My dearest friend {name of friend},
How are you? I am fine. I am so happy to hear that you are coming to visit this summer. It has been a long time since we last met. Let me know the details of your arrival so I can receive you.
Looking forward to seeing you.
Yours affectionately,
{your name}
I don't know why I thought of this after so many years. I think I miss the definiteness of relationships. Earlier there were best friends, schoolfriends, tuition friends, neighbour friends, friends of relatives friends, ex-friends (friendship broken cos someone shared lunch with the sworn enemy). I could immediately tell you how I knew someone, and how close or not I was to them.
But now, I can converse freely with anyone I meet, and make you think I've known them for ages. I can have a party for a dozen people where everyone meets everyone for the first time, and I would introduce them all as "my friends". But in all this soical frenzy, I keep myself essentially isolated. There's no real sharing. Noone who's met me for the first time in the past two years would know that I write poetry, or sketch in charcoal. They wouldn't know I've run an alternative healing center. They'd never believe I pick up the cell phone a second before it rings. Ok the last one, practically no one believes. But it's true. 90% of the time.
Anyway, coming back to the point. I think I've become commerically savvy but emotionally impoverished. Except when my REAL friends are around or in touch. I know myself through my relationships. So I'm happy that the lasting ones are so great.
By the way, if I had to write that letter now, here's how it would go:
Duuuude! you're finally coming to {name of city}. The last time we met I wore plastic jewellery and you had big hair. When you getting here? I'll take a couple of hours off from work and come home to let you in. Let me know. Yayyyyy!!{no signature}
5 comments:
Boohoo! I want to write a letter.
Something touching about this post. I hope we will write letters like the second one, in a few years.
reading your section on picking up your phone a second before it rings - must share with you how often i have done that in this one year of my strange isolation in japan. played games with myself that perhaps i didn't hear it ring, maybe i should check it once more, maybe i didn't see properly should check again...had read marquez's no-one writes to the colonel a long time back, and how often i tried to make myself laugh thinking its time for me to write about no-one calls the alien. by the way in japan all foreigners have an 'alien registration card'! technology has taken us from expectation of letters to the expectation of phone calls...interestingly i see how often i just keep waiting, wonder for what though, and nothing really happens...just like in marquez's book...
writing letter to a dear friend is the best way of expressing feelings....i m gonna right a letter now....
awesome post!! 'become commerically savvy but emotionally impoverished' and knowing yourself through relationships!! Very thought provoking. My tiny grey cells love it :)
btw - knowing for an year, haven't reached the two year mark as yet; sketching in charcoal - do my portrait pls - :P
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