I love getting letters in the mail. All the better if it’s a big package! There’s a nice kind of surprise, a feeling you can only get with mail. It’s like magic, you know. Just when you think your day couldn’t be any more ordinary, suddenly a letter appears on your table (because your mom picked up the mail)! Even if you are expecting it, it’s a lovely anticipation to wait for something you expect to get, not knowing if it will come today or tomorrow… or never.
But we aren’t dwelling on lost mail! (I’m still put out at the one time I sent a postcard with words I painstakingly thought out for almost an hour – it’s a postcard, remember – and the recipient didn’t receive it, bah) We are going to talk about a package I received from a dear friend today. 🙂 I have been expecting it because she he told me, but when I saw the box on my computer table it just feels like magic! Like, wow, did I think this package into reality?
The gifts were wonderful, of course, no question. She He gave me something that had a lot of meaning to herself himself, and something she he knew I would love. (Hey, I’m so easy to give gifts, just check my About page out.) But the most wonderful of her his gifts were not the gifts themselves, but her his letter.
For some reason, it is only today that I came to appreciate the gift of a letter. Don’t get me wrong, I love my gifts, love them, love them, but I love the letter even more (even though she he said she he was just writing gibberish). I found the letter to be so personal. Handwriting, penmanship, that’s really personal. It’s the product of your hand(s). And what are your hands if not an extension of yourself, the instruments which fulfill the actions of what your head and heart desire to do?
(Needless to say, I think her his handwriting is lovely. I even saved the postage note on the box because it has her his signature.)
I knew handwriting is something special and personal. I mean, I did think up my Handwritten Valentine project! But I never truly realise how much a person’s handwriting can mean to me.
I adore every line, every dot, every curve, every word in that simple letter.
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Random: Buttermilk is my new favourite word.
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Edit: I’ve crossed out the gender pronoun of the sender of my gifts and replaced with the other gender pronoun. Just an experiment; wondering if that makes any difference to the post. 😉 Do you think?
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Comments on: "The Fruits of Your Hand" (25)
Wow… those must be some letter/gifts you received!
I think the way you wrote about them is just amazing.
sulz: thank you. and the gifts were awesome, that’s without question. 😉
You’re right. You really do feel good when you get a letter. Especially in today’s world because now mostly everything is done via e-mails and stuff. Sometimes, people send typed letters also but if it is handwritten, it makes the things more personal, more direct I feel. You know, it’s as if someone actually cares for you that much that they picked up a pen and wrote something. I think that’s a great feeling.
PS – Buttermilk is a specialty in the place I live. If you ever happen to visit India, come to my place and I’ll make you drink all the buttermilk you can possibly do. 😛
sulz: exactly! you always know how i feel. 🙂 as for buttermilk, it isn’t exactly the real buttermilk i’m referring to… 😉 but of course i’d give it a go, though i’m sure all the buttermilk i want to drink is not much!
I know how you feel because that’s how I feel. Great minds think alike, you see. 😛
And well, one glass of buttermilk in here would be approximately a little more than one of those beer mugs. But yeah, you can always get a small glass. I didn’t used to like it earlier but now I do. It’s a nice drink in the summers. We have buttermilk drinking competitions in here and they are loads of fun.
sulz: not short of confidence, are we? 😉
are they like milkshake? sounds rather thick and gooey.
sulz! What a lovely post, and a lovely gift your friend has given you. I particularly liked
“It’s the product of your hand(s). And what are your hands if not an extension of yourself, the instruments which fulfill the actions of what your head and heart desire to do?”
That’s an amazing, poetic, and beautiful phrase. Your friend is lucky to have you…as are we. 🙂
sulz: i knew you’d like that. 😉 haha! thank you. i will tell my friend that! 😛
Oh yeah, full of confidence I am. Almost overconfident actually.
And yeah, buttermilk is something like milkshake. It’s called “Lassi” in our native language.
sulz: oh, so that’s lassi! so if we drink mango lassi in indian restaurants, that’s mango juice with buttermilk?
Our paths cross once more in space-time.
Just 2 days ago I got a note on the letterhead of the group that owns Curlin. The letter was handwritten and thanked me for cheering for him and for blogging about him.
