Writing letters is a funny thing. In today's custom of cursory notes and the dreaded shorthand I call hackerspeak - which is the practice of substituting one letter for words, having more than one acronym for several common words in the same sentence, forgetting all capitals and correct punctuation, numbers scattered among letters for no reason whatsoever - as well as brief email messages, what's a letter? An honest to God letter, with a salutation, indentation, formal language... that thing our teachers had to drill into our heads in school, and were so picky about complete sentences and all that other shite... when's the last time you saw one in the electronic medium?

Ah. I'm rambling. Something I tend to do a lot of, unfortunately, but I suppose it's... sort of a way to organize my thoughts. And they need organizing. Heh. Incomplete sentence. Starting with 'and' or 'but' is a no-no. Good thing this is a journal of sorts, because all those rules don't apply. Creative writing has one rule only, but a lot of good suggestions. Someone I admire a great deal taught me that. It was even in school. How about that.

Unfortunately, rambling can also just be my way of stalling. Back to the subject at hand. Letters. I know I write them - oh, initially at least. They often tend to devolve into the barest acknowledgement, a quick few phrases, and a signing off that may or may not include any form of farewell. The only exceptions to this, I've found are friends. The close kind, the deep sort. I may not write often, but when I do, it's a letter. This is, of course, excluding the kind where I'm sending a picture or a file and I'm also talking with them directly in a real time chat. Letters don't come when you're handing them something to take a look at and comment on right then and there.

Letters are funny things. Sometimes they flow like snowmelt down a mountain stream, and sometimes they're as hard to compose as fishing that needle from the haystack. I've been trying to write a letter for over a month now. Every time I get about halfway through, something happens. I had started working on it at work. On lunches. Breaks. Then the shit came down there, and it was a struggle to keep my head on straight and calm, and I had no time or freedom to finish it. Things coalesced there, and when I quit, I thought I had printed out everything of mine to take away, so I deleted it all. I evidently hadn't printed that. Gone. I wrote one by hand, to be included in a package I was mailing. That one's been lost, whether among the paper chaos on my desk or on the journey, either way it doesn't matter. When I found this out, I started to write it again. Halfway through the latest version, my computer seized. You guessed it. Gone. Some letters don't want to be written, and some don't want to be read. I'm beginning to think this one is both. Either way though, someone deserves that letter. So I will keep trying despite minotaur's luck.

You'd think after all this I'd have the thing memorized, wouldn't you? Nope. It's different every time. It just seems like it should be that way, you know? A unique effort every time. It may not make sense, but it feels right. Maybe that's why things keep going wrong with the letter. Maybe the letter is wrong, and it won't make it until it's correctly written. *laughs ruefully* No, I don't believe that. Right or wrong, it will be what it will be, and different or not, it always says the same thing.

Well. You'll have to excuse me now. I've a letter to write.

Kaz