Monday, June 16, 2008

Correspondence

I received a lovely letter via airmail from Sutton-on-the-Forest, York England. This came from a customer who has had a long exchange with the former owner and is keeping it up with me. What an art letter writing is. He is eloquent without being wordy, amusing, and kind. An elderly gentleman, a professor, who once traveled abroad often, but is no longer able to.

While I love the Internet and the speed that we can be connected, I also love receiving this kind of letter. It carries with it a sense of something exotic and foreign. It makes me feel connected physically to the larger world in a way the Internet does not.


And letter writing. Here at the store I have volumes of letters written by professors, poets, authors so eloquent and grand. It was in letters that these sages discussed their ideas and epiphanies with their colleagues, and we have these documents, a map of the progress these ideas took on their way to becoming. In 50 years will people have these maps? Will they be consigned to cyber-space? Short comments punctuated by abbreviations. What of our language? What of the poetry of words placed on a page thoughtfully set down to convey meaning to another person a world away?


I will continue this correspondence with my English gentleman. And I am now inspired to create more...links to my family, friends and acquaintances...links to the past.

2 comments:

shadows and clouds said...

oooh, lush, letters - real letters! can't beat them, for sure. you are right, and i miss them! the exhileration of watching the post arrive, opening and reading a letter you've been waiting for, it just isn't the same as clicking on an e-mail in the inbox, no matter how wonderful the content... you're right, must make a return to paper and pen...

thanks for your comments over on my blog by the way. and, ooh, i sooo envy you having a bookshop! it's a dream of mine!

J. said...

How lucky you are to inherit such a wonderful opportunity. To enter into an actual coorespondence like that sounds lovely.

When I was a kid, I read 84 Charing Cross Road (I think that's right) and always thought that would be a wondeful thing.

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