mail

these days, i just love mail. i have money in the bank, and i get so excited when they come because i can just pay them. a few times, i've been able to pay them completely off, and that is a wondrous feeling. writing checks for thousands of dollars is so satisfying. i actually get disappointed if there are no bills in my po box. weird, i know.
and there there are the letters. i'm a practitioner of the old-fashioned art of letter writing, and there's nothing i love more than a good conversation through hand written letters. i've gotten a few from my girlfriends--notes with invitations, postcards, cute crafty things to cheer me up. but the best paper fun i've been having is a furious back and forth affair with an old love who is in prison. he's not there for terribly long, just a year, but that certainly provides a "captive" audience for sustained discussions through letters. i got his first letter which was written on the back of a form detailing his possessions, in my old mailbox at my former house which i just happened to check one last time after i moved out. i'd already had my mail forwarded, but i guess a few things slipped through. it was a magical moment where the unexpected found me through dumb luck. i have no idea how he got my address, i mean, we've seen each other once in the past 2 years, but he does live in my hometown, so we've been aware of each other through mutual friends which is probably how he got it. at any rate, it's been a rare and joyous pleasure to communicate with him. being locked away is doing him quite a bit of good, as he is now sober which facilitates his brilliant thinking and elegant, poignant writing. he always was the drunken poet type, but now he's morphing into a sharp wit with a broad perspective who surprises me every time.
it's things like this that keep me happy some days.