My only grrrr was that the darn Fed Ex guys left the package outside in the pouring rain all day and the note was virtually ruined. It’s dried now and is all crinkled up as a result. I”m still keeping it. It still has unspeakable value to me.
sulz: damn! at least it’s still legible, yeah? 🙂 you should take a photo and post it in your blog for posterity sake.
Nowdays the only letters I get are via email and that too very rarely. 😦 Handwritten letters? Now let me remember when was the last time I saw one…..hmmmm……can’t remember. 🙂 Believe me, if there is still someone in the world who writes you letters, then you are very lucky. Touchwood. 🙂
sulz: why touch wood? i do want more handwritten letters! 😛 and yes, they are very much a rarity these days.
Yeah, pretty much. But that’s not authentic lassi. Lassi is not supposed to be fruit flavored and stuff. There’s just plain sweet or salty lassi which is the original thing. I like the salty one. I don’t eat many sweet things y’know.
sulz: ah, but it tastes great anyway. the orange lassi though, i don’t like mango.
that’s why indians have such lovely straight white teeth eh? 😉
IMO, it does make a difference. It makes it look more… romantic… but that’s just me.
Is the sender a ‘he’ for real?
sulz: haha, yes, that’s what i thought too.
is ‘he’ for real? hmm, you tell me. 😉
I think it is a he.
sulz: okay, if you think so! 😉
Who knew? I’m a former calligrapher sulz. In one of my former jobs calligraphic work was required. Now it’s something I don’t do much any more. So when you choose to tell me when your birthday falls I may practice a bit and then write you a letter.
sulz: wow, do you write like the olde english kind of font? surely i can get a letter even if it’s not my birthday? 😦
I couldn’t agree more. Letters seem so much more personal than emails for instance. And the fact that it’s a dying art makes it all the more precious. With the miracles of technology, anything we think can be sent within in milliseconds to anyone, anywhere. So when some one takes the time to sit down and write down what the feel or think, it’s so refreshing. Your handwriting is an extension of yourself, one that can be left behind and treasured long after you are gone. Which is what creates a certain sense of intimacy between two people when letters are exchanged. It doesn’t have to be romantically.
sulz: you’re right! hmm, maybe i should consider this as my next blogging project? 😉
I’m working on something similar for my site, but you should make it your next project. “A handwritten letter from sulz”, or something to that effect.
sulz: you are? i’ll look out for that. 🙂
I think it is a he!
I think I would love a handwritten letter. I keep letters from my friends that I interchanged when I was a child. And “paper IM” as we called it in school and uni, when we could not talk during classes.
I wanted real penpaling, so I arranged something with one of the girls in my blogroll, sadly, I found out I can’t really afford sending, and its’ not fair to just get letters and not return any. 😦
I’ll try to get into it when I start making $$$ I think it would be great.
sulz: haha, you think so too, hmm? 😉 haha, paper im! i do that too sometimes.
yeah, all the more reason letter-writing is dying, seeing how expensive in unreliable post can be. 😦
Yup. You should do the “letter from sulz” thing though, cause I want one from you. 😀
sulz: it’ll be a while before i think about that. my handwritten valentine project, fun as it is, needed quite some effort too! 🙂 but this is my best blogging project, if i do say so. 😛
I don’t know about straight white teeth. I had horrible teeth when I was 13. Then they took me to a dentist and got me braces. I kept them on for like 2 and a half years and now I’ve got reasonable enough teeth. But they’re still not very straight.
Okay, crasyasuka’s comment reminded me of one incident of paper IM’s that I had in my class. In out bio lecture, the teacher was teaching sexual reproduction in humans (reluctantly obviously), and she was talking about STD’s and condoms. My partner decided to take my book and write the word “condom” on it like 10 times and I started laughing. The teacher noticed it and asked me to bring the book to her so she could see what was making us life. I completely blacked out because if she would have seen it, it would have been a great incident. I don’t know what I said to him..I guess I said sorry or something and just then the period ended and she went. I had thought I would be dead that day.
