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Tuesday 28 February 2012

In the spirit of taking my mind off it....

I wrote a letter. It's the kind of rambling letter that you write to someone when you have nothing to say except the wish to make contact.

Thing is, I'm in much more regular contact with all my friends at the moment, we have texts and phonecalls and skyping and visits. Really different to when I'm alone in an unknown location with a rucksack and I want to send a little five minute view of my dreamlike life back to my friend at home with their important objects like jobs and houses and schedules.

So I thought that perhaps I'd try a thing. You know, a blog thing where I invite comments and then give a prize.

This will combine two of my favourite activities.....sitting for hours in cafes, and the sending and receiving of letters. I have the idea that I will, every so often, go to sit in a public place and fill as much paper as I can with the things I see there. Then I will offer to send it to a reader.

Know this, you are very special because you are one of the miniscule number of people in this world who read my blog and if you want to receive a letter, a real life piece of paper in the post, that will maybe say something important but will more likely say nothing at all, then leave a comment and, in one weeks time, I will pick a commenter at random and it will be you! and I will send you the letter...anywhere in the world!

Here is what you can do in return..

1) Nothing, just keep a secret letter that only you and me have seen and that will never be repeated or published anywhere else because you have the only copy of it, keep it all to yourself, forever.
2) You could put it onto your personal internet world, blog, thing and it would be like a guest post or just an interesting link.
3) You could send me something by return of post (I'm sure I will get my own address very soon).
4) Reveal that you are actually a globe straddling book publisher and you want to make me rich.
5) Reveal that you are in love with me and want to come to my house and ply me with infinite pleasure.
6) Do the same on your blog for someone else, pass it on, like.


And because this is the internet and we are all scared of making real life contact; I will only use your address to send you one letter and then I will throw away the piece of paper it was written down on (and I will scribble over the address first in thick black pen, so you don't get cloned by the people who go through rubbish bags) and I will never contact you using this method again. I won't tell anyone your real name and I won't look you up on Google Earth. I definitely would never come and look though your windows while you were asleep (unless you were my next door neighbour and then the blog/real life coincidence might be so strange that I would not be able to resist taking a little peek....but I would probably tell you about it later in a self-depreciating, I'm so wierd, kind of way and hopefully we could laugh about it).

And while I'm talking about letters and post and other things. I will tell you that I have recently joined this website www.postcrossing.com which is for people to send postcards to strangers. And while it's slightly more boring than I imagined...mostly because it's not full of quirky, creative people who want to write strange things to strangers...some people just want to collect postcards (sad face)...I will tell you about it anyway because in my imagination, being a reader of oddness on the internet, you are interesting and creative and maybe you'll join too and make this website more like how I would like it to be.

Oh, and the mother fucking hospital visit where I'll Finally end this stupid limbo...tomorrow, 1.30pm. Fuck.

6 comments:

isabelle said...

Oh this is just the sort of thing I love ! I'm afraid I'm not a boy ( or girl) who could come over to your house and ply you with infinite pleasure( well, not of the kind you're perhaps thinking of ), but I certainly could be your lettery friend.

I love letters. I could tell you stories about them too. I have lots of stories about letters....like this one.... http://letterstoed.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/with-my-love-back/

I'm thinking lots of positive thoughts for you today, hope it's all OK xxx

Mallee Chick said...

And I'm posting because I'm a Postcrosser too, and I want to tell you that we are not all sadfaced postcard collectors whose only pleasure is a piece of ephemeral cardboard.
Some of us want to make a connection and want to change the world one postcard at a time and are in awe of someone who is strong enough to ditch their ordinary life and wander into the unknown and report back whenever they can. And want to know that, in the reporting back, that there is a big world out there that it's not such a hard thing to do and that you can survive and prosper and GLOW with JOY at what you find no matter how much it challenges you. And that you will come out the other end renewed, recharged and more beautiful.

Mallee Chick said...

p.s. Get a UK address soon, or get some way of making sure that the postcards sent to you in Romania get to you. It would be such a shame to waste my secret!! ....

haveyouseenthisgirl said...

Argh, sorry Mallee Chick. That was almost rude about Postcrossing wasn't it. I didn't think that any readers might be from there. I think I'm just disappointed that the website is not exactly as I imagined it in my head----this disparity being a source of much of the worlds woes I believe.
Yes, I wanted to use the postcards to make a connection with people and I was disappointed when I didn't see the same in everyone else (duh, I think this is my problem, not postcrossing).

Hah, and now I see that you have sent me a postcard too. Well, if all goes well, I will go to Bulgaria within one month. And if all goes better I will get a place to live within a fortnight!! Updates to follow....

And Isabelle!!! I'm so glad you're interested in letters; I had a strong feeling you would be!

Mallee Chick said...

Just remember that there's just as many flat heads in Postcrossing as there are in all walks of life.
It is what you make of it.:)

Nikki (www.bookpunks.com) said...

Wow, what a neat idea. Might have to do this myself. Consider me entered in the potential letter receiver sweepstakes. Haha, Sweepstakes used to be a nickname of mine. Don't remember why. I think a friend of mine just liked the way it sounded.