Written with love

Snapshots of moments, gifts of time

Hello friends

I’ve been away from this space for more than two months. I’ve had the idea, set up the draft of the new post a few weeks ago, typed a tentative title, jotted a few random thoughts in a notebook… but then, nothing. I’ll just say that I’ve been through a turbulent time: I have simply been unable to apply fingers to the keyboard, and felt guilty for letting you, my readers, down, and for not being able to pull my thoughts together. (I know, self-compassion and acceptance - easy to say, hard to practise.)

I was about to say ‘I was unable to put pen to paper’ but it’s not true: I have done plenty of that. Journaling and more journaling - in a sense, letters to myself - but also some old-fashioned letter-writing.

Come to think of it, letter-writing has popped up in different guises over the last couple of months - nudges from the universe? The February post was a Letter to Baba. At more or less the same time, I felt the need to write about my native island Kasos, and was particularly drawn to a travelogue written by the French traveller Savary in letter format, still to come back to it. Then Emma Pooley, a lovely human and fellow writer at the London Writers’ Salon had the creative idea of starting a pen-pal practice. I jumped at the chance - see photo above.

Few pleasures match the excitement of a handwritten, personally addressed envelope landing on the mat. I realised how much I’d missed it when Emma’s first letter dropped through the letterbox. Every time I receive one, it takes me back to my pre-internet, late-80s youth when I had a number of pen pals to practise languages and to make cross-cultural connections. I met a few of them in person while Interrailing through Europe in 1986, but the most significant cross-cultural connection took place thirty-eight years ago this very day, when I met my Iranian pen pal, the Tall Dark Stranger at the Goethe Institut in Athens. We had exchanged only a couple of letters (in German!) before we met, and quite a number more over the year-and-a-half we were apart. We’ve been together since.

(Photo by me: the first letters I exchanged with the Tall Dark Stranger before we met in person)

But it wasn’t only the Tall Dark Stranger that I exchanged letters with. When I came to London for postgraduate study in 1987, I had at least one letter most mornings. Mama would write to share social news: a cousin has had another baby, and Uncle George has had an operation but is recovering well, oh and to share the sad news of a neighbour’s passing, and complain of chronic pain in her legs and back. Baba mostly wrote to follow up on my life plans, to advise and support, and to express his love. Yaya, my maternal grandmother, wrote benedictions and valedictions and apologies for not writing more often. My friends from the University of Athens wrote with their updates, the one from Penn State, the other from the Greek military service. The guy at the reception of Hughes Parry Hall once exclaimed: “This lady receives more post than the Queen!”

Despite the numerous moves of accommodation in London and across countries from the UK to Iran, I’ve kept all the letters with reverence, these snapshots of the foreign country named ‘past’ where things were done differently. Especially after the deaths of Yaya and my parents, the letters took on an added poignance, the raw feelings hiding behind the clichéd phrases, the words left unsaid. How did I respond to them? I will never find out: my letters to my parents and Yaya were not found during the clearance of the Athens flat.

But back to the present, and the exchange of letters with Emma. The revival of the almost lost practice of letter-writing feels like resistance against fast communication - even fast anything. It feels like freedom from the anticipation after the double-tick and the pulsing dots (‘so-and-so is typing…’), eyes glued to the screen. It feels like a bold act of staking boundaries of attention. Emma’s latest letter arrived on Tuesday 29 April. I read it and re-read it a few times, savoured its freshness and intimacy, and put it on my desk until a space opens that will be dedicated only to its answer, and to the connection with my new pen pal. Writing a letter feels like love for another human, in the gift of time given to connecting only with them.

Thank you, Emma.

What are your experiences of letter writing? Have you ever had any pen pals?

I’d love to know! Let’s exchange ideas in the comments.

The heart meets the (left) hand in an embrace of imperfection

Revisiting my first letter to the Tall Dark Stranger, I noticed my 23-year-old self there in plain sight, signing off with a flourish, and little symbols of music and writing. Full circle.