Dear Materialities of Writing,

I used to write letters ALL the time, before the internet.  I was a teenager in the early to mid-nineties, when there was internet–but none for me, until 1998.   I’ve had this Stuff On My Cat stationary for way too long.  I almost never write letters anymore.

I forgot how my brain works inside of letters.  Unless you enjoy erasing, and clearing away eraser detritus with so many swipes of the hand, you’re not gonna revise a handwritten letter.  You have to revise by inventing new material to retroactively revise what you wrote before, without actually having to erase, if that makes sense.  You have to qualify what you already said, instead of erase.   Now, in an email or text, it’s so easy to just erase and start over, be more direct.  But you lose something in that clean transaction.  Like the part of you you maybe didn’t want to reveal after all, so backspace.

That’s why.  The handwritten letter is more intimate.  It’s not just the handwriting and the actual ink or actual lead.  It’s more like a real conversation, where you have to say wait a minute, that’s not what I meant, I meant something more like X, or maybe Y.  Perhaps Z too.  All of those things.

I felt like a more complex person in the letter I handwrote this evening.

Maybe.

Love,

jen