PHAYVANH LUEKHAMHAN

Every year, my friend Cynthia sends me a Solstice card–it’s her holiday card.  No Christmas or New Year’s greetings.  I guess her recent visit inspired her to make a more graphic cartoon drawing for this year’s illustration.  I’m so glad about that.  I love her drawing style.  Her sense of humor really shines through this piece.

We share a wonderful correspondence.  Actual letters, I mean, posted with beautiful, collectible stamps on the envelopes.  I am in love with people who still write handwritten letters.  I know they are rare people in this age of instant digital contacts.  I admit I have fallen off the letterwriting wagon.  Since Facebook has taken up a lot of my time, and made keeping in touch really easy, my letter-writing has come to a screeching halt.

I am not one who often feels guilt.  But in this respect, I am guilty.  I have abandoned my pen pals (many of whom I am not digitally connected to).  In return, they have let me go.  Rarely now do I find that personal note in my P.O. Box.  Now I know what it is like to open the mail and find only bills.

Well, postage stamps are made for using.  So use them I will!  My goal for this coming year is to write, write, write!  Not just poetry and blog posts, but letters.  Lots of letters.  I hope all the addresses I have are still active.  I had tried to continue my weekly martini might at the bar when I moved to Montpelier.  And at the bar, I would scribble my confessions into my letters while I got drunk.  My handwriting would start out neat(ish) and ramble on until it tumbled over itself and scarcely readable loops.  That’s when I knew I was done for the night.  I love doing it this way.

But the schedule didn’t work for me as it did when I lived in Brattleboro.  And I guess I gave up.  Last week when I walked to a different bar (one I rarely visit), I realized I just hadn’t tried hard enough to find the right place and time.  I found it last week, at a hotel bar down the street, in the afternoon.   The bar is long and shiny.  The servers are pleasant and beautiful.  The atmosphere is quiet.  This is not a place to be seen.  I can think and read and write here.

So I’ve found it, Cynthia.  My new letter-writing place.  I wrote you a letter while eating lunch there.  And I’ll do it again, and again.   Once a week, starting January.  Keep me to it.