Life’s fading pleasures

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Every now and then we receive a letter in the mail from a relative or a friend, usually a thank-you but occasionally something about their lives, the kind of message that is more intimate, more meaningful if it arrives on paper, snug in a stamped envelope.
Contrary to popular belief, some people still write letters, nursing a custom that goes back as far as the written word. Letters may be dying along with the mail, but they
retain a curious aura, the spirit of missives fetched by Mercury, messenger to the gods of Olympus.
Letters on paper are treasured for many reasons. They let us say things carefully, rather than blurting something out over a phone line, or speed-typing an e-mail, or pecking out the inane coding on twitter. Unlike the evanescent phone call or e-mail, a letter is physical; we can save it, put it in a drawer or a box for the record, or
as a keepsake. A letter can be read without help from a battery or a plug-in.
Letters once were a good part of the postal mail, which still seems more promising and less annoying than a ringing phone or a digital spam list. Few things compare
with the promise and satisfaction of a letter, the handcrafted message – something we all hope for. Something that, nowadays, surprises us.
And even if we can’t name it, or say why, we still feel in our bones that when a message does come, it should come Mercury’s way, as a letter. After all, this is yet how some people, and the gods, stay in touch.
‒ JOHN MARSHALL

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