Letters & Longings

I have three letters going out today! Letter-writing is an art I am always flirting with and then forgetting. But Lent, the season of slow living is giving me moments of remembrance. While Petka slept away in the late morning sunlight, I sat at the table with my good pen and all the un-altered-by-Yarrow paper could find to send out little bits of love to my far-flung friends. I’ve discovered I need prettier envelopes. I’ve discovered my favorite pen bleeds though my favorite paper. I’ve discovered that I love the look of addressed envelopes stacked beside coffee (actually, I knew that already, I stacked them there just for that look.) Once again I’m committing myself to a life of texture and reality.

The funny thing is, I know my life is full of the tangible, real things. The wood in the stove, the splinters in my fingers, the heavy mugs of my early throwing days and the better ones more recently made. Books, tea, snow, wind, chickens pecking at the door. All these things are mine and yet they’re never enough. I want everything that is real and beautiful. I want to gather it all up like my daughter wants to gather up the moon and hug it to her in love. There are some longings that cannot be filled with a thousand letters.

"Longings don't want to be quenched

with a drink from some dull, mundane glass;

they want to be your objects portrait

and your desire's equipoise-"

~Rilke