The Writer’s Craft, 2016

Letters
 
I was probably in eighth grade, or possibly ninth, when I began writing to my first “pen pal”.  She lived in SoCal and I’m thinking she, eventually, attended Berkeley.  This texting on Facebook reminds me, a bit, of writing to a pen pal except, of course, texting is immediate gratification.
 
In years past, the act of composing a thoughtful and informative letter took great consideration.  Then, one had to sit down and actually engage in the exercise of taking pen in hand and scratching across the paper – write the words you may, or may not, have written out (at the very least, you would have thought them out) as a ‘sketch’ of your letter. This is why letter writing was, at one time, considered a ‘high art’ – ie, think of Jefferson’s mountains of letter correspondence and the facsimile (polygraph) machine he used to make himself copies, in order to keep track of what he said and to whom: his “drudging at the writing table”.
 
OMG! ♥ There were no little smiley faces (or acronyms) used in the hopes they might express with a symbol or abbreviation what our dear, sweet and precise vocabulary was meant to convey to another human – whether business correspondence or a sharing of the heart, a letter was meant to emote, to bring forth certain passions and emotions. 
 
Love letters were, decidedly, a completely other genre.  Love letters often expressed either emotional thoughts one had for the receiver or the hopes, dreams, plans and sometimes incredibly emotional daydreams one might maintain for another….the stuff of novels and plays and poetry.  This was intensely serious business: one misplaced word, one incorrect word, one word dispossessed of the ‘clearest’ meaning or implied emotion could sever a relationship in the fluttering of a butterfly’s wing – just that fast, indeed, do emotional tsunamis wash over we humans, especially if reading a correspondence when the correspondent is not in front of us, so we might inquire about meaning or request explanation and etc.
 
People kept those labours of love, those dynamic hand-written jewels, as one might treasure photographs or some other visual of a Loved One.  Indeed, it is still felt that many letters contain, at least part of not only the writer, but also the receiver, who, having read, sighed, wept, laughed, dreamed over the letter, would certainly be (literally) within the very weave of the paper and the ink used to write upon it.
 
Letters have been, throughout human history, one of thee most Golden Threads; binding us, tying us, wrapping us together to our tribe, our clan, our family, our friends, our centers: our Human Core – an electrical charge, which when we join together with those contributing to that larger charge, we find anything, and everything, is possible. 
 
Magic. 
 
Sometimes I think we’ve almost lost it and the ability to remember, to understand what the word even means – to experience it, the way we always have done, until recently in our story – not our history or herstory…just Our Story…all of us…can we bring the Magic back?  Find it again?  Or is it lost forever?  Has it morphed into some new, more superficial shadow of the old?   What do you think? 
 
Don’t stray too far……
I think I’ll write you a letter.
 
By Barbara Helvey Hughes, ©2016
Love is the language spoken here.  Don’t go back to sleep.