Raison d'etre

Well, here's the thing. I am an anachronism in an electronic world. The shameful truth is that, while I love to communicate with people, I purely hate e-mail. So cold. So impersonal. So rushed and hurried and fast and efficient -- why on earth would anyone want to use this thing? It puzzles me deeply though, to be perfectly fair, so do road maps, the infield fly rule, and how it is that the cat manages to vomit on precisely the same spot on my pillow every time she gets the urge.

What I love is mail. Post. Letters. Long, elegiac communications written with thought and consideration, in longhand, and signed with a real signature. They are especially nice when they contain little nonsenses like clippings, photos, and small sums of money. A full mailbox is like someone throwing a party in your honour -- a party during which no one spills red wine on your white sofa -- and I haven't had a full mailbox, except for things that start out "Dear Sir or Madam, It has come to our attention...", since they invented e-mail. I miss it terribly.

And so, I have decided to rectify matters, to the best of my ability, which probably is best only in terms of a man being the best hitter on the Washington Nationals, but never mind. I'm going to be 56 tomorrow, the Series looks like it's going to come down to the Yankees, my ancestral team, and the Phillies, my adopted team, and I am going to write letters. Lots and lots of letters. Starting tomorrow, over the course of the next year, I will write 1,000 letters. 1,000 personal, chatty, comfortable letters in longhand, with a signature. I will mail each one and I will see what happens. 1,000 letters in a year is slightly less than three letters a day. Ought to be a piece of cake -- it's not as if I have that scintillating a social life, God knows, and, thanks to a severe case of arthritis, I no longer work for other people, so my time is basically my own. Sadly, I really have nothing better to do than write slightly less than three handwritten, personal, signed letters a day over the course of a year. Well, that and have fantasies about making torrid, steamy love to Hugh Laurie and, at my age, that really doesn't take that long.

Because I am not a complete anachronism, whatever I might think, and because I've always figured that there was no point to doing anything unless a fair amount of people were immediately informed of your actions, I have decided to report on the daily results of my project in this blog. I have never kept a blog before but I figure that, given the number of people who do so and also seem to be functionally illiterate, it can't be that difficult. So far it's been relatively easy, if only I could remember what password I chose, but surely that will come back to me eventually. And if it doesn't, you'll never know, because this blog will just quietly slip away into the night, no doubt to the vast relief of all concerned. Works out rather neatly, I think.

Therefore, I will see you sometime tomorrow, after my nice, celebratory sushi lunch with my pals, Jane and Susan. I love sushi as I love few things beyond cats, baseball, and, well, cats and baseball, so this should serve nicely to ease me into this great transition, going from ordinary middle aged person into a letter writer supreme and master-blogger.

And it's a damned good thing I managed to spell that last word correctly.