I wonder how much do all my letters weigh. All the letters that I've written and sent out without a copy to keep for my own. When I send out a letter, deposit it, dump it, release it, into the blue bin, or the red one in that country or the yellow one in this or that foreign land, I give away part of my mind, my heart, sometimes even a part of my soul. It doesn't matter if I reread it, revised it, rewrote it; it only matters that I released it with whatever emotion, and there it went, into the chasm that tunnels to the hands of the recipient.
I've never written letters to my family. Sometimes a postcard to a friend, reminding them that even when I was far away I thought about them. In fact, I am one of the few people I know that diligently send at least one postcard to a dozen or so friends, sometimes, I guess, even family. I rarely get postcards myself. Except the ones I send to myself. The ones that have some thought at the moment in some foreign land regarding my existence, my past, or my future.
But I am not talking about those. They often don't carry more than some fun or philosophizing inspired by wherever I was or had seen a few hours earlier. I am talking about letters. Letters that carry a lot of emotion, often painful ones, sometimes false hopes, sometimes anger, regrets, but rarely happy ones. It seems that storms of the heart make better ink than the daisies of happiness.
I, however, rarely get letters, and just as well almost never from the very recipients of my multiple missives. I guess writing is one way for me to express my feelings, but the writing is generally very verbose. I try, but I in the end have so much to say as if it is rarely about the inspiration of the anger and more about something deeper I had never had a chance to blabber about. On the contrary, these letters before me are quite succinct. They are full of hope, though tainted occasionally by regrets, fear, and even anger. I am the recipient of these numbered letters written in super-recycled paper, some made from bizarre detritus like banana leaves. The handwriting is unmistakable and very familiar. I've known them for almost two decades. The last one, numbered 9, was sent about two years ago. The nine letters span over just nine weeks, one each week.
It doesn't matter why there is no number 10 or later. It doesn't matter that they are consistently weekly. It doesn't even matter who sent them. It matters that they are here, in front of me, waiting for their fate. I read them when they arrived. I read them quickly. I wonder if that was how recipients of my tons of letters had read mine, quickly, nervously or carelessly. When there's so much emotion, you either can't really understand the depth of the words or are too afraid to risk drowning yourself in them. So each one of them had a cursory caress of my eyes, maybe even mind. And for about two years they've lived in this shoe box along with the rare postcards, the abundant, superficial holiday cards, and the few, rare letters from the few friends who were equally interested in vomiting their thoughts regardless of whether I cared to read them or not. For two years these nine letters had been stowed away in my closet.
And I sit here with them on my lap and wonder why I should care anymore. Already too much sentimentality has been poured through the sewers of my life. They seem now so redundant, at best. To live in even the feelings of two minutes ago is to be dragged into this sewage system and you will forever be stinking of the past. I wonder if the recipients of my letters keep them. At least the writer of these nine letters did because she referenced them, reminding me of my past emotions, past feelings, past promises, all should have been flushed away in the dark sewers of all of our lives, but sometimes we open the iron grate and fish out the treasures that give us hope for a future.
I open one of them, randomly, the one numbered 5. I open the fibrous envelop and took out the equally and similarly fibrous sheet of paper. There are, actually, two sheets. I can't read beyond the first paragraph. There was too much hope and fear mixed in that first few lines. The texture of the paper instantly reminds me of the complexity of the relationship she and I had had for nearly two decades. It is rough, it is full of bizarre colors, it is recycled from something over and over again. There is a desire for guilt, and there is the resistance for this futile desire. I just want to rip the letter into little shreds, or, even more dramatic, watch it burn over a candle flame. I want this to be the fate of all nine of them. I won't miss them, ever. The sewers need to be cleansed despite their eternal fate of rancor.
I open another one, having refolded number nine and put it back in its envelop. This one is number 1. The first one where she declared that she would write one to me every week. Until when? She didn't say. Now I know that the deadline was when her hopes fizzles. Nine weeks? Some hope! Compare that to eighteen years. I wonder why people bother to write letters to me after having waited so long? Why express feelings so delayed and only when they are sure that they no longer are relevant, that their only purpose is to stink up life more than it already is. Two years ago I felt sad, but like now, no love. No desire. And now there's just anger. Not because of any anger in the letters where there isn't much, but rather because of the timing of the letters.
Feelings are strongest at the moment they are expressed. They mean as much in the future as they were before they existed. She didn't understand that. And now that her own emotions are dumped in my lap and sitting there for two years, I am supposed to react.
Every letter was written with a fountain pen. Sentimental, I know. So I take all nine of them; I get up; I walk out of my house; I crossed the meadow and into the forest. There is a creek and next to the little bridge that cross over it is a half-dead tree where decades of abuse by emotional lovers have made it an emblem of broken promises. So many hearts have been carved on this poor creature whose sole crime was being in this desolate place by a footpath. Not a single owner of any of the scars feel the same way when they committed the crime as they do now. Most aren't even with the person whose name is stuck to theirs on this poor creature's skin.
I stand on the little bridge next to this tired tree. The intermittent sounds of birds hover around me. The sun tries to peak through the canopy of leaves to sneak a peek at the drama. The air is clean, almost innocent as it infuses my lungs. It's the day after the vernal equinox, and my own sentimentality carves a smile on my tired body. These banana leaf letters (or whatever else they are made of that is biodegradable) doesn't belong in my body or in my sewers. Their putrid tardiness belongs here, in the new spring water that is flowing again under the little bridge after a winter of hibernation. We've polluted this world with so much chemical already; let me do my part in polluting it with some rotting emotions that no longer have a place anywhere.
