomes easy and comfortable and I can soon congratulate myself on meaning well. Meaning well doesn't quite earn the same sort of credit as doing well, does it?
Today I jumped of the merry-go-round of business and sat down to write. It felt so good to put pen to paper with the thoughts of my heart directed toward another person. This is the sort of comfort I enjoy most so how can I neglect it even for a day? Writing a letter feels as good as wrapping myself in a blanket and reading a Jane Austen novel. Tomorrow when I sit down with Jane I will sit also with paper and pen ready for a dear one to come to mind. And when they do I will tell them so. Good deeds are so much more rewarding than good intentions. I haven't written a letter all week. I lament this and feel that I simply haven't had time yet I know I can steal half an hour from somewhere if I set my mind to it; but that's the problem. My mind has been greatly preoccupied with other things. Maybe, just maybe, it's the other things I have been doing that have been stealing time from writing. Letters matter after all. Letting somebody know I'm thinking of them is surely more important than many of those other things I tend to be distracted by. Now I don't mean to say that I haven't had important things crowding into my days, but not everything I've done this week can be rated as top priority. It is very easy (and I KNOW I'm not the only one who does this) to fall down the internet rabbit hole following a trail of links only to emerge half an hour or even a whole hour later with nothing to show for myself but a lost hour...an hour that could have been spent writing (or reading, another worthy pursuit). So, it's time to refocus, reorient, and write. I'm the only one with the power to manage my time. Now to get offline and on to important things :o) .
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Letter Matters
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