Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Letter club


Today I imagined that I was some old times English lady writing a letter to her friend in another town. I found the pen that I have not used for a long time, got papers from my old note-book, took an envelope from my husband's drawer and got down to writing.
Whenever you do something you need to feel comfortable. Even writing a letter should be cozy and make you feel good; so I sat in my kitchen which has a nice view to the green backyard wearing a green Zara cardigan and green ear-rings I have bought two years ago in Berlin.
And the pen started to slip on the paper like it did not belong to me at all.
That is what usually happens to me - when I start to write ideas, thoughts come so randomly all I have to do is to follow the pen and make it write slower for nobody would have been able to read what I had written.

People don't write letters to friends nowadays. They write e-mails I know. I e-mail everyone all the time too but you can never compare an e-mail to a real letter written by not computer or some typewriting machine but a living human hand.
My husband has beautiful hand writing in fact. Mine is awful. I write fast and never mind the size of the letters. I make notes to him when I leave, or when I want to make his day... then he comes to me asking what have I actually written.
Nonetheless I write and write because that's what I feel quite good at.

I had some weird professor in my freshman year at University who taught Linguistics and she used to repeat the following: "Verba volant, scripta manent" meaning 'Words fly while letters remain'. Even though I used to think she was scary and giving students hard time now I absolutely agree (should I feel little nervous what if I am getting weird too?).
So if the letters remain imagine how eternal our writings could be? You may write some funny story or a witty line which will make someone's day in a ten year's time or next century. Why talk about someone in a century but yourself, you may find your old diary that you kept when you were a teenager, find some lines you had scribbled there and here you go - happy, inspired and feeling loved.

That's my letter club all about, I decided this morning in my very kitchen writing a letter to a friend. I will write letters and mail them around to people I think of. Some people design clothes, some run the companies, some direct movies, some break hearts, some never smile and look gloomy, and I will be the head of my own letter club in my kitchen distributing moment of "scripta" happiness.
Don't let the word "moment" puzzle you, nothing lasts forever anyway and one precious moment is more important than the simple mundane decade.

Yours truly,

Sophie

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Oceanic letter


Dear Rebekka Averbach,

I decided to write you a blog letter.
Been listening to this song and somehow it reminded me of you - not that this girl is like you or anything, on the contrary - she's calm and singing so gladly, maturely, surely not a teenager.

Well, Rebekka, more than five years ago there was this girl believing in the dreams of Teddy (you remember him, don't you), diaries of Che Guevara and writing letters to some Czech authors; travelling all around and looking for the place to dwell...

Now this girl has found some Australian or maybe New Zealandian anonymous poet Alabama Otis and she is reading all she has ever written. It is weird to name the Australian girl Alabama, isn't it? Who knows probably there are many Alabama state lovers in New Zealand too. So weird but fact is that there she is, this Alabama Otis writing down all that happens around her, she writes down the dialogues between her and her husband, she writes down the words she hears in the street or while she rides a bike and hears the wind whispering through her hair.

Do you also go and keep the diary about what people say? Do you go and collect emotions that people lose here and there?

No, I don't. I think nobody really does except Alabama Otis. She's been living in this little town near the ocean. It is Summer beginning in Australia and New Zealand now. And she loves Summer, because it is the time when people keep spreading their emotions, take off the clothes they don't need anymore and become lighthearted like birds.
And mostly it is not even about clothes or emotions, it is all about our attitudes. Anyways, we all know it is all in our heads.
Don't we, Rebekka?

Whatever you might be doing in your little German city and no matter how far you might be from Alabama Otis and her warm oceanic home, remember to be free and sweet, ok? Not that sugar-honey-oversweetened but the sweet like natural fruits can be, having sparkles in your eyes and ride your bike with your hair loose on your shoulders and letting the wind to curl it up even more.
Summer will be back from Australia soon.

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