The epistle apostle

I was thinking today about how the art of letter-writing is so seemingly lost. In the past two weeks, I have had people tell me that not only was the cost of stamps rising two cents but that the United States Congress is considering passing a bill into law that would charge a nickel for every email message sent in the country. How did we get to this point? It seems that our Information Age technological society simply has forgotten the simple graces of epistolary writing. When was the last time you either received or sent a letter or even a postcard? It seems that even birthday and Christmas cards are down across the board.

It's very sad that an art that has been with mankind for thousands of years is being wiped off the map almost suddenly. It's true that the advent of the telegraph and telephone cut down on the need to communicate by letter, but I believe that it wasn't until the advent of digital email that the death warrant was finally signed.

For many years letters have conveyed the personal thoughts and sentiments of human beings across the world, having simple, personal or even worldwide effects on mankind. Hell, half of the New Testament is a collection of letters. The romance of Thomas Paine and the early revolutionaries, the Pony Express, love letters and family missives sent from war-torn Europe during the 1940s. What would the world be like without these things? What if Dracula was just another story instead of an epistolary masterpiece? As a writer and historian, the detoriation of letter-writing makes me very sad. How are future generations to understand our ways of life, our thoughts, and our dreams without correspondence printed on common parchment? The letters of men great and base are an amazing and incredibly in-depth way of studying the civilizations that preceded us. What a perspective they add!

I urge everyone to flex their creative muscle and break out the Bics to write a letter now and again. You don't have to be as prolific as an H.P. Lovecraft and write a library of tens of thousands, but perhaps drop a line of post now and again. A simple letter to a friend or family member. An unexpected surprise in the mail can be a wonderful surprise, even if it's nothing more than a written greeting or salutations. And what better way to improve your vocabulary and language than putting into words what would normally be a mundane phone conversation? Just think; something you write could be enshrined in the National Archives someday.

To the death?...No, to the pain.

So I just finished this conversation with lada about my previous post and my apparent fascination with pain and being in pain. It is simply this: pain equals life. Or rather the struggle to maintain life. What's so wrong with being obsessed with wanting to be alive? Nothing at all. It's perhaps the most elementary of all human instincts. It is something very animalistic, primal, and basic that we all exhibit as common shareholders of the DNA for Homo sapiens. To feel pain is to truly know life.

For me, the simple definition of death is the absence of pain. If you were to hack a corpse to pieces, it's not going to suddenly jump up and shout for mercy. The nerve endings aren't transmitting any chemical signals; the body is just so much cordwood. The same if someone became calloused and shut themselves off from the world. Emotionally they are numb and for all intents and purposes dead in that way -- if not medically. This line of thought could also be extended to the spiritual side of life as well. Gets a little more tricky with people's individual beliefs but it can still hold. If you can't feel pain than you are either medically deceased or emotionally numb to the point you might as well be some zombie wandering around a shopping mall in Pittsburgh.

I'd like to go into more detail about this right now, especially concerning my thoughts on the pain of heartbreak and such, but I'm running on an hour of sleep and hopped up on Robotussin so it'll have to wait another day.

It's late, I just drank a bottle of champagne, and what the fuck am I doing?

Why is the beginning always so hard for me to write? It seems that everything I write or do, it's so damn difficult to get past Act One. It would seem for most people it is the finishing that is so hard. For me? Complete opposite. I never seem to like how I start so I hit reset and begin again. Trouble is I'm never satisfied. It's just simple exposition: introduce some characters, add a little backstory, set up time and space and just go. It's like that old Greek story of the wicked king hanging out in Tartarus condemned to roll his boulder up his hill. He gets half of the way up before he starts having problems; at least he can get the ball rolling. Why can't I just go and see what happens. I'll give it a shot.

The protagonist is this story is me. The Dunce Cap Marvel. I'm 23 but act both 16 and 43 in equal parts. I either worry too much about the past or the future and totally disregard much of what is happening in the present. I'm a student at the University of Georgia. Or, rather I act like Chris Farley acting like a student. I don't think anyone would mistake me for Stephen Hawking, and not just because I lack a seriously disabling disease that leaves me confined to a chair. I don't really have a very bright and sunny disposition. In fact, I'm rather dark and brooding. Some of that comes from the clinical depression I suffer from and the rest from my wanting to be Lord Byron. I always say I should have been born a 19th century Romantic. My heroes are literary giants: Poe, London, Hemingway. If only I could write and drink and die as they did.

Life sucks sometimes; most times really. I wouldn't have it any other way though. Yeah, I'm a little masochistic but it really does make the great times truly GREAT. Why would anyone care that the sun was shining if there weren't thunderstorms? As lada loves to tell me, life is beautiful. And it is. I live in a world that has many simple beauties. Trees. Mountains. Oceans. I've been in love twice in my life. A lot of people can't say that. I have a great family and wonderful friends. There is a lot of promise and hope and love in my life. It evens out the sorrow, loneliness, and pain.

Life is a two-sided coin. My favorite movie is 'Return of the Jedi'. That's because of Darth Vader. His character embodies humanity. The good and the bad, the joy and the pain, the light and the dark side. Hopelessly entangled. And the best part of the movie? He redeems himself and comes out of it a pretty good guy who by the way saves the galaxy. Every person's goal everyday should be to redeem his or herself. I truly believe that. That's just a little window into me. You know, it's not that hard going after you get started.

ps. And one more thing: I'm a sucker for dog stories. I cry everytime.