My Letters
In a time when we had to hide our love for one another, when we couldn’t be free to express these feelings we had for someone whose body and mind was like our own, when these things were unspoken secrets – we wrote letters. Letters of beautiful script, with carefully sculpted words written by a woman’s hand expressing the secrets locked away in the deepest places within our hearts – letters written by women to the women they loved.
It’s a lost art I think; the handwritten letter sent thru the mail to a secret lover, but the feeling still exists, as does the power of these relationships we sustain with one another thru our letters. The feelings are real, the love is real, and how these relationships exist is equally real. The handwritten letter has been replaced with email; something I often wistfully wish we could dispense with for just a little while so we would be forced to dip our precious pens in our inkwells once again – perhaps a special pen saved just for writing letters to her… on a special paper… just for her… carefully folding pieces of ourselves into neat envelopes, sending our most sacred things hidden in our words off to their destination, and then waiting patiently for her reply.
The world moves faster now. Replies are instantaneous, or nearly so — and the longing pain of absence when the reply doesn’t come still fills us with the same anguish our sisters felt when weeks went by without receiving a letter, as does the wonderful amazing joy we feel when the reply does come as we cherish every word shared, every emotion expressed, every inch closer we move together; filling us with the most beautiful feeling as we read the words and hear her voice singing throughout our minds – filling our hearts until they overflow with joy.
This is what I feel when I read her letters and when I miss her letters.
* * *
There’s a wonderful website here which I enjoy which speaks about the letters of women.
For centuries, women have expressed their love for each other in letters and in their journal entries. These pages share excerpts from published letters and journals, showing the deep and abiding love as expressed by several notable women.
There you can read Emily Dickinson’s letters to Susan Gilbert, or pieces of Anne Lister’s journals, or Eleanor Roosevelt’s letters to Lorena Hickok, or perhaps some of the most powerful expressions of love between Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf or Violet Trefusis such as this one here:
I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this –But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it.
Or perhaps Violet Trefusis’ letters to Vita Sackville-West
I am in the act of asking myself if I ought to reply to your question? A question furthermore most indiscreet and which merits a sharp reprimand. Reply, don’t reply, reply! Oh to the devil with discretion!
Well, you ask me pointblank why I love you….I love you, Vita, because I’ve fought so hard to win you…. I love you, Vita, because you never gave me back my ring. I love you because you have never yielded in anything;’ I love you because you never capitulate. I love you for your wonderful intelligence, for your literary aspirations, for your unconscious (?) coquetry. I love you because you have the air of doubting nothing! I love in you what is also in me: imagination, the gift for languages, taste, intuition and a host of other things…..
I love you, Vita, because I’ve seen your soul.
Or perhaps the letters and journals of Natalie Clifford Barney written in the salons of Paris; words woven by the hand of a woman who understood the beauty of loving another woman. Perhaps leaving clues as to what her name may have been… the muse who inspired Sapphic Idyll and The Well of Loneliness.
* * *
I often wonder how these women who came before me, who loved other women, who wrote these letters… how did they cope with the longing, or the pain of missing, or the reality that they may never be able to express their love for one another in the ways they wanted or needed to? How did they get thru the lonely days when they missed one another so much that if they could rip their own hearts from their breasts to end the pain they would gladly do so if it meant just one moment together.
How did they do it?
I wonder about these things because I also write these letters… and today was a hard day… but I write these letters because I must, it’s all I have of her, and I cherish what they, and she, means to me… even if all we have right now is our letters… because it means that we have everything.
1Lazy Editor
wrote on 15 July 2008 at 0:54
I think about this subject often, too: the longing that must have taken place all those years ago.
I can remember being in Europe, and receiving a letter a week from my beloved, envelopes addressed in a zany manner, meant to embarrass me at my foreign workplace, letters filled with his pen, long sheets of prose, love, too. I cherished them, truly cherished them, in a way one could never cherish an e-mail. In a way, they must have helped with the longing, come to think of it, for me, then, and for these other women from other times. A handwritten letter can be smelled, inserted with rose petals, analyzed (what sort of pen did he used, did he run out of ink mid-sentence, did he mispell a word, and go back and correct it), re-read, tied in a stack with other letters, and stored away, placed under a pillow, and dreamt upon… ah yes, the handwritten letter.
You’re inspiring me to write one.
Love to you,
LE
2nina aoki
wrote on 15 July 2008 at 11:29
LE,
Yes… there is a romantic attachment to something you can hold and feel with your hands. It’s something we use to feel connected to the person who wrote it. Hard with email these days, kwim?
