Mailbox

And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart.
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
~W.H. Auden

I love the mailman. 

I love running down to my little postbox, slipping the key into the lock, and opening the tiny copper door to find letters personally addressed to me.

I love signing into my email and seeing emails written from one friend to another...personal, without a foolish "chain" or a message full of coupons, packed with trite, impersonal gibberish.

I love the written word, seeing my address hand-penned on an envelope...

...perhaps a few inked embellishments here and there to give the paper more personality than it already inherently possesses. 

I love knowing that someone took the time to sit down and scribble their heart onto the page for my eyes alone. 

It's is a much-loved gesture. 

Of all the movements in this world...

...of all the friendly acts known to the heart of man... 

...there is none so devoted or as timeless as a letter writ in human hand. 

This is something that I will never cease to adore. 

Not even after all the ink has run dry. 

The post office has a great charm at one point of our lives.  When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for.  ~Jane Austen

Lettre

The one good thing about not seeing you is that I can write you letters.  ~Svetlana Alliluyeva


I am a huge advocate for the written word. 


Honestly, as much as I love and rely on technology for communications with the world beyond my own doorstep...


...there is something so heartfelt about a hand-penned letter, placed in a hand-licked and carefully address envelope, and slipped into a mailbox. 


It requires patience and love and a steadfast hand. 


It's a discipline and a virtue, one of which I am a devoted follower. 


I received my first penpal at the tender age of 11 with a little girl I met through a Christian children's magazine...


...and then continued with my letter-writing delights at the age of 14 with a guy friend I met at Family Camp, with whom I still have a wonderful friendship with to this very day.


And now, I have just recently begun a new mailbox-connected friendship with my beautiful friend Grace of Puddles of Memories. 


There is something so entrancing about the idea about sitting down at a table, taking a pen between my fingers, and allowing my thoughts to flow out from me onto the page...


...sharing everything, no matter how trivial, with someone who waits in a different part of the country to hear my soul's musings. 


There is magic in the art of the pen and paper. 


The computer has its delights and its requirements, that is certain. 


But the whispered mystery of the written word...


...novels made of paper, fragrant with ink and unspoken promises of lands to come...


...the scritching sound made as my pen traces across the blank page of a eagerly-waiting journal, aching to fill its empty spaces with teardrops and overwhelming joys...


...letters written in the careful hand of a patient and tender friend... 


These things have held me spellbound all my life.


And regardless of technology,


I would rather hold the words in my palm. 


The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.  ~Walt Whitman

Handwritten

A person who can write a long letter with ease cannot write ill. ~Jane Austen

The art of the handwritten letter is in danger of extinction.

With the advances of technology moving forward the way they have been, the very existence of pen and paper is slowly fading into oblivion.

Text messages. Cell phones. Facebook. Computers.

What need do we have for paper and pencil? For stamps and envelopes? Journals? Notebooks?

It's disappearing.

Computers contract viruses and crash; cell phone towers get knocked out in bad weather. When a file is deleted or erased, it's gone forever.

In a way, we're loosing a legacy. There's no sentimental delight in finding an old hard drive.

We're surrendering so much; it's tragic.

We're giving up that excitement of opening up an old jewelry box and finding a forgotten love note...a "thinking-of-you" note from Mom the day we started High School... a scrap of pencil-decorated paper slipped into a lint-filled pocked by a friend.

There's a fine art to be found in picking up a pen and letting all your thoughts flow out in ink onto a blank paper canvas. There's no spell-checker, no automatic grammatical correcter, and no backspace key.

It's 100% genuine.

You can't hide behind the impersonality of the internet or the disconnect of a text message.

It's a form of reality. It's a way of letting go of our pent-up emotions and letting them just pour out in a way that a keyboard just can't convey.

It seems almost criminal to let go of something so wonderful, so old-fashioned and so fresh at the same time.

Maybe it's just the romantic artist in me, but I can't imagine living in a world where the delight of handwriting is forgotten.

So write a letter...fall into a flashback...

...don't let the ink dry.