First of all, I’m gonna get all scholarly about why this assignment is late.  Well, honestly, it’s because I forgot to do it.  But I forgot to do it because (and this is true) I filed it in the section of my brain labelled “not work.” This has been a problem for me of late because things like sitting in my sunroom and reading also registers as “not work,” but, of course, that’s my most important work.  And writing letters to friends is not work, so I don’t do it.

Okay, that wasn’t very scholarly.  But I used to write a lot of letters.  A LOT of letters.  I would go on vacation and sit in a coffee shop and write 50 postcards a day.  It was my favorite thing to do.  But of course, that was before the internet was such a big deal (we had it, but it just seemed like some dumb thing that people who didn’t care for actual human interaction did).  And then I got a lot of letters.  And my life was lived in letters.  I’m trying to say something here about networks– that my friendships were full of precious artifacts, of evidence of friendship, of art.  Now, my friendships are full of emails, which seem to lack materiality.  I know most of you will disagree– but hey, especially in love letters, there’s something magic about holding a piece of paper that your beloved held miles away.   I miss knowing my friends’ handwriting.

Anyway, my friend Will sent me a letter from Finland months ago.  He lives there.

One of the rules of letter writing in the early 90s was that you had to send something other than just the letter.  This is a photocopy of a picture of his daughter which came in the letter, along with some poems he wrote, photos of his wife and son and his bicycle.

Anyway, I’ve written him a letter back (evidence below) which I’m about to go walk to the post office.  I often wonder why I quit writing letters.  It seems almost silly now, old-timey, because, for example, if I have something I really need to tell Will, I’ll send it in a Facebook messsage and it will get there immediately.  But that’s what letters are: slower, more thoughtful, more handheld.