letters, the post, mail, correspondence, etc.

did you know blipfoto limits how many characters you can have in a title? yes, well, i didn't either until today.

i won't beleaguer anyone (again) with long diatribes about the postal service here in the US or my love of mail, so on and so forth. i am pretty sure you all (at the very least vaguely) remember me mentioning it at some point or another so it goes without explanation this time except to embellish on details you have perhaps not heard yet, from this pulpit anyway.

this is my most recent letter from one of my closest friends, jessica. we have been lettering back and forth for some time now, i think it is approaching 5 years now, perhaps more. i cannot trace it back very efficiently, as i first started reliably saving them when i moved away from the area we both lived in (dallas-fort worth). but i know we lettered some before i left here.

so now we are, for the first time in 4 years, both living in the same general geographic area. enough so that we can see each other more often - i went last night to jess' roller derby championship match, what a hoot, next time i will try to make it blipworthy - but we still letter all the same.

we pride ourselves on using beautiful envelopes and different methods of addressing the letters. she also has a lovely collection of rubber stamps that she uses often on the outside, such as the one here - a detailed picture of a human heart.

i reciprocate with quotes on the outside of mine that often have to do with a primary theme i am discussing in that letter. or just with nothing - something that has caught my eye recently.

anyway, you can tell these are highly treasured and loved by me, perhaps one of my most valued physical possessions in fact. you always hear that joke "if you could save three things in a fire" - well, everything on my computer is backed up elsewhere, in the cloud, as well as on an external that is right now in storage. my books mean much to me, but not that much. when i think of three things, roxanne is immediately one of them, perhaps one of my jerseys from the ride another. jessica's collection of letters are definitely on that list - irreplaceable.

there is much in the news these past few weeks here about the postal service in america, lamentations about no more saturday service or about cutting jobs or raising costs. i find this sad - not because i will miss saturday service, i'd rather the mail carriers get to keep jobs than have saturday service each week - but because i feel this is all a sad tendency toward less direct communication, less work to say hello to friends, less love and care in letters and in postcards. there is something great in receiving mail, in knowing the person had enough to say to you that the effort was well worth it.

of course, i am often known to go on about my distrust and ultimate dislike for the digital tendency we have all developed and seem to be plummeting nonstop toward. the internet and technology have done a lot of good for the world and after all i would not be here talking to you about all this without it.

at the same time, i fear we are growing apart from the human connection with each year. even my young cousins seem so distant from me in terms of how they live and work socially in the world - they have never known a life before the world wide web.

but that is enough blathering, yes. i should do something else now.

edit: and in writing this, i realize my style has gotten rather repetitive and if possible, even heavier, since going out of daily practice and i must apologize for that.