On Letters and Letter Writing

I've decided to take a brief interlude from my monastery narrative while I decide exactly how much more of that story I should tell -- or rather, can tell. Always a touchy thing, writing something autobiographical when nearly everyone involved is still living. Moreover, the reasons for my eventual departure from the monastery are very complex and deeply personal. So I'll think about all that. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these two sonnets I wrote a few years ago -- rather Victorian in tone, but maybe that serves the subject.

THE LETTER NEVER SENT

 

 

I'd write my true, unvarnished heart to you

If only I were sure you'd have it, dear,

In place of the mundane, detailed review

Of my small days and all that happens here.

I'd set my heart to music, write it out

On manuscript, each rhythm, note, and beat,

So clearly, that although it be without

A lyric, the intent would be complete.

The pen that I now hold so yearns to write

What stirs beneath the noncommital words

I send you, words I am constrained by right

As "friend" to say, all friendship's rule affords;

For if I dared to send my song, you'd hear

My heart, and all the love that's singing there.

THE MAILBOX

 

 

Some days it is so full of emptiness,

It seems to emulate the echo in

My hollow heart, the arid nothingness

Where once my dewy, eager hope had been.

On other days, it cruelly teases me

With letters, letters, like so many pins

To prick my bright balloons in callous glee.

No, none from you. The end of hope begins.

And so I tire of opening that door;

Its mockery I can no longer stand.

But just as I resolve to hope no more,

I glimpse my name in your belovèd hand!

My heart is like a brook that swells with rain;

I close the metal door and smile again.

********

 

 

My old friend, that amusing essayist "Alpha of the Plough," has this to say on the bygone art of letter-writing, all of which is just as relevant today as it was when he wrote it over a century ago:

 

 

     In the great sense letter-writing is no doubt a lost art. It was killed by the penny post and modern hurry.

     . . . .the telegraph, the telephone, and the typewriter have completed the destruction of the art of letter-witing. It is the difficulty or the scarcity of a thing that makes it treasured. If diamonds were as plentiful as pebbles we shouldn't stoop to pick them up.

     . . . .the secret of letter-writing is intimate triviality. . . .To write a good letter you must approach the job in the lightest and most casual way. You must be personal, not abstract. You must not say, "This is too small a thing to put down." You must say, "This is just the sort of small thing we talk about at home. If I tell them this they will see me, as it were, they'll hear my voice, they'll know what I'm about."

     . . . .A letter written in this vein annihilates distance; it continues the personal gossip, the intimate communion, that has been interrupted by separation; it preserves one's presence in absence. It cannot be too simple, too commonplace, too colloquial. Its familiarity is not its weakness, but its supreme virtue. If it attempts to be orderly and stately and elaborate, it may be a good essay, but it will certainly be a bad letter.

On the First Sign of Madness (?)

     I would like to welcome a distinguished "guest blogger," a gentleman who wrote under the nom de plume "Alpha of the Plough." His amusing essays graced an English publication called The Star around the turn of the 20th century, and were eventually gathered into slim volumes, several of which I own and enjoy immensely. In his essay "On Talking to One's Self" he addresses what many consider to be the first sign of madness:
 

     I was at dinner at a well-known restaurant the other evening when I became aware that some one sitting alone at a table nearby was engaged in an exciting conversation with himself. As he bent over his plate his face was contorted with emotion, apparently intense anger, and he talked with furious energy, only pausing briefly in the intervals of actual mastication. Many glances were turned covertly upon him, but he seemed wholly unconscious of them, and, so far as I could judge, he was unaware that he was doing anything abnormal. In repose his face was that of an ordinary business man, sane and self-controlled, and when he rose to go his agitation was over, and he looked like a man who had won his point.
 

     When I first read this, I recalled an incident at my local office supply store. I was perusing the paper and stationery choices, and there was a woman a few feet away from me, also perusing. On hearing her speak, I at first thought she was speaking to me, but when I looked at her I saw her eyes were still glued to the shelves and she was quite unaware of my presence. I then thought she had a blue tooth attached to the other side of her head, but when I walked past her, I saw none. Meanwhile, she continued to voice aloud her opinions on the merits of 25% cotton content vs. 100%. Having my own thoughts on that subject, I tuned her out and made my selection.

"Alpha" goes on to say:
 

     I recall occasions when I have talked to myself, and have been quite conscious of the sound of my voice. They have been remarks I have made on the golf links, brief, emphatic remarks dealing with the perversity of golf clubs and the sullen intractability of golf balls. Those remarks I have heard distinctly, and at the sound of them I have come to myself with a shock, and have even looked round to see whether the lady in the red jacket playing at the next hole was likely to have heard me or (still worse) to have seen me.
 

     During my monastery days, I and another novice were working one afternoon in the computer room. My companion carried on a very lengthy, murmured, one-sided conversation as she typed: "No, that's not right. Yeah, maybe that would be better. . . . Oh, shoot, why didn't that work?" And so on. Knowing very well that I am prone to do the same thing while working, and being certain that countless others are as well, I didn't consider my companion's rambling to be at all "the first sign of madness." If it were indeed the first sign, the entire human race is destined for the asylum. One does, however, have to monitor the habit carefully, as "Alpha" points out:
 

     How is it possible to keep a secret or conduct a bargain if your tongue is uncontrollable? What is the use of Jones explaining to his wife that he has been kept late at the office if his tongue goes on to say, entirely without his knowledge or consent, that had he declared "no trumps" in that last hand he would have been in pocket by his evening at the club? I see horrible visions of domestic complications and public disaster rising from this not uncommon habit.
 

     Curbing our tongues is hard enough when we are speaking with others, but curbing them when we believe ourselves to be our only audience requires considerable conscious effort. I would also venture to say that, though I maintain that talking to one's self is a universal "madness," it is yet to be universally accepted as a social norm. So I will continue to check myself in public places when the urge arises, and hold my tongue.