Showing posts with label love letters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love letters. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Written Word


I find that words can be empty. They get lost after you say them or sometimes they come out wrong (maybe more than sometimes). I'm mostly referring to the spoken word, not writing.

Stories were passed along orally long before written word, but how many of those stories are still remembered in comparison with the ones that were written down? How many were forgotten? How many were transformed into new stories than in no way resembled the original?

Writing is an art that may some day become extinct in our hunger for technological advances. Typing does not and never will be able to replace writing. The brain continues spew messy thoughts as you type and as a result you cannot pay attention to the detail, the art that goes into each word, syllable that make up the meaning of a piece of writing.

Writing is art; it's tangible and it's evidence.
Love letters and letters of friendship and of new events etc. went out the window a long time ago. It makes me sad. One of my best friends and I used to send each other long letters. There's nothing quite like receiving a letter and knowing a lot of time went into the thought and preparation of it.

These days I write poems rather than letters. I have a gift for turning letters and words into a beautiful picture or story. It's a gift many people used to have. I don't show my work to people, because who has time to understand something so beautiful when we're all too busy doing 10 things at once. I don't take so much time to type anything special on here for the same reason.
Perhaps I should though...

Most recently I wrote a letter to someone I care about. I shoved it into his hand before I left and thought I was a coward for writing it rather than saying it. I'm not though. You can forget what someone says if you want to. You can't deny that they took time to write it down.

I sat down in the quiet of my home and thought about him and only him. Then I put my most vulnerable bits on paper and gave it to him. I put my heart into every piece of writing (school and work aside). I put my heart into that letter. So now it's real; my heart, my vulnerability and my connection with him.

I'll never forget. I even saved a copy for myself.
This letter is me standing and holding my own.
This is my promise to never run away from someone I care about so much ever again.
This is me facing my biggest fear - being left by someone I love.
It may be too late for things to be as they were and should be, but I can be satisfied that I did try...eventually.
Better late than never.

I'm not ashamed of the letter or anything else I have ever written.
We all deserve to have such a letter written to us.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Love Letters

I wish men still wrote poetically to women and that women could reply. Hell, I wish people still wrote letters in general. I am determined to write to Iszy while she is at camp in NY.

Still, there's something about taking the time to construct a letter as a piece of art to be deciphered and appreciated by the one/s you love most that is...romantic.

I recently watched Bright Star and as a result, I decided to read Brigh Star, the book of love letters and poems by John Keats to Fanny Brawne. I am trying not to rush through them and only to read 1 per day. It's difficult to restrain myself.

Here are 2 excerpts from the first letter in the book. The first I connected with, because sometimes you are in a wonderful place with wonderful people, but it still isn't the same. It's hard to explain, but everything seems duller. It's not quite as beautiful or brilliant. As for the second quote, I admire his use of butterflies. It's not overdramatic, but a colorful illustration of his pure love for her.

"I do not know how elastic my spirit might be, what pleasure I might have in living here and breathing and wandering as free as a stag about this beautiful Coast if the remembrance of you did not weight so upon me." - John Keats

"For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain." - John Keats

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

If My Heart Was A House

You'd be home.

So I watched 2 romantic comedies/dramas with my mom tonight.

Seeing The Jane Austin Book Club again gave me a new appreciation for the books. I haven't read them all, but I really want to now and re-read the others. I like that there are 6 different stories interwoven. Their lives all connect through their book club. Of course each story involved love and relationships.

There was the young highschool French teacher who was married to a business man. Their problem? He barely paid attention to her and took her for granted. Enter: handsome, bad boy highschool student. Which one did she choose?

Then there was the oldest woman in the group who had been married 5 or 6 times. She loved being in love and was thinking about remarrying.

Then the slightly lost and insecure woman who's husband left her for a 45 year old. Her daughter moved in with her. Did she move on or decided to eat in bed and sleep?

Then there was the 40ish woman who had never been in love and wasn't exactly looking. She was the matchmaker and friend for the previous woman.

Then there was the daughter of the woman who's husband left her. She was a lesbian who liked to be wild and do things like sky diving, which was the opposite of her mother.

Last but not least: The man who liked the single, never-been-in-love woman. He had never read Jane Austen (he liked science fiction) until he met the woman who thought he'd be good for the third woman. You can tell that's complicated huh?

I liked the end, because all of the men had a chance to redeem themselves. The first couple was my favorite. She begged him to read Persuasion. They read it together and in the end their men (except for the daughter of course) became part of the book club. Men reading Jane Austen?! This is miraculous!

I want to put a lot of emphasis on writing. There was a whole scene talking about how the men in Jane Austen's books often redeemed themselves or explained themselves through writing letters or notes. I love writing letters. I love receiving letters. I notice females write more letters these days than men. Normally I would say tell a woman how you feel, rather than write. Sometimes it's nice to write too though. Writing letters can be an art after all. So go for it as long as you can talk about it as well as write about it.

My mother and I just started watching Junebug. It seems interesting. What caught my attention most was the scene where the husband of the pregnant wife (Amy Adams) tried really hard to tape a show on meercats, because those are her favorite animals. Unfortunately it didn't work, but it was the most adorable thing I've seen in awhile. It's odd things like that that mean the most. When a guy picks up on little things like that, it shows he really cares.

Speaking of animals, my favorite is a wolf. I've said this to a few times, but sometimes I have wondered if I would make a better wolf than human. I haven't thought that so much lately though. I think we all know I would be the alpha female. Human society is so much more complicated.