by Hazel Anna Rogers for this Carl Kruse Blog
I’ve got my pen to paper, and I’m waiting to catch a thought.
It’s always like this.
Just when I sit down – stamps to the left of me, envelopes to the right of me – then I forget what it is I have to say. Suddenly, it is like there is nothing between my eyes except for blankness. It is like I have forgotten all of it.
And, so, I write about that. About forgetting. About having nothing to say with a whole page to fill. ‘Nothing’ still makes for a good letter, because it is a nothing you can hold in your hands, or press against your heart. A ‘nothing’ in a letter is still something, somehow. It is not like a ‘nothing’ in an email, or a text. A ‘nothing’ in these formats is inevitably destined for the ephemeral trash can.
I learned to write letters in school; mostly formal, business ones. I don’t think I’ve ever sent anyone a formal business letter. But, then again, I’ve never worked a formal business job.
I have written a lot of letters, though. A lot of letters, and postcards, and little notes for people to find. I have written many of these, and I have received many also.
We are now very used to having things delivered. Packages, mostly. Not letters. For want of some statistics on the matter, but without the desire to make this an article on statistics, I’m willing to bet that not many people write letters anymore. The main reason I do is because I wrote many when I was little, and so it is nostalgic for me to put an envelope into a postbox, and that is as good a reason as any.
I mostly wrote postcards when I was younger. It was tradition. When I went to see my family in France, it was integral that I take the time to buy and write and send a postcard to my best friend back home, and it was also integral that I buy her a trinket from the ‘vide-grenier’ at the little town nearby. I used to manage to buy all sorts of things. Money stretched a little further back then.
And then there was the Amnesty group that my mama was a part of, where we’d go and send letters to people in prison and things like that. I remember we’d go to this man’s house and write the letters around a table and maybe there were biscuits and tea and there was a big map on the wall with photographs of the people we were sending letters to, in the places where they were in prison.
And then there was my penpal, Rachel from Horsham. I found her address in the back of a magazine called Aquila. I found it funny that she was from a place called Horsham, because Horsham sounds like Horse, and, indeed, she had several horses. She used to send photos of herself riding them.
I think Rachel from Horsham moved to Africa or something. Maybe her dad worked in oil. We stopped writing to each other at some point. I don’t think we had much in common, I think it was just nice to get letters in the post because when you’re little you don’t get much in the post. She used to put lots of stickers on her letters. I did too. When you write letters when you’re little you ask lots of questions. Boring questions, like ‘What year are you in at school?’ or ‘Have you ever been to France?’ or ‘Do you like maths?’. I would go through all Rachel from Horsham’s questions and ensure I answered them all in my letter, then ask questions of my own.
I don’t have Rachel from Horsham’s letters here with me. They are in my Memory Box back in my family home. I wonder if she has kept my letters in a Memory Box of her own. I suppose I might never know.
I have a Memory Box here too, with other letters, and birthday cards, and notes, and postcards. I thought you might like to read some of them.
BIRTHDAY CARD [Winter, 2019]
From the first year I lived in Brighton. I think my Italian housemate Maria must have made the card. She and my other housemate, Dave, wrote inside. We studied together to teach English as a foreign language. I smoked a lot of weed that year. It was the year that I first discovered the song ‘I didn’t mean to turn you on’ by Robert Palmer. Maria and I saw the music video for it on an old ‘Top of the Pops’ episode, back when we used to watch cable television.
“You’re a flower that is starting to bloom!”
- Maria
“I hope your year is sweet, as sweet as can be.”
- Dave
LETTER RECEIVED WHILE IN MY HOMETOWN [Summer, 2018]
I received this letter soon after I met its sender. We were together for a time. His was the first letter I had received in a very long while. I remember that his letters made me feel like I lived in a different time, a bygone time. That was a good feeling.
“I’m really shocked sometimes the way grief works, how I latch onto things, pieces of music, texts, ideas, without realising that they contain some element of memory or grieving. It takes me by surprise.”
