Sofia mou - I love your flourish with the pen and music symbols! Your 23-year-old self would be so proud of how you hold true to those pursuits today! Loved reading this! Ah, the touch and feel of those flimsy yet precious and enduring blue envelopes! 💙. Cannot wait to share more letter-writing with everyone in Emma's room!
Your post really resonates with me. As a kid, my elementary school best friend and I used to exchange small notes all the time. At some point we even had small notebooks that we just kept exchanging. We talked about books we read, fantasized about having older siblings who could help us with our struggles. They're a great look into my perspective as a 9 year old. We lost touch for a while but started chatting again after a comment on instagram. Our messages turned so long that I decided to send her a letter again, hoping that it would be a better format for all the things we had to discuss. So now we're around our 30s and writing again. It takes some time and effort and peace of mind to sit down and write a letter, and my thoughts often race faster than my pen can write, but there's something so deeply personal about a handwritten note in a time where everything is digital. I really love it
Anne, so pleased you liked it. I loved the idea of exchanging notebooks with messages - how original and what a rich depository for two young friends' inner life the notebooks must be! And yes, socials may be a bit of an everyday plague, but getting in touch with old friends is one of their valuable upsides: I've reconnected with a very dear college friends after decades through Instagram. I'm so pleased you are exchanging letters with your old friend now. you are right, there is something magical about the slowing down to write in longhand, which was part of our life in pre-digital communication so we never thought about it (writing a letter took as long as it took) so it now feels a more intentional practice in slowing down and connecting meaningfully. Thank you for reading and engaging.
I enjoyed your post on letter writing. My late father always wrote letters to me, and fortunately I have kept his letters. One great advantage of writing letters is that they can be preserved, re-read and perhaps even archived later on.
I had two pen-friends from the late 1970s. One was a girl living in Germany, but we didn’t persist in writing to each other, but my other longer-lasting pen-friend was from a beautiful part of western Norway. She wrote using a fountain pen and had lovely, regular and clear handwriting.
We wrote regularly to each other for years, and I wish that our correspondence had continued for longer. However, we gradually stopped sending letters during our university years in the 1980s for some reason.
She studied chemistry (and I biochemistry) and later started work in the oil industry in Stavanger and the offshore platforms nearby. Her textbooks were in English - I remember thinking that it must have been challenging to study in a foreign language.
We sometimes exchanged photographs, tape cassettes of our favourite music and some small gifts. Sadly I didn’t keep the letters, but I have retained everything else.
In summary, I can thoroughly recommend having a pen-friend!
David, thank you for sharing your pen pal experience - I loved reading about it. How enriching it must have been! Did you ever get to meet any of your penfriends in real life? Thank you for engaging with this post.
Enjoyed and it has prompted me to send you something I wrote on the topic some years ago ...
However, it is not matched by a similar determination to go back to letter writing (though I might later..). I had my hip operation nearly 7 weeks ago and am slowly becoming more mobile walking the streets with one crutch now x
LETTERS
1
I would write to you all now to share things from here
the rummaging of children, the cluttering and decluttering of the adults,
the woes and triumphs, the new places seen.
But it’s all nothing -
words to fill up space, phatic communications, pleasantries to cover emptiness.
So please just accept this reaching hand,
Without pen, without design, just something mine.
2
The last letter I wrote was to my mother
It was what she was used to, the way she used.
Writing down her thoughts and feelings
She said it helped and it made contact.
3
Now it is emails and texts rushed off with little thought
Ping-ponging into the night and beyond;
Perhaps we will one day have collections of emails between the elect
But I doubt it, they will get wiped away or just
lost in a mass of unnecessary words.
4
Remember those days when you waited and waited for the postman’s visit,
for the letter that would be for you falling to the floor!
Remember the time you took to write,
The expectation, the thrills, the disappointments,
the descriptions and the insights,
and the wondering what was really meant?
And no quick journey in cyberspace but a slow hand to hand existence -
Thank you, Tony, for reading and for sharing your poem too: it captures the anticipation and the excitement and the leisurely pace of how we did things then. I hope you recover soon and we meet up again - by chance or design.
Aww Sofia, thank you for sharing this, your kind words mean so much! I'm delighted that it has inspired you to write this post, and it's such a joy to receive your replies to my letters.
Oh I love this. I found the letters I wrote to my parents when I was at university in Newcastle and the year I spent in France and Spain after their died, along with a bundle of letters my dad wrote to my mum when she was in London pregnant with my sister, he in New Zealand on a long business trip. I also have various other letters written to my mum from her friends. She was a card and letter writer, I used to be and still send friends and family the odd card but it is something I want to do more of. Thank you for sharing this and I love your 23-year old sign off. Gorgeous!
Sofia mou - I love your flourish with the pen and music symbols! Your 23-year-old self would be so proud of how you hold true to those pursuits today! Loved reading this! Ah, the touch and feel of those flimsy yet precious and enduring blue envelopes! 💙. Cannot wait to share more letter-writing with everyone in Emma's room!