Thanks hon,
love,
nina
3Henry Jennings
wrote on 15 July 2008 at 15:22
Perhaps it is the pace of our lives now that cause us to no longer write letters or keep journals.
Many letters were a way to share a journal, or record a relationship. We don’t do that any more, primarily, I believe, because our relationships aren’t as deep and meaningful as our forebears were. Even our blogs tend to reflect a narcissism and naked immediacy that rejects a lot of reflection or analysis or even thoughtful prose.
Television, work, the internet, traffic, the pace and the noise of modern life have ruined our sense of calm, our yearning for reflection and our ability to lay our thoughts down in meaningful ways that stand up over time.
4nina aoki
wrote on 15 July 2008 at 15:35
Henry,
There’s certainly been ’something’ lost in all of our progress. I keep handwritten journals, still, and have for many, many years.
And you make an excellent observation about the nature of letters too, and how they served as records of our relationships. People don’t invest the time to do that anymore. Everything is disposable — blogs, MySpace, texting have all become convenient substitutes for what was once considered courtship or even ordinary intimacy.
Relationships require an investment of time and care — writing letters was one way we once accomplished that.
Tho, I think this medium has its uses and it can be used to achieve those larger goals. I’ve used the medium to reach many… tho the world is still moving too fast sometimes for my tastes. I’d like to slow it down, for just a little while.
Thanks much,
nina
5Alexa
wrote on 15 July 2008 at 20:31
You both make excellent points (and civilly, I might even add! lmao).
I wonder what it will look like 100 years from now - the way we write, the way we communicate, the way we interact, and the way we even form basic relationships. With the societal and cultural shifts taking place these days, it is a bit disconcerting to think of some of the potential deficits we might experience as human beings.
6nina aoki
wrote on 15 July 2008 at 21:53
Alexa,
“You both make excellent points (and civilly, I might even add! lmao).”
Yes, I know — sighs — I misplaced the butter knife. :P
I think there will always be those of us who fall in love with the words and who are able to express all of the intangible things about the human condition thru our words. Society and culture may change; some of those changes good, some of them not so good — but the desire to be heard, and the desire to connect with others will always remain I think.
This desire has always been with us… and I hope it always will be too. There will be new ways to communicate, yes. But I hope we always take time to cherish the written word and what it means when one person shares their words with another to express the most beautiful things in the world.
xoxo,
nina
7a scottish pineapple
wrote on 16 July 2008 at 20:46
it’s the lack of second thoughts…third thoughts - an unavoidable process of reflection - on the implication of every word, phrase or connotation. that’s what discourages me and fries my head, among other things.
we don’t take (mental?) notes to the same extent, so often the writing feels like frequency, rather than quantity or quality.
i sent a paranoid appendix to a previous email out to someone last night…and have just noticed another unfortunately constructed use of words etc in the appendix. letter writing is an art that should be aided by too much attention to detail. and writing itself is an art form which should marry well with such mental insecurity…it shouldn’t be so unrestrainable that for the writer themself, the art is the the cause of self doubt or disillusionment.
i have always dreamed of having that old-timey outlet of letter writing, for every emotion or genre including of course erotica.
but in my wistful dreams i am sitting at virginia woolf’s desk, looking out the window with only the sound of the birds, the wind in the trees and the clock ticking to accompany the process.
luddite that i am i find it impossible thus far to engage with the world of word with that same romantic glee, while flicking between a web page of prose and one of something slamming some poor fucker’s arse.
8corinne
wrote on 17 July 2008 at 6:53
My third girlfriend who had clear blue eyes and dwelled in the desert sent me letters. I who lived by the sea on the east coast of an ancient land would reach into a bleached wooden letterbox and find them beautifully addressed. She would sew the envelopes together with red thread and then line them with silk so I would slip my hand inside a subtle soft exquisite space to find her language of love.
X Corinne
9nina aoki
wrote on 17 July 2008 at 13:07
a scottish pineapple,
I think I understand what you’re trying to say here, and I thank you for sharing your thoughts. You are right about one thing tho, letter writing is indeed an art. To be able to communicate one’s emotions to someone else thru the written word isn’t something to be taken lightly.
Thanks much,
nina
10nina aoki
wrote on 17 July 2008 at 13:08
corinne,
Thank you so much for sharing this lovely bit of prose… I can see her clear blue eyes, the bleached wooden letterbox, and the beautiful sewn silk lined envelopes.
Thank you so much for sharing this with me.
nina