BIRTHDAY CARD [Winter, 2019]
From the same sender as the previous. This was the first year I started cold-water swimming. I remember those cold January days, zipped up in my wetsuit, giggling at the chill of the break at the shore.
“I really enjoyed walking in the sun with you, and in the rain. Let’s always walk together and smile into the sun.”
POSTCARD [Spring, 2020]
From Mamie, my French grandmother. She always sends such beautiful postcards. Her handwriting is difficult to read sometimes, but I like the way she writes. I think it’s romantic.
“Ma petit cherie adorée. Je t’envoie un article sur David Bowie. Tu l’aimes toujours?”
- Mamie
[My little darling. I’ve sent you an article on David Bowie. Do you still like him?]
POSTCARD [Winter, 2020]
From my family. Strange how the time passes. My twin sister, Joanna, lives with me now. In this postcard, she writes about our now deceased cat.
“Mow [the cat] is looking forward to meowing at you and walking briefly across your lap to demonstrate her love [a reference to the fact that she only ever sat on my mother’s lap].”
- Joanna
CARD [Winter, 2023]
A birthday card from a man I studied acting with – Gavin. He was older than the rest of us in the class, and I cannot help but have the utmost respect for the the sheer gall of a fully grown man pretending to be an animal in the same room as a gaggle of other students in their early 20s. Godspeed, Gavin.
“I am sure 2023 is the year you – and hopefully us all – take the world by storm. You were always a ray of sunshine and I always look forward to seeing you. Truly.
Go git ‘em.”
- Gavin
CHRISTMAS CARD [Winter, 2022]
From my sweet, sweet friend, Fraser. He was away in Norway when I opened the card, away in the snow and the fjords and the mountains cutting into the sky.
“And think on this: next year will make something entirely new of you.”
- Fraser
And then, there are letters like these. Letters left on a bed that has seen caresses and rage in equal measure. Letters to be read silently, with the window overhead opened wide, the heat of January sun piercing down. Letters to be read sincerely. Letters from times turned sour, from lives that are moving on – fragments of eras left behind, fragments to be smiled at fondly, fragments to laugh kindly at, fragments to remind you how much things have changed.
LETTER [Winter, 2020]
“You deceived me in love, and that is the worst possible, and most hurtful and destructive for my mind.
I struggle to understand you now, as someone capable of doing this to me, somebody you, I thought, loved. I cannot see or understand the brashness with which you acted, especially not if it was for love. What you have done can never have been done for love. Not for him, or me. As the love has been proved to be weak and formless from both of you. Your love to me has no weight or value, and he should see that. Equally, his cruelty should show you what he is capable of – acts of hurt and hate and malice, not love. This can never be seen as love.”
And then, there are the notes left in books, after time has passed, after the decisions have been made. Notes that remind you that the hurt was not for naught, for it brought about the blooming of tender flowers of friendship, of love.
Those blooms remain here still. After all this time.
NOTES [left in Zen Buddhist Book] [2024 – December]
“This year is coming to an end, but we know better…the feeling of beginnings, however shy and barely peeping, often surrounds me when we sit, drink, and talk. Like holding out a hand would need be the only exertion for a flower to grow and bloom. A savage slow learner I might be but I surely learned that from you.
No need to say: keep at it – what else will you do? You’ve got strength enough….Basho says:
Hail beats on
The new house – old
Self’s a mossy oak.
He also says:
Muddy sake, black rice –
Sick of the cherry,
Sick of the world.
I hope your time at home brings you peace and joy. I’ll think of you.”
If I am to leave you with anything, let it be that writing a letter is never a bad thing to do. People write with their hearts when they write in letters. Something about the permanence of a letter seems to bring about a poet in all of our pens, for a letter is a small mark on time as it wanders by the window, and it is the sweetness of mundanity, and it is the smile on your lover’s face when they pick up an envelope with your handwriting on the front.
So…go write a letter!
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This Carl Kruse Blog Homepage is at https://carlkruse.at
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Hazel include A Love Letter to Doctor Who, A Positive Spin on Hustle Culture, and Single Mums.
Also find Carl Kruse at Goodreads.
