On paper

10Jun11

What an appropriate topic for a blog post.

I joined the Letter Writers Alliance. Bad timing: the local stationer just closed. Stationery in, say, a Staples is ungodly hideous.

I think it’s because I finished my first draft and now won’t be writing in longhand anymore. Also because I needed something else to waste time looking up on eBay and Etsy then mostly not buying. Something else to dream about and not actually do. Because, to be honest, I wanted the opportunity to gawk at and then probably not buy the LWA’s crazy-adorable members-only bag. It’s because I am writing something in which a letter figures highly. I need more letters to paper over the acuteness of that one.

(E-shopping reminds me I hated stationery. Because it was inadequate. Manufacturers allowed two small sheets of paper per envelope, tops. I wrote reams. Had to switch to plain paper after page 2. It looked ugly.)

Now, where are my correspondents?

Turns out it is very hard to convert a conversation from email to paper. No surprise. If you’re used to emailing someone all the time… how do you wait long enough that there’s something to say? You need a long-distance friend or two who is equally romantic about sitting down at the kitchen table at the end of a day with a sheet of paper.

Consider that image. A woman sits at the kitchen table at the end of the day with a mug of tea and a sheet of paper. Does it matter to me, truly, if a friend is at the other end of my account of my life? Probably not. I like to hear myself talk. Probably a voice echoes more loudly in an empty room. Very probably what I really need is the Hard Copy Journal Writers Alliance.

Thank heavens LiveJournal didn’t exist in my salad years.

There is this thing called “mail art” and it is beautiful but I can’t do it. An effort was made. I walked up to the woman at the post office counter and asked what stamps she had available. This happened because this post office, which is in a uselessly beautiful building and soon to relocate, lacks a stamp machine. Actually this happened because when Bank of America bought out BankBoston x years ago they discontinued the handy ATM stamp service. This happened because I do not qualify for the level of mortgage necessary to buy property in Somerville, Massachusetts and thus pay my monthly housing cost in a check to a landlord instead of an electronic debit to a bank.

How far back in this chain of explanations do you want to go? I like explanations. I like to wrap them around a neck and pull.

Because this is an off-duty blog post I don’t need to wrap up the ending.

I will reread this post multiple times. I like to hear myself talk.
xx
djd
p.s. Spam comment to Berklee-Blogs.com:
Everything is interesting

Filed under: obsessions   |  1 Comment
Tags: letter writers alliance, mail art, the usual dithering, you know where you know when