A life in writing...

I love how the world turns on its axis back to the same place, over the years.
When I was a child I had pen pals. Strangers I talked with in England or Pakistan, even, that left their name in a magazine or a newsletter hoping to meet someone different, somewhere different.

In times of war, women at home wrote to the 'brave GIs', creating relationships out of nothing except shared memories and hopes.

Now we throw our personal information out into cyberspace in the hopes of making a connection.
We write to people we've never met, may never meet, and build relationships out of the fantasy people we create out of their written words.

And words are so fluid, so malleable. Words lie.
I can mould them to mean something here, in my mind, and send them out for someone else to mould into a new shape that fits them.
Is the internet reviving the poetry and romance of the written word? Or is it perpetuating pretence?

And yet, anyone who has ever received a postcard from a friend, or a letter from a lover, knows that they can be a window into a person's soul, a chance to be truly honest without guile or pettiness.
How freeing it can be to take the feelings flapping around inside us, capture them in words and press them down onto a page to keep. How revealing.
It's easy to fall in love with someone's words (distance makes it easy to ignore snoring & body odor & dirty dishes in the sink).
And just think - wouldn't the World War I veterans have preferred a Skype striptease to a Vargas postcard and a flimsy letter pressed between the pages of a bible?