And the envelope please – Conversation with characters

IMAGE: etsy.com

Many blogs available on this site feature “letters” in different contexts. I have however never commented on envelopes, until now. The following shared from Inspire Hub Facebook

“Kurt Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope:

“Oh, she says, well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?

And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

I meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up.

And I’ll ask a woman what kind of dog that is.

And, and I don’t know.

The moral of the story is – we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And it’s like we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”

Let’s all get up and move around a bit right now… or at least dance.”

[Meanwhile, back to the office] Immediately to the right of my blog-creation workstation is a drawer filled with different sizes of envelopes including the classic #10 along with others smaller and larger. And they are rarely used. Email is my dominate mode of communication. I loathe texting or Twitter/X. I prefer to visit with friends, family, and colleagues in person. Sadly, I have too many introverted friends as they rarely call me to arrange a coffee visit (you know who you are); so I call you, which is fine, but I feel like a nag sometimes. I will continue to take the risk however.

Presently, as technology occupies increasing space in our conversations and lives, the good old fashioned in-person visit deserves our interest and support. Hence my enthusiasm for American novelist Kurt Vonnegut’s encouragement.

Kurt Vonnegut (born November 11, 1922, Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.—died April 11, 2007, New York, New York) was an American writer noted for his wryly satirical novels who frequently used postmodern techniques as well as elements of fantasy and science fiction to highlight the horrors and ironies of 20th-century civilization. Much of Vonnegut’s work is marked by an essentially fatalistic worldview that nonetheless embraces modern humanist beliefs.

I suspect that Vonnegut would have loved Rachel Joyce’s first novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry published in 2012. Joyce’s first novel, it was longlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, and Joyce won the UK National Book Award for New Writer of the Year for the book. It was also the best-selling hardback book in the UK from a new novelist in 2012.

It tells the story of Harold Fry, who prepared a letter to a dear friend, and like Kurt Vonnegut told his wife he would going to mail it. Having reached the first post box he decided to mail it at the next post box down the line. As you might guess, this process took him from the English west country to Berwick Upon Tweed on the border between England and Scotland. The story is now a delightful movie. I will never look at a post box the same way again. Yes, the letter itself is important; but the people he meets along the way are beautiful.

I am sure that all of us benefit from a life-experience characterized by, well, conversation with characters, eccentric or otherwise. I hope you also feel the same way. Let’s meet up to talk this through.