The Pony Express

(your mail in three months, guaranteed)

There is something infinitely redeeming about a letter.
Every day I send upwards of twenty work e-mails, sometimes more. Sometimes many more. I send a lot of friends e-mails as well. Just type, click, and it's there. Instantaneous. And when I type as quickly as I do - almost as fast as I think - it's not hard for me to get all my thoughts down that I want immediately, fresh and hot off the synapses, still sparking with nanobits of literal mental electricity. And when e-mail became the preferred method of communication, both in the work and the social worlds, it was because of its immediacy, it's ease of creation and delivery, a process that required no pickup or dropoff times, no physical materials, and no horses. (Or the couriers on them.)
So getting a letter is a strange and rare event. Getting two in one day is unheard of. But upon opening my little mailbox in the lobby of my apartment complex last night, I found two letters from Margaret, sitting all nice and pretty.
One was dated June 20th; the other, June 26th. I got them both July 6th, a testament to Margaret being at an electricity-poor camp in Maine and the reliability of my apartment complex always adding 4-7 days onto the normal mailing process. I sometimes wonder if the building supervisors wait outside for the mailman, cheerfully saying "We'll sort them into each apartment box for you!" and the mailman leaving thinking, "That's really nice of them to do that", while the women carry the mail back to their offices and see how long they can hold it before their residents pitch a fit.
But I digress - I got two letters, both long and handwritten. That seems to go without saying but after the thousands of e-mails I've sent and received over the last year, there is something pure and simple about a handwritten letter. For one, it takes time. My handwriting is infinitely slower than my typing. It shows you that the person put a lot of time and effort into it, because it's not that easy to create a long letter, particularly compared to the ease of e-mail. For another, you get all the personality of the characters, the slant of the lines, the flowing strokes of curves and hard dashes. It brings to mind the scene in Hero of the battle at the calligraphy school, and how writing and swordplay are almost exactly the same thing. But the personality is the key - and it's something I never noticed before, or at least not this explicitly.
The cool thing was that Margaret was having a similar experience in Maine. Away from all the 'basics' of city/suburban life - like electricity - you get down to what the real 'basics' are - trees, fire, lakes, stars. It was really impressive to read about and the topic just seemed to fit the handwritten letter perfectly.
And the last cool thing about handwritten letters is that, unlike e-mail, one good letter deserves another.
A timely quote: "The harder you press on paper, the more intense of a personality you have."
Excellent...

Going to meet with Martin for a writer's conference tonight, and I'm excited about it. Caissa practically needs a new dress. W0w. I'm pretty sure she wrote that before my brain had actually comprehended it.

I set up the family fantasy football league today, and it looks like it's going to be awesome! So many good things ahead...

Life is getting better...