Lick, Fold. Sender. Stamp, Seal. Frank, Address.

“The post office has a great charm at one point of our lives.  When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for.”

Jane Austen

 

I have had a lifelong reoccurring dream about receiving good news in the mail, lost things found, excellent university results, inheritances. One of my favourite fantasies is receiving a love letter. I used to frequently check my mailbox and post office box in the vein hope that I would receive a letter from a secret admirer.

 

“And none will hear the postman’s knock, without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?”
W.H. Auden

 

In my early twenties I became infatuated with a friend’s boyfriend, Justin. I never flirted with him. I believed that if someone was in a relationship, that it would be a terrible betrayal for a friend to behave that way.

 

They went travelling abroad for a year. About six months into their journey, my friend wrote to me to say that she was ending her relationship with him, she had met someone else. I couldn’t help but smile from my very core, not only was he single, she had initiated the relationship ending.

 

As I read on through the letter, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. She said, “Blue, I know that this is going to sound strange coming from me but I think that Justin has always had a soft spot for you. Would you mind if I suggested that he write to you?” I wrote to her in London and said I would be happy for him to write to me (if she thought it would help him of course). I couldn’t believe my luck!

 

“Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company”. 
Lord Byron

 

Then as he travelled around the world he sent me a series of postcards tracking his journey and his growing anticipation for coming home to see me. When he returned those words back and forth to one another created a highly combustible fire of passion between one another. However, after a while, I realised that I was not in love with him, I was in love with his letters.

 

Another of my earlier boyfriends, Silas, left Sydney to study. He wrote me for the years he was away. As we grew older, he travelled for many years, the last time I ran into him, he had returned from living in Egypt. Silas used to make his own collaged postcards and send them to me. I don’t think he was particularly creative, however, I think in his own way, he wanted to tickle my fancy as I was art school at the time.

 

I think the last time I received a hand written letter was in 1995, the year I had bought my first computer. I was corresponding with a friend in Canada who had found me randomly that year; he had always wanted to come to Australia and he loved the name Blue. That is how small the internet was back then.

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We sent a hard copy diary back and forth to each other over the years to update. We bought property together on the moon. We met in real life in 2003 and had a brief affair. Usually when I end a relationship with someone, I never see them again; he was one of the few exceptions. I think it was that we had so intimately shared one another’s lives over so many years on paper, revealing so much more than we were able to when we were in each other’s presence. We now write to one another by e-mail a few times a year.

 

“Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls. For thus, absent friends speak.”

John Donne

 

One of my first loves, Ben, (the friend who has re-emerged in my life after a long absence due to drug addiction), used to write me letters. I have kept them all.

 

When he started the recovery process six months ago, he contacted me to say that he wanted to write a book of letters with me. It hasn’t happened; he was having a hard enough time just getting through the long moments of sober reality.

 

Of late, he has started to text me his random jumbly thoughts and although sometimes they make no sense we have had fun bouncing ideas off one another. After hours of texting two days ago, he signed off by saying, “I feel I have a creative mission, suffering finds its muse rarely but rightly reasonably, wank wank, say no more”. I am not sure what he meant but I hoped he meant that he was ready to write me a letter.  

 

“If you must reread old love letters, better pick a room without mirrors”.  Mignon McLaughlin

 

Ben and I used to write to one another in 1987-1989. When I reminded him of one of his old letters recently, he was able to recite part of the letter, written over 20 years ago. Categorically inconceivable considering the crazy cocktail of chemicals he has consumed.

 

I am tempted some times to read one of his old letters. I love that they were written for me alone. If I re-read them, it will be with a critical eye developed with age. No. I don’t want to diminish how much those words meant to me back then.

 

"A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist – nothing shields him from the world’s gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix himself up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time".

E. B. White