And yes, making it he makes a huge difference. Suddenly from a very nice girlfriend, it becomes a boyfriend. We’re narrow minded you see. Girls and boys can either be brothers and sisters or else boyfriends and girlfriends. There’s nothing like “Just friends” on our planet. 😛
sulz: better than mine! hmm, i should update my password-protected post to show you guys my beautifull vampire-ish yellow teeth, haha!
haha, what a narrow escape! 🙂
of course guys and girls can be just friends! you don’t think so?
I’m glad to see that I’m not the only person who thinks the ‘friend’ it’s a he.
sulz: yeah, looks like some people are just dying for me to be hooked up! haha. 😛
re: edit/update: It doesn’t make a difference to me! 😉
sulz: haha, good! it might be a trick, so good you didn’t fall into it. 😉
We say “touchwood” when we see something great happening to someone and want things to remain that way. You didn’t knew that? 🙂
@Ish : A similar incidence occured when I was in 10th. My Bio teacher had drawn the “Female Reproductive organs” on the board and was explaining them….sweating profusely. 🙂 There was this guy in my class who was behaving as if he was too naive to understand all this. When the teacher asked him a question about what she had just explained, imagine what he said.
“Is this FRO? I thought you were drawing the horns of a cow.”
The teacher didn’t knew where to look. 😆
sulz: oh, that’s strange! here we say that when we don’t want something to happen! haha… something new i learnt today. 🙂
yeah, it is a pretty good project
Of course I do think they can be just friends. I mean come on, aren’t we just friends? Doesn’t mean we are boyfriend-girlfriend. I was just trying to tell you how the “intelligent society” of my country thinks. 😛
@Amit: ROFL horns of a cow. I believe he would have thought it was the horn of a rhinoceros when the teacher drew the male reproductive system. =)
sulz: do you really think we’re just friends? 😉 😛 haha, just kidding! true, i can be immature about that. if i see a guy and a girl hanging out a little too much i’d tease them. 😛
You think we are just friends. I can think what you wanna think. No issues. 😛 You don’t let me hit on you. 😛
See, that’s normal human tendency. When you hang out and talk a little too much with each other, you’re in lurve!
sulz: haha, i don’t know how to reply to that, honestly!
well, that is usually the case when you hang out a little too much with somebody? i know when i have a crush on someone i’d want to catch every moment with or glimpse of him.
But there are best-friends like that too. There can be guys and girls who can be best friends and they share everything with each other before sharing it with their respective girlfriends/boyfriends. At least I’ve seen such people in movies. But in the end they do end up getting hooked up with each other but that’s cliched I believe. It’s not necessary that they have to be boyfriends and girlfriends.
sulz: that’s true, there’s always an exception to every rule. and hey, it’s the movies. if it were up to me, i’d fall in love with some guy online and meet him and live happily ever after! 😉
Lovely post, sulz. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of getting a handwritten letter, is there? Being able to feel and smell the paper, to see someone’s handwriting and know they took the time to write every word… it’s a wonderful feeling.
I have a thing about handwriting being a much clearer way to communicate. Most people can’t write as fast as they can type, so writing by hand gives you more time to think about what you want to say… in fact after years talking to a friend over IM and email, we decided to become penpals. Much as we loved getting emails, we both loved letters too and it seemed like a fun thing to try. Four years later and we’re still doing it. I still get the same thrill now when one of her letters arrives in the mail. 😉
If I guessed I’d say your friend was female just from the feeling I got from the post, but it could be a guy! I don’t think it makes much difference anyway; your gifts were beautiful and that’s a wonderful friend you have, and he/she is lucky to have you too. 🙂
sulz: thank you. 🙂 i know, i still can’t get over the letter and gifts!
hmm, you have a point there. also, since it’s slower to communicate via letter-writing, it’s more valuable than everyday im communication. blog posts are similar to letter-writing in the sense that most people do take the time to plan what they want to say, editing before publishing, except that it’s faster and more interactive!
hmm, you’d bet on a female huh? 😉 so muse and you think it’s a she, but juan and crazyasuka think it’s a he! anybody else want to make a guess? 😛
but you’re right, it doesn’t really matter because the friendship i have with that person is just an amazing thing to me!
suddenly i wonder how everybody’s handwriting would look like.
Okay everybody, I’m gonna let the cat out of the bag!
Here! It’s out…
MEOW!
sulz: what cat? what bag??