Dear faraway friend,
I know that we are in the middle of summer. But do you not miss the warmth of winter? Cold air, rainy sky, and the sweet desperate need for a hot cup of tea. I hope your imagination is wