letters don’t time out

or need you to click on them

This morning I awoke before my alarm went off. I threw on pants and a warm jacket, a hat to cover the mess of hair, and the key to my postbox in my pocket. The neighborhood was quiet while I walked down one hill and up another. There were bees in the Spanish lavender even though it felt awfully cold for them to be up without the warmth of the sun just yet.

Listen, walking without a dog honestly feels like the most ridiculous thing in the world. People do this? They just walk themselves without a dog tied to them? Pure silliness.

So there’s me walking myself, getting a bit of morning movement before I hunker down at a desk for the rest of the day, which is why I stopped at the postbox on the way back to the house to collect whatever recycling it contained. Mostly recycling, anyway.

Tucked between the advertisements and pieces of mail with someone else’s name on them were two little envelopes that felt different. They were special. They weren’t just addressed to me, they were actually *for* me.

I made my way back inside, started up the tiny coffee maker [oh my, more on this later], cooked breakfast, and sat at the table with my letters.

We used to do this all the time, right? We would write to one another, package our words up in envelopes, buy stamps at the store regularly, send things out into the world, and……….. wait.

We used to wait.

If you were born after 1985 or so, I honestly feel a sense of sorrow for you that maybe you don’t know what the world was like before instant everything took over. You don’t recall the sound of dial-up internet (56K, baby), you never programmed an Atari game in BASIC, the mess of audio tape going into a reel-to-reel baffles you. But most of all, you may have missed out on the joy/hope/wonder of sending a letter off, staring at a calendar, mentally calculating how long it would take for your letter to arrive, how long it would take for their response to travel back to you.

And then you wait.

And you wait some more.

I had forgotten to wait. I signed up for a monthly letter in the mail from littledoormusic, and promptly forgot I’d done it. A friend mentioned they were writing something for me a week or two ago, and it slipped my mind. This would not have happened to me in the early 90s. I would have been checking the postbox daily, anticipation firing up my heart each morning, calm breathing keeping me steady when the box was empty so that I could withstand waiting another day to check again. Yet here they both were, two little gifts of words tucked into envelopes with my name on them, mystery unfolding in their pages. It was delightful just to wait to open them while the heat of my toast melted butter to spread.

remind me to tell you about the little coffeemaker

So I sat down, switched into my reading glasses (look, I just told you about being born before 1985, so this shouldn’t be a shock), and spent breakfast with friends, quietly, reverently. I did not need to tap the screen to keep it from timing out. I wasn’t interrupted by ads. I did not get distracted by a desire to check likes or new posts or today’s weather forecast, another app, another site. I read a story, I was offered snippets of kindness and joy, I was connected to real people who did this real thing to connect with me.

And then—bonus—I got to listen to a song one of them created after I’d read the process of that song coming into being, and… fucking magic right there. If you get nothing else from this post, I hope you’re inclined to go sign up for “the letter” from Kate Ellen, because we all deserve a sprinkle of magic in our lives, and this is the real kind.

Listen to me, now, if you were thinking about *ever* paying to subscribe to me and what I write, just don’t. Spend it on this letter instead. Let’s be efficient about this kind of thing, shall we? I create what I create without getting paid [much] for it, and I’ll keep writing here even if you don’t ever pay to subscribe [which you won’t ever have to do], and it would make me incredibly happy if you spent your hard-earned cash on one of these letters instead so that you could feel the joy of reading one over your morning cup of [insert favorite beverage] just like I did today, and for real, the minimum cost is a buck, $2 to cover the cost to the artist, more if you’re feeling generous, and it is the best $2 you will spend this whole goddamn month. For realsies.

Letters don’t time out. They don’t need your eyes to make contact with them. They are patient. They don’t feed an algorithm. They don’t contain ads. They won’t make you spontaneously *need* to buy something. They do not add to your to-do list. They can be opened again and again, and each time you’ll feel a tingle of that initial magic you first felt when they showed up in your life. You can smell them. You can rustle the paper in between your fingers.

Best of all? You can create them yourself.

If you’re in one of those moments, a kind of a lull in between things happening, and you’re about to pick up your phone or tablet to scroll to fill the emptiness, consider reaching for paper and pencil instead. Doodle. Scribble out a list of things you like or love. Write down what happened to you today or last year or when you were seventeen. Then go find an envelope, write the address of someone on the front, stick on a postage stamp, and send it.

Send it.

Start something. And then ask for something back, like a letter, like a song, like a poem, like a picture. Magic doesn’t just happen, it has to be asked for, beckoned into being, summoned, sacrificed for.

Your trans friend,

Robin

PS – Like a lot of artists, I struggle with how to value my own work, my own creations. I know I’m not alone in this. Sometimes it is easier for me to point you to someone whose work I value as a way to express that art deserves to be funded and promoted and seen and cherished. This kind of sharing, to me, feels thoughtful, humble, and sincere. I can also acknowledge that the kind of work I do needs its own funding, but you won’t typically see me pitch anyone to pay for it. I’ll work on that. In the meantime, I really do want you to go sign up for a letter. It is so worth it.