Tuesday, October 12, 2010

the lost art of letter writing

As autumn settles over me, I'm reinvigorating some colder-weather habits that I love.

I'm making my Starbucks runs for pumpkin-spice lattes (they only taste right between October and December, in my humble opinion) several times a week. I've unpacked the fall wardrobe, which for me mostly consists of skinny cardigans and multi-colored scarves. And at night, now, I read--something, oddly enough, I only really do as colder weather sets in. In the summer and the spring, books are daytime business for me. Oh, and, lower temps...always means a transition to red vino as my drink of choice. Spices things up.

This autumn, though, I have a new tradition developing. Letter-writing. Before three weeks ago, I hadn't written a proper letter in years. I'm talking, years. Maybe not since I wrote my summer camp friends back in high school and promised them we'd be soul sisters forever (yeah, that happened).

I've been sort of interviewing people around me as of late. Do you write letters? Would you? Is there beauty in it? Everyone seems to agree that they WISH they "had time" or that "people still did that kind of thing, because it's so romantic."

It is romantic. It's lovely. And it does NOT take that much time, folks. It's a lost artform, I think, that in an electronic age people need to work to revive. I found this great article from Newsweek:

http://www.newsweek.com/2009/01/17/the-good-word.html

I was thinking about how few of us even see each others' handwriting anymore. How we form words on paper, says more about our personalities that what we wear or what we eat or any other random gauge people use these days to set themselves apart. Exchange letters--real, several-pages-long, story-telling letter--with someone, and you will know them better.

Cheers to the letter! Let's bring it back to life, so that our children and grandchildren can find our words in old trunks and between yellowed bookpages.

No comments:

Post a Comment