Written Letters: an Experiment and Offer to QL Readers

Last week I sent a friend a four page, handwritten letter and was surprised to see it was an unusual enough event for her to blog about it. I had to agree with many of Beth's thoughts on the increasing rarity of letter writing and receiving and on the ways in which emails, immediate and handy as they are, usually fall short of the sensual and emotional satisfaction of a pen and ink and paper letter for their readers.

Oddly enough, as I was writing the letter she received, I found myself thinking in ways I'd not thought in a long time, slowing down, allowing myself to wander, to amble, to write langourously, in love with the feel of the paper scratching gently beneath the fountain pen's nib and my own words. (One of my favorite quotes states that an essayist is a person who has simply found a way to talk about themselves without being uninterrupted. I have to laughingly agree.) I used to write letters more than frequently, but the immediate gratification of cyberspace communication has eaten away at that activity, and it has been only recently that I've begun penning short notes once more. Beth's four page letter was a return to the days during which I would very often write lengthy epistles tossed to the mercy of the Post Awful at least three or four times a week to various folk.

Handwritten letters. Good for the receiver. Good for the sender. Why not, then, make an offer to my readers? My email is listed in my Blogger profile (link above under picture). Send me an email with the subject line "Quotidian Light Letter Request," include your snail mail address in the email, and I'll scribble out a real, live, handwritten letter and send back to you through the mail. I make no guarantees about its content or length. It may be one page or six, full of family ridiculosities or theological ponderments or rambling description of the Ozarks countryside. If you're a regular reader, there may be personal comments. If you've never commented, I'll do my best with whatever information you give me about yourself in the email or will fake it blindly.

A letter. A personal, handwritten letter in your mailbox to confirm and affirm your existence in the coporeal world. A real, live, inky, fibrous, living, breathing letter with your very own name on the envelope, written just for you. Tempted?