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So, I just stomped through the door in the bad mood to end all bad moods. Stomped into the kitchen, got coffee, then Pedar said, "There's a letter for you," and smiled. Perhaps he guessed as I did who it was from before I even opened it. But then, maybe not; Pedar, as I have said many times before, cannot remember my friends by their names, but only by some salient detail about them. Clare gets her name because of her decade-long presence in my life - among the others are "the die-hard socialist" and "the one in purple" and "the intellectual one."
So I grabbed my letter and went through a hundred-and-eighty-degree moodswing. Much of the delighted bouncing and yelling, "It's from Leigh!"
"Who's Leigh?"
"The one with the linguistic inevitability," I said, and retired to the stone table to read my letter. It was a bit of a weird experience "hearing" Leigh's voice, which I'm so used to and familiar with, in such a different context. And it made me giggle, and Leigh, my first reaction to the word "taper" was indeed "candle", so I turned the page and giggled and earned a few odd looks from everyone else.
But I don't care 'cause ohmygod I have a letter from Leigh, and I love letters. Clearly, not as good as actually meeting would have been, but unlike our many emails and LJ comments, a letter is something the other person wrote, worked on, actually touched. I may be mentally four years old but I'm yet to get over the miracle of the postal service. The envelope has my name on it, plus four lines of text, and on the strength of these alone it has travelled four thousand miles over four days and reached the exact right place - this one white house, this one kitchen table of all the (stone) kitchen tables in the world.
And this letter had something else in it - certainly the most unusual and thoughtful gift I've ever received, and one I'm going to keep taking out and looking at at odd moments. I have a drawer crammed full of letters in my bedside table, none of which I would have without miracle of the internet.
And as this is getting maudlin and philosophical, I will stop here. It will be light for another four hours and I have to go down to the shore and shout at the Atlantic.
So I grabbed my letter and went through a hundred-and-eighty-degree moodswing. Much of the delighted bouncing and yelling, "It's from Leigh!"
"Who's Leigh?"
"The one with the linguistic inevitability," I said, and retired to the stone table to read my letter. It was a bit of a weird experience "hearing" Leigh's voice, which I'm so used to and familiar with, in such a different context. And it made me giggle, and Leigh, my first reaction to the word "taper" was indeed "candle", so I turned the page and giggled and earned a few odd looks from everyone else.
But I don't care 'cause ohmygod I have a letter from Leigh, and I love letters. Clearly, not as good as actually meeting would have been, but unlike our many emails and LJ comments, a letter is something the other person wrote, worked on, actually touched. I may be mentally four years old but I'm yet to get over the miracle of the postal service. The envelope has my name on it, plus four lines of text, and on the strength of these alone it has travelled four thousand miles over four days and reached the exact right place - this one white house, this one kitchen table of all the (stone) kitchen tables in the world.
And this letter had something else in it - certainly the most unusual and thoughtful gift I've ever received, and one I'm going to keep taking out and looking at at odd moments. I have a drawer crammed full of letters in my bedside table, none of which I would have without miracle of the internet.
And as this is getting maudlin and philosophical, I will stop here. It will be light for another four hours and I have to go down to the shore and shout at the Atlantic.
