Epistle

There's something magical about writing a letter, a full paper-based epistle that you seal and address and then put in a little slot to be physically conveyed to its recipient. I used to send lots of letters to a once-girlfriend overseas and it truly helped maintain the connection in a way no other means of communication does. Skype doesn't help, the phone doesn't help, but letters do as they maintain the connection but also allow you to continue your life fairly functionally. Also, and more importantly, the effort is meaningful, far more meaningful than turning up next to a computer. The writer of a letter has sat down somewhere, away from the soul-destroying machine, and has written with a pen and ink thoughtfully. It's a wonderful thing.

However, the rarity of letters in this time period means you have to use them wisely or extravagantly, lest people wonder at your intentions. They are the atom bombs of communication and are best used for devastating effect. For everyday epistles we've shifted onto e-mail, because it's fast and free! I love e-mail, despite the increased chance of imagination throwing a spanner in the works and distorting what you meant to say all along. It's easier to read incorrectly between the lines of an e-mail than a letter, because the spaces are so very uniform and spacious. The very worst media are short messages on Twitter and Facebook. If ever a service was designed to be misleading...

My voracious correspondence takes place mostly in e-mail, with a horde of variously themed and moderately lengthy messages flying out into the world every week, and a horde returning in response for the most part. As they always used to say: "You have to send them to get them." It's true. Contact is something that you must initiate in the most part in the hopes that both participants will then sustain the link. It's easy to be proud and wish that other people would contact you, but it doesn't work that way. Obviously by this principle a small number of people get a massive torrent of e-mails and letters and have a luxury in responding but in the most part you have to send them to get them.

It's probably very noticeable that I write this blog as an open e-mail most of the time, a message to an anonymous and theoretical reader out in the wilderness of outside reality. Hopefully sometimes it connects with someone and causes a spark of happiness or incredulity, as is its secondary purpose. As always the primary purpose is self-expression. If more people wrote blogs and expressed themselves, perhaps the world would be a less stressed place. That's food for thought. Maybe we should all have pen friends?

O.