And now, another memory dump of rambling thoughts, this time about personal correspondence.
I’m fond of proper mail. Not the spam type of stuff—flyers, applications for a credit card, notification of enrolment for jury duty. No, none of that. I’m talking about opening up your mailbox, and seeing a blue and red air mail envelope addressed to you from someone you know. An envelope that contains a letter. A personal letter, one that was written solely and intently for your eyes only. You open that envelope and read the words written on the A5 paper inside, reply back, then shove it in a shoe box with your other letters underneath the bed.
Sadly, with the advent of e-mail, instant text messages on phones, and the internet in general, the art and the good-natured will of writing personal correspondence to a friend or somewhere across the world has nearly gone, and I think that’s sad for a few reasons.
The Olden Days
In the olden days, before the invention of computers, you would have to go down to your local stationary store and purchase a few items: a tablet of paper (probably A5 or letter size), a stack of envelopes to fit those sheets, a pen, and some stamps. You would write letters to various people and groups, and sometimes you’d get a handwritten reply back. Sometimes, if your writing was so poor (mine drifts from grade 1 penmanship to decent, depending on how much coffee I’ve had and how awake I am), you would use a typewriter, if you had access to one. You would seal the envelope, mark it with appropriate postage, then drop it in the mailbox, and wait.
Now, you make a few taps on the keyboard, click send with your mouse button, and WHAM—instant notification.
That may sound revolutionary, but I think it’s cold and very calculated, instant or not.
Why Is Personal Correspondence Personal?
Personal correspondence is personal for many reasons. First and foremost, if you write with a pen or print out a page, you’re still thinking of many things to say, so it becomes your creation, so to speak. It’s not like sending a few texts. It’s thinking of something to say to another person that would strike the right emotional tone for the receiving party. The very physical feeling of the envelope, the textured paper running on the edges of your thumbs—it’s an indescribable feeling, but one that tells you someone took the time and liberty to give to you a message or a series of papers about whatever topic. That, I think, is a good feeling; the feeling of accomplishment, of understanding, of bonding. Not to mention, it keeps your brain cells going.
It goes even deeper if you write that letter. Whatever writing tool you implement, you may notice some things: the writing style, be it cursive or printed; the artfulness of how the words are written (using small circles instead of a pen dot for small letter Is, for instance); the various dark and light ink patterns on the paper indicate a change in the mix of emotions the writer is experiencing as they go along. When you read and see it, and when you feel the texture of the paper where the pen or pencil digs deeper, you develop a sense of what the person is trying to convey, and with what emotions. It suddenly becomes relatable to you and only you. I just can’t think of the right set of words to describe what your mind goes through when reading the latest updates of a pen pal from across the world, and what its like over there. It’s that feeling of connectivity. Maybe that’s one way to say it.
Furthermore, lots of people in whatever field they are love receiving letters from fans or others, and often reply. The late amateur astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, up until his death, read the majority of letters sent to him, and he typed his responses back to those who wrote to him. When you do something like that and receive a personal reply back, that is special. Someone actually read what you wrote and took time out of their busy lives and career to write back. If I had written to someone like Patrick Moore and got a reply back, it would definitely be something I wouldn’t throw away. I’d keep it forever. I may even frame it and put it on the wall.
Physical vs. Digital
You may say that typewriting, writing, and instant electronic gratification have the same outcome, but I don’t think so. With typewriting, you’re physically moving mechanical pieces to strike hammers onto a ribbon that imprints (and often impacts) a mark on a piece of paper. You’re making that letter by physical and more simple mechanical means. With writing, you’re using a stylus to make marks on a paper, gripping it tightly or more loosely, depending on your thought process and the intensity of the moment. Sometimes, with typewriting, you get the same result with the dark and light letters when they hit the keys harder than usual.
With digital messaging or e-mail, it feels less creative. There’s no magic to it. No sense of accomplishment. Disregarding the use of emojis (non-text ones, which I think is a crime against humanity), you do not always get the sense of emotion or level of seriousness someone is trying to convey. It’s more challenging as a concept.
Like many things displaced by modern computing, these tasks were often physical, but those physical gestures often connected with our emotions and thoughts, and I think it’s rather sad we stopped physically writing letters, because we have diminished that connection between our brains and fingertips. It doesn’t become something fun to do. Instead, it becomes a mundane day-to-day task that doesn’t give the same level of excitement or feeling of completion, if you will.
As a test, I tried writing a short story, one purely on the computer, the other by writing. I found I felt more free-flow of ideas with my fountain pen because I was physically writing the words, and somehow my thoughts and emotions helped transform my ideas through the nib of my pen and onto the sheet. With the other story, I felt bored, and my sense of creationism felt off. I don’t think it entirely because of bias, but because I could not only just erase everything, but because it didn’t feel like I was writing properly. I can’t explain it, really. It just didn’t strike the right chord with me, and provide me with a thought process that would help me to properly make my words flow. I got there in the end, but it certainly wasn’t as enjoyable as good old fashioned physical writing.
Conclusion
The art of writing correspondence, I think, is healthy for our human brains. It forms a type of social bonding, and conveys that emotional sentiment that only we can create with our bare hands, not with binary digits and a mouse click. The amount of letters that passes through sorting depots and all those courier hands have significantly diminished over the past few decades. We’ve replaced that sentimentality of writing to a friend with eye-strain and staring at a computer screen or phone to type and auto-correct a series of words that don’t have that special connection. I always maintain that physically writing out something like a letter, or a story, or whatever, helps you convey the state of mind you want the receiving party to see. It also gets your imagination and creative thoughts going. It doesn’t feel the same doing it on a computer. It’s just words on a computer. I can’t explain it deep down—it’s one of those things that we each have unique experience of when we do it.
More often than not, those letters become part of an archive that you keep. They are memories. Maybe they’re sad ones; or, maybe they’re happy ones. Either way, they are a part of your history, like a family photo album. They are keepsakes, a reminder of the times. They are there when we need them, when we wish to reflect on our past, or relive a few of those memories again. They are objects that have no exterior meaning other than to ourselves, and the same goes for the other party.
I put in an order for A5 paper and appropriate envelopes, a new fountain pen and a converter to use the bottled ink that was kindly donated to me by a patron of the Starbucks I regularly visit. I want to use that A5 paper and write more letters. I think it would do me a world of good.
I have a mailing address for Patrick Rivers specifically, and if you want to write something to me, I’d welcome it. There’s a good chance that I may write back to you, in personal correspondence.
If you have the option to, I think it would be a good idea to write letters to whomever you wish, because not only does it convey a sense of personal pride, it conveys a sense of sentiment and emotion, of creativity and imagination, and revives an ancient form of communication.