Thank you for reading! So excited about the connections in our salon and the Letter Writing room in particular💙
Your post really resonates with me. As a kid, my elementary school best friend and I used to exchange small notes all the time. At some point we even had small notebooks that we just kept exchanging. We talked about books we read, fantasized about having older siblings who could help us with our struggles. They're a great look into my perspective as a 9 year old. We lost touch for a while but started chatting again after a comment on instagram. Our messages turned so long that I decided to send her a letter again, hoping that it would be a better format for all the things we had to discuss. So now we're around our 30s and writing again. It takes some time and effort and peace of mind to sit down and write a letter, and my thoughts often race faster than my pen can write, but there's something so deeply personal about a handwritten note in a time where everything is digital. I really love it
Anne, so pleased you liked it. I loved the idea of exchanging notebooks with messages - how original and what a rich depository for two young friends' inner life the notebooks must be! And yes, socials may be a bit of an everyday plague, but getting in touch with old friends is one of their valuable upsides: I've reconnected with a very dear college friends after decades through Instagram. I'm so pleased you are exchanging letters with your old friend now. you are right, there is something magical about the slowing down to write in longhand, which was part of our life in pre-digital communication so we never thought about it (writing a letter took as long as it took) so it now feels a more intentional practice in slowing down and connecting meaningfully. Thank you for reading and engaging.
I enjoyed your post on letter writing. My late father always wrote letters to me, and fortunately I have kept his letters. One great advantage of writing letters is that they can be preserved, re-read and perhaps even archived later on.
I had two pen-friends from the late 1970s. One was a girl living in Germany, but we didn’t persist in writing to each other, but my other longer-lasting pen-friend was from a beautiful part of western Norway. She wrote using a fountain pen and had lovely, regular and clear handwriting.
We wrote regularly to each other for years, and I wish that our correspondence had continued for longer. However, we gradually stopped sending letters during our university years in the 1980s for some reason.
She studied chemistry (and I biochemistry) and later started work in the oil industry in Stavanger and the offshore platforms nearby. Her textbooks were in English - I remember thinking that it must have been challenging to study in a foreign language.
We sometimes exchanged photographs, tape cassettes of our favourite music and some small gifts. Sadly I didn’t keep the letters, but I have retained everything else.
In summary, I can thoroughly recommend having a pen-friend!
David, thank you for sharing your pen pal experience - I loved reading about it. How enriching it must have been! Did you ever get to meet any of your penfriends in real life? Thank you for engaging with this post.
Thanks Sofia, unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to meet any of my penfriends in real life. I did find the experiences enriching though, as you say.
Enjoyed and it has prompted me to send you something I wrote on the topic some years ago ...
However, it is not matched by a similar determination to go back to letter writing (though I might later..). I had my hip operation nearly 7 weeks ago and am slowly becoming more mobile walking the streets with one crutch now x
LETTERS
1
I would write to you all now to share things from here
the rummaging of children, the cluttering and decluttering of the adults,
the woes and triumphs, the new places seen.
But it’s all nothing -
words to fill up space, phatic communications, pleasantries to cover emptiness.
So please just accept this reaching hand,
Without pen, without design, just something mine.
2
The last letter I wrote was to my mother
It was what she was used to, the way she used.
Writing down her thoughts and feelings
She said it helped and it made contact.
3
Now it is emails and texts rushed off with little thought
Ping-ponging into the night and beyond;
Perhaps we will one day have collections of emails between the elect
But I doubt it, they will get wiped away or just
lost in a mass of unnecessary words.
4
Remember those days when you waited and waited for the postman’s visit,
for the letter that would be for you falling to the floor!
Remember the time you took to write,
The expectation, the thrills, the disappointments,
the descriptions and the insights,
and the wondering what was really meant?
And no quick journey in cyberspace but a slow hand to hand existence -
Wrapped in an envelope.
addressed, stamped, posted, sorted,
delivered, opened, read,
maybe treasured, usually kept.
And then becoming part of the clutter!
Thank you, Tony, for reading and for sharing your poem too: it captures the anticipation and the excitement and the leisurely pace of how we did things then. I hope you recover soon and we meet up again - by chance or design.
Aww Sofia, thank you for sharing this, your kind words mean so much! I'm delighted that it has inspired you to write this post, and it's such a joy to receive your replies to my letters.
Thank you for your inspired idea and for all the energy you are infusing the whole endeavour with! Onwards and upwards💌
Oh I love this. I found the letters I wrote to my parents when I was at university in Newcastle and the year I spent in France and Spain after their died, along with a bundle of letters my dad wrote to my mum when she was in London pregnant with my sister, he in New Zealand on a long business trip. I also have various other letters written to my mum from her friends. She was a card and letter writer, I used to be and still send friends and family the odd card but it is something I want to do more of. Thank you for sharing this and I love your 23-year old sign off. Gorgeous!