The title of this post is a bit of a misnomer. If an errant comet hits the barn tonight, destroying me and reducing my home to cinders, the letters I have written will not find their mark. They are stacked on my table, addressed and return addressed and stamped and ready to go out into the world. All except for the letter requested by Scott of the UK, whose letter is waiting to have the proper postage affixed.
This was fun. Thanks to those of you who reached out. Several of you wrote expressing interest in the project but claiming that you, “did not need letters.” What am I to make of this? Are you being too polite? Or maybe it’s that you’d rather I not know where you live.
In some ways, I am grateful that I posted this offer over a holiday weekend, because had more people asked for letters, those of you who will be getting them would have gotten less. I wrote each of you a full page, with the exception of the lone stranger among you, who got two pages. It’s too small a sample to draw conclusions from, but I think it might be telling that the one person I did not know at all got the longest letter. Did I have more to say, for some reason? Did the act of writing to a stranger require greater preamble? I wish that more strangers had reached out, that I could know the answer to this question.
The words I write in my daily exercises are free to be empty. They have no audience. With the letters I have sent to some of you, the words required purpose, care, and meaning. It’s a different challenge, to be sure. I’m glad to have had the opportunity to meet it.
If you are inspired, please tell me what you think when your letter arrives. Words cast into the void have some value for the potential they represent, but words responded to are greater by far. They represent a conversation. And no matter how much of a misanthropist any of us must be, we need exchange as we go about our lives. We long to be heard, responded to.
In other news, I got an email from Robbi today, who must have ingratiated herself to the owner of a local cannery with a wireless connection. The message was short, the news brief. It sounds like the fish aren’t hitting this year, but that my babies are well. My babies…what do they even look like? Oh, I remember now.
Seventeen days and I’ll see them again. Wasn’t the whole world made in just one?
Matthew,
I’m looking forward to my gift of a letter. And yes, you are right, it is about the exchange, the conversation, the sharing. What is the point otherwise?
Dang cute babes, BTW. And 17 days is not so awfully long. Wait till they go off to college.
Way to brighten my morning! I actually spend all day writing at work but in a tone I don’t like and about things I largely disagree with so the vision of an actual personal letter is oustanding.
And whilst I’m appalled someone would actually decline a letter (!?) I am secretly smug that they did so that you were able to write a whole page to each of us.
17 days alone in Chestertown sounds like a dream come true to me.. hope you enjoy it and the return of your babies is quicker than you think.
Just wanted you to know that I got my delightful letter and will respond with a few thoughts that it inspired, sometime over the weekend. Meanwhile, thank you!