I don’t know about you but I melt each of the (very few these days) times I receive a real letter, by post, that contains… stuff we used to put in letters. Not the endless formal letters from business, nor the fake personal ones from businesses (like the amazing fancily embossed wedding invitation I got a while back that turned out to be from HBO… it was an ad for the new TV series on polygamy, “Big Love”… did anyone else get that? Must have cost them a huge amount…. I’ve been to a few fancy weddings, and that invitation was in fact comparable in quality to some of those…)
It is all so rare to get real personal mail the old fashioned way these days. So many things done by email. Hundreds of emails. Too many sometimes. Fast. Too fast sometimes. Or is it just me?
I love the look and feel of a nicely addressed (airmail especially) envelope, with firm, flowing writing by an actual human being… I really miss that. I loved getting this one so much, loved the look of the exterior so very much, that it took me a while to actually (carefully) tear it open to get at the contents.
In fact, at the beginning of this Summer in a fit of good intentions, I bought some airmail envelopes and a pad of writing paper, with lots of mutterings about starting to actually write real hand-written letters again. It has not happened yet. Sigh….
-cvj
Pingback: Reading, Writing, and ‘Rithmetic - Asymptotia
Pingback: How To Make It Stop? - Asymptotia
Writing the letter and putting it in the envelope and all that is the easy part for me. The bit I am bad at is getting it to the post office! I picked up one of those airmail envelopes after reading this post with the intention of writing to my mom, but I bet that even if I wrote the letter, it would end up getting thrown out a year from now when I realise I hadn’t posted it.
It probably says a lot that I melt every time I get a proper letter-style email that says the things that letters and emails are supposed to say, instead of the one-line inbox-cloggers that say stuff like “The Board of Studies meeting is at 10am in room 5529. The agenda is on the webpage.” or something.
Ok, I suck at snailmail. I keep meaning to write letters and postcards to people, but somehow it never happens. But really, I miss the “letter-that-says-nothing” genre — the kind that goes one a little ramble that is a window into the head of the person who wrote it. As opposed to the single line of need-to-know information.
–IP
I love real letter too. My mom was a wonderful letter writer, remembering everyone’s birthday and everyone’s anniversary and always including a personal note. I wish I had learned her art.