Of all my obsessions that have stuck around for as long as I’ve been alive, letter-writing is certainly an interesting one to cling to in the digital age. At this point, I’m not even sure when it started, but I blame journals and secret notes in elementary school. I used to wonder at the embarrassment of the single phrase “Dear Diary”. That is probably where it cemented as an unfortunate aspect of my personality (depending on who you ask).
While I haven’t checked, I would bet on my past self’s hoarding tendencies that I’ve hung on to a lot of those paper slips passed over the years. The last time I made a concerted effort to de-clutter the boxes of useless papers at the top of my childhood bedroom closet, I distinctly remember finding a card I had saved from grade six. One of my best friends had written in it, “We haven’t known each other that long, and you’re very short, but you have a big personality!”
The irony of that is we are still friends and I am now definitely taller.
Possibly due to pretension or my love affair with handwriting, I think there is something special about the exchange of a letter or carefully crafted note. It is as if something unnamed gets sent along, tucked in among the words. I am far from alone in this fixation with intangibility, somehow inseparable from something so physical as a piece of paper.
For others also obsessed with letters, you know the Roland Barthes quote, from his text A Lover’s Discourse: “I have nothing remarkable to say, but it is to you I want to say this nothing” (1978).
I happen to agree with Barthes (on a myriad of topics) but on this one the most. With so little room for maundering, postcards force someone to show their hand. There is no choice but to admit that the sole reason for a postcard is to mark a moment when you are thinking of someone and cement it into existence via mail.
In a letter to her sister Cassandra (5th June 1808), Jane Austen wrote: “Where shall I begin? Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?”
Last month was April and also National Card and Letter Writing Month. I am a true proponent of letters...meaning I own a fancy letter-writing pen, ostentatiously thick paper, and have been gifted a seal matrix. The photos attached to this post are of a postcard picked up from one of my absolute favourite locations in all of Montreal and it’s not even on a map. Tucked into a quiet street not far from my current home, sits a letterbox. “Take a letter, leave a letter” is decorated on the outside and the box is never empty of scraps or trinkets to exchange.
No matter how small or seemingly dumb, a gifted piece of writing is a way to stamp an outline of your brain onto someone else who might find it meaningful. At the mystery letterbox, all of the careful consideration is being sent out to a stranger without the expectation of a response. It might be unimportant or a “nothing”, but I believe it’s also a worthwhile something.