Letters (1)

In the age of the internet and all these fancy ways to communicate, I've been thinking about the letters I used to write back in the days. Letters that have been overtake by hundreds if not thousands of e-mail messages and faxes over the years. Letters that have also been replaced by the ever lower cost of phone calls from and to any part of the world.

I do remember very very well the last letter that I wrote though. It has been perhaps the letter with the most sentiment and most love I've ever written, and that prove to me that today, with all those ways to communicate with someone, a letter has perhaps become even more powerful and important that I ever thought.

Even though I remember my last letter, I can't recall my first letter ever. I do remember writing letters to Santa Claus when I was just a little child, or writhing to the tooth fairy -I was a very demanding kid-, but I can't place in my my mind the moment when I wrote a letter to someone that I knew, or didn't know. The time when I considered I had something to tell someone who was not around me. That moment in time and space when I wanted to bring someone close to me, and bring to that person some memories of this red haired.

I lived in the same city where I was born for 17 years, attending always the same school and with the same group of friends. Well, not really. I used to hang out with some people that I considered my friends, but somehow they "back stab" me at some point, and then I moved away from them -even though we were in the same class. That's a whole different story that I may write about in the future. My point is that I never had someone to whom I was close to and that went away for a long period of time; a time long enough that made necessary to write a letter.

I had a uncle who lived -and still does- in a country different than the one I grew up in, but I always wrote my name on the yearly Christmas cards that my parents used to send him. Even though we spoke on the phone with him once in a while, I never felt the need to write him a letter telling him something about me or my surroundings.

I would say the first letter I ever wrote was to the president of my country. No, I ain't no genius or anything like that, but I did wrote him a letter and got a reply from him as a matter of fact.

Back in those days the country where I grew up in was at war with itself. There was this guerrilla groups that were trying to overthrow the government and the federal forces were fighting them back. I didn't quite understand much what was going on those days, I was perhaps 11 years old, but I do remember that while watching TV with my Dad, I saw that the president went abroad to some meeting with other presidents to try to end another war that was going on in the neighborhood. There was a lot of fighting back then in my original country and others around. So as he went to this conference, I asked my Dad: "Why doesn't he first make peace here in the country, and then goes abroad?". My Dad said he had no fucking idea, that I should ask the president himself, and trying to shoo me away to leave him alone he said "go write a letter, go!".

I end up writing a letter and my Mom took it to the post office. Few weeks later the president replied to me through a telegram, well at least it was signed by him. He didn't answer my question though, his telegram which was just few lines long said pretty much that peace was very important for his government and that he'll keep working towards it in our country and abroad. Five presidents later, the fighting in my original country has intensified, there's more weapons on both sides, therefore more deaths and the current president is scalating all the bombing and shit with no end in sight. Peace in the other countries around mine was either reached or imposed but not thanks to that president I wrote to. He retired once his 4 years were over, didn't write his memories or anything like that and never went to any conference about peace in the region.

Too much for a question of a 11-years old.

Now that I think a little more about letters, perhaps the second one I ever wrote was when I was 14 years old -and no, it wasn't to the president.

I was attending my freshmen year in high school and one of my teachers came with this idea of a pen-pal.

Let's write to someone who lives in the US so that we can practice our english and know about their whereabouts. By the same token they can learn about us and our country and all that bullshit that teachers always come up with. I got a letter from my pen pal, a girl, in no time and with the help of my mom I wrote her back. It's funny, she wrote to me in english even though I grew up in a country that has a different native language and she didn't even mention anything about "I hope you understand this". I included a picture in my letter, Jean-Francois in all its glory, smiling, his hair combed and wearing his best t-shirt.

I never got a reply from her; maybe got scared of my "good looks" and that was the end of our "pen-pal" friendship.

Those were my first letters, the first letters ever written. Short lived relationships but that can be classified as letters nevertheless.

Throughout my life I haven't written many letters, even though I've lived for extended periods of time in Asia and the US twice. One of the reasons is that early in my travels I found the internet, that killed any desire to sit down with a piece of paper and write. Other reason is that I've never been too close to my family, and I don't like to tell them much about me and my whereabouts. Early in my life by trying to be honest with them I got myself in a lot of trouble, so the lesser they know about me, the better. That's also a whole different story though.

When talking about letters one thing that does comes to my mind is the last letter I wrote, and as I said before, perhaps the most successful story of words putted into a sheet of paper in my whole life. It showed me the power that letters have today in our internet society; a power that once unleashed upon someone . . .

. . . may just die down, because due to time and phisical separation love dies no matter how many and how awesome hand-written letters you put in the mail.

But as a letter, it was a success.