The Symptoms of a Love Letter.
Have you ever written a love letter?
I’m not talking about an email or a text or one of those tinder replies, or a rehearsed phone call where you obsess over how you’re going to verbalize this impossible feeling, that same emotion which meanwhile threatens to close your throat with each word, stammering and stumbling with a thick tongue in a dry mouth until the courage rushes in to blurt it out in frustration! Fear be Damned! Otherwise be damned yourself and lose the chance forever, cursed to a life without passion!
Sublime as those moments are; they’re nothing compared to writing a Love Letter.
You may have written a love letter without knowing it. You may have thought you were crafting hate mail or a seething complaint to an uncaring conglomerate or corrupt politician… Either way, they are all love letters to me…
Here are what I like to call the “Symptoms of a Love Letter”
1. Did you consider your paper with care? A love letter is identifiable even before it is opened. There are hints like the careful placement of the stamp and the penmanship in which the addressee is penned. Oh! a love letter is known by the weight in the hand, even by the postman (HE CAN TELL) he’s written them as well. God forbid you should deal it with wax. If you considered the media carefully and decided on the best, this is the first symptom of a love letter.
2. Careful handwriting, appropriate to the perceived recipient of the correspondence. Longhand for a lover: extravagant, flowing and bold like a butterfly carrying a 2000lb box of chocolates. ALL CAPS OR even Grandpop’s typewriter to give it that official feel. Maybe you printed on unlined vellum with a line-guide below it, surrounded by wads of crumpled mistakes and an overflowing trashcan in the corner when you missed a T; or ei’d instead of ie’d. This is the another symptom you’ve been writing a love letter.
3. Did you revise and run it past another pair of eyes, asking “too much?” or “too little?” “too soon” or “too late,” by the time the postman hits your front gate, you’ll be wringing your hands, “My God what have I done?”
4. If you’ve written it well and were honest, you may feel a strange grumbling in your gut. This will intensify as you imagine the recipient reading what you can remember of what you’ve written. You may wonder why you didn’t make yourself a copy. You may have made yourself a copy… This is a definite sign you have been writing a love letter.
5. Did you try our try not to make it rhyme? this happens all the time, don’t worry IT’S NOT A CRIME after all, it is just a Love Letter.
6. Did you find yourself fisting the table and gripping your head, trying to remember what Mrs. Kutzer said, wondering why you slept through grammar, about hyphens and dashes. Smelled like cigarette ashes while she CLEARLY EXPLAINED when to use a comma, or not; and when a semicolon. And out of nowhere you find yourself digging for a dictionary or even a style guide that; until now, you never noticed: Mr. Webster put right up in front! Seeking the assistance of experts or friends is a definite symptom you’ve been writing a love letter.
A love letter is a work of art and you are the artist. It is the finest expression of the innermost soul written with the full capacity of whatever style and Marketing Acumen the writer may possess, after all; you have an Agenda whether you admit it or not, you want some attention and you want them to know Just Who They Are Dealing With and while secretly afraid they don’t care; which would be a disaster because it is, after all, a Love Letter.
Well, Napkin Diaries is my love letter to me, and you, and the postmaster too, and anyone else who could stand a little perspective and some laughter or even tears. I’ll just leave this here for you to do with what you will.
David Patrone is author of Napkin Diaries, a visual and literary blog that can be found on instagram at www.instagram.com/napkindiary
