It was orange and plump and I found it yesterday in a cardboard box in my garage. I picked it up and turned it over; it was neither heavy nor light. Written on the front in red texta was ‘1996 (2/3)’.
As I removed the envelope’s contents I realised that 1996 was the year before the internet and email snuck its way into my life. Back then it was an end-of-year tradition to bundle up the letters, postcards and invitations family and friends had sent me and put them in an orange envelope and file the envelope away in a cardboard box – not unlike when at work we’re required to keep key documents for an important project, in case one day someone wants to find out how it happened.
I wanted to know how 1996 happened, so I leafed through the collection, this the second of three envelopes – it must have been a bumper year. Thoughtfully composed letters from friends: how courageous we were, how wanting, and revealing. In the midst of our twenties we expressed so much love for each other, sometimes testing to see how far we could go, desiring to cross lines, to define ourselves.
But there are two pieces that stick in my throat.
One is a handmade card in a handmade envelope. In this undated piece a friend with whom I have lost contact apologises for his behaviour at a dinner party: he is sorry for not wanting a meal I’d prepared because he’d recently and privately become a vegetarian, he is sorry for leaving my house between dinner and the movie on video, sorry for going under what appear to be cloudy circumstances – he asks me to forgive him for these ‘terrible things’.
The second and similarly undated piece is a black-and-white newsagent card, on the front an image of a blue-heeler dog chained to a kennel, a windmill in the background, desert on the horizon. Inside the card it reads, ‘Dear Nigel, just a quick note to say THANK YOU, I had such a wonderful time’. But the correspondent is nameless and I don’t recognise the handwriting.
There is no way of knowing if the two events are connected, except in the sense that in a world where letters are becoming increasingly rare, where we’ve forgotten about the physicality and intimacy of handwritten correspondence, something is lost, if not altogether broken.
(First published in Panorama, The Canberra Times, 2 October 2010.)
17 comments
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October 3, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
jeremybalius
Hey Nigel,
there’s a new WA zine called Loose Leaf that is right in line with what you’re saying.
Their website says:
“Remember when you used to get hand-addressed mail?
Loose Leaf is a subscription-only zine sent to your mailbox once a month. Each issue is ten pages of stories, drawings, recipes, gardening advice, jokes, photos, opinion and current affairs, travel stories, and tons of other good things.”
You can see scans of issue 1 on the site.
http://www.looseleafzine.com/index.html
– Jeremy
October 4, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Jeremy, thanks for stopping by. And thanks very much for the heads-up on Loose Leaf. It looks great. God, I love zines.
October 3, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Ms. Moon
I grieve the loss of hand-written communication. I don’t think we will recognize the huge meaning of that for some time to come.
October 4, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Ms Moon, I wonder if people will revert to writing letters by hand, a bit like how some (of us) have reverted to listening to music on vinyl records?
October 3, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nana Jo
I received a hand-written letter the other day … the first in a long time and what a joy it was to see and hold. There is a spirit, a pulse that just doesn’t exist in email.
October 4, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Nana Jo, you lucky thing! I hope you enjoy this latest pulse you’ve received.
October 3, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
screamish
huuuh.
I had so many late nights this Australian winter under my parents’ house in Brisbane going through boxes of stuff like that. Who is that person in that photo with his arm round my shoulders in that Edinburgh pub? Who is this nameless person writing to me to thank me for my loving support? Who is Emily from Minnesota and why did she keep writing to me for months after we met, apparrently, in the Whitsundays? Why didn’t I realise Phil C was in love with me (he wrote to me every week from Melbourne)?
Oh the humanity!
New resolution is to start writing real letters again…
October 4, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Screamish, yes it’s an interesting way to spend a few hours, isn’t it, going through a box of old letters – how we forget these people who clearly meant so much to us back then.
And, yes, I too had that experience of re-reading old letters and realising, Oh my god, that person had a huge crush on me and I never knew! How silly am I!
October 4, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
itallstarted
I wonder if the people whose letters you found will read this, and get in contact with you again?
October 4, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Agnes, I’ll be sure to report back if any ex-correspondents get in contact with me through Under the Flutter. Will keep you…erm…posted.
October 5, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
ayearofletters
Believe it or not some people never stopped writing letters. I stopped 20 years ago, but took it up again this year. Now I use all my modern technology, IPad, blackberry, blog,etc – letters have just become reincorporated into my life. And I love it. Now when I wish to say some meaningful words to a person I pull out pen and paper instead of going instantly to email. I leave email for business, arranging details and what not. Letters are fabulous!
October 5, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Hi AYOL, thanks for your thoughts. Glad to hear letter-writing still exists. And what a wonderful blog you have – and a great mission for the year, a letter a day. Cheers to that! (Although I do wonder how you find the time.)
October 6, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
ayearofletters
Lol, oh it’s not uncommon for me to be days behind – but in reality my thoughts and writing come extremely quickly. My major challenge at this point in the year is “Who do I write next?”
October 25, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
broadsideblog
Great point. I plan to write a number of hand-written thank you notes this week to some business associates and love the aesthetic decisions to be made when choosing which pen and ink color and what paper and what message those send in addition to the words inside. Putting pen to paper remains deeply personal; email and texts, to my old-school mind, do not.
As a journalist and author, I worry that the loss of hand-written materials (as opposed to all digital communication) will also mean a grievous historical loss of data and detail for future biographers and historians.
October 25, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Broadside (if I can call you that!), thanks for your thoughtful comments. Interesting point about what future biographers and historians will find in a few hundred years when they ask the quesion ‘what on earth did our forebears talk about?’
October 31, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
ayearofletters
For Mr. Broadside,
On history and biographers, it could make those of us still writing letters seem more famous than we actually are. Or our letters may hold more weight in society because they will be a rarity. I think already, a letter has a heightened value because of it’s rarity. How can one not make full use of such a situation?
October 31, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
ayearofletters
Well I just assumed Broadside was a Mr., didn’t I? Woops!