writing to other people

[taotie]

I am arrested again by the thought, stock-still in my midday reading, that I should be writing letters to other people, only to whom, I don't know. I have friends to write to, in theory, but is the kind of letter I want to write (daydreaming, full of yearning, hopelessly cloud-like) something that wants to be received? Out of the blue to get a letter like this in the mail — no topic, rambling, where the ends don't meet — I too would be knocked briefly off-balance, breathless. Part of this impulse is that I simply enjoy the physicality of paper and all its participations in the literary (I have this burgeoning interest in bookbinding that I'm attempting to foster), and part of is that I like to tell people what I think, despite those thoughts being sometimes considered strange to others outside myself. It's why inside me remains the mid-2000s atavistic desire to blog: a letter with no respondent, a missive to the world. This letter was meant for anyone who stumbles across it. A digital message in a bottle.