Unwritten Words On Imagined Paper
I realise there is virtually nothing more tedious than the recounting of someone's dreams, so I promise not to drag it out. But one of the unexpected developments of early-pre-peri-menopausal life for me has been the vividity of early-morning dreams, so this one has stuck with me in the days since.
Dream-me had received a letter, you see: a real honest-to-goodness, biro-on-paper, addressed-to-me actual letter. I was stood in a cosy kitchen, reading through the second of five or six A5 sheets of closely written missive. It was from a friend I was very close with back in my late teens and early twenties, and we did actually exchange letters at that time so the scenario wasn't unrealistic.
I have no grand theory as to why he, and this letter, made an appearance in my unconscious hours, twenty-odd years later. I can think of no prompt or trigger that could have assembled themselves into that particular configuration. All I know is that since this dream I've been left with a melancholia for the days and the deliveries that will never come again.
Hours, I would spend, with pads of paper on my desk and a pile of multicoloured pens by my side. Two sides of paper covered - in single line spacing, of course, and good luck to the recipient if my loops and tails ran into one another - was a bare minimum. Two sheets front and back was the least I'd expect, if the paper were A4; anything less seemed evidence of sub-par effort expended. If cuttings, diagrams, pictures (printed photos!) were included, so so so much the better.
Photo by John-Mark Smith
Subject matter varied. Weird things that had happened at school. Memories of times the recipient and I had experienced together. Music I listened to, the studying I was putting off by writing the letter, plans for holidays. Musings on the meaning of life shared pagespace with reflections on the previous night's episode of Friends and questions about plans for the future.
The recipients themselves? People I'd met on holiday camps, or at activity weekends away. People I saw regularly. People I'd met only once. Friends I spoke to every day. All of them were fair game as targets of my letters, often whether they wanted them or not.
Reciprocity was the reward, of course. The recompense for time spent crafting a good letter, with a careful mix of ink colours, anecdotes, doodles and questions was the gentle thwump of the response on the hall carpet some days or weeks later.
In fact, the anticipation of a reply was almost better than the receipt. I'd watch for the postie coming down the street, whistling as he rummaged in his bag, willing him to carry a handwritten envelope addressed to me. The appearance or absence of such bounty could make or break the entire day. And it really was a "get out what you put in" effort-reward situation: the more letters I wrote, the more I received.
All week I've thought of those long-gone days. On Tuesday morning I was so excited to read that lettre de rêve. My brain had filled in a few lines of the content but, failing in insertive creativity, woke me up instead. In a novel this would signal the beginning of some quest or rekindling of old friendship in service of grand narrative arc, but because it's real life I was left instead to marshal the morning chaos while wishing I knew what message was in those pages. I could still feel the crumple and heft of ink-soaked sheets in my hand, long past the last dregs of my morning coffee.
Why don't I write letters now? Well - 'time' is my immediate response. I have a job! children! laundry! a crippling book-buying habit! - but that excuse holds no water when I consider the screen time I can rack up across a week. If I truly wanted to, I could find an hour or two to pull together some physical scribbles.
Even the act of writing, however, would depend on me now being able to physically sustain use of a biro for more than the school-permission slip or birthday card I usually employ it for these days. I work almost entirely paper-free, notes all taken digitally, and the legibility of my scrawls has suffered commensurately.
If I were to be self-effacing for a moment, I'd perhaps complain that, surely, no-one wants to hear from me to the tune of however long it takes to read a letter. The narcissism of youth! - I always assumed that others were as delighted to hear from me as I was to tear open their replies. It's a strange qualm to have as I write paragraphs to the people who have signed up to receive my writing, but there is something different about a physical object that intrudes into another's home. It seems more demanding of attention, somehow.
And what would I even write about now, in these hypothetical letters? So much of what we wrote about to each other in our teens were our future plans; who we hoped we would be and meet and love. And for many of us, those questions are now - mostly - settled. In terms of what occupies my mid-life thoughts, it's hard to believe anyone is interested in my heated airer (I still talk about it at too many people, right enough).
We are so used now to the immediacy of communication. It's possible to type and share to tens, hundreds, thousands of people before we've even fully formed a thought, and the feedback usually returns just as quickly. The instantaneous dopamine hit of being seen and heard online is hard to give up, if that's your thing. In contrast, sending off a letter to be received, read, and considered in private does not feed the addict. (It's me, hi. I'm the dopamine addict, it's me).
But what social media, or even direct online messaging does not deliver, can never provide, is the personalisation and effort that a letter represents. The knowledge that someone has gone to the effort of collecting paper and pen, and sat down to write to you, thinking about you the whole time? What a rush.
And then, then, they have found an envelope and a current valid stamp, dug out your address from wherever they store such antiquities, AND put all these elements together to get the filled envelope into an actual postbox? Honestly, it sounds fantastical.
Oh, to be the recipient of such devotion. Of course, unless I were to create such physical manifestation of love myself, I can hardly expect it of another towards me. So let me continue to conjure the contents of that dream-world letter, and wonder what my friend had to tell me that couldn't wait until morning. If it turns into a novel-worthy quest, I'll definitely let you know.
© Fiona McDerment, 2024. All rights reserved.
Article originally published via Medium - visit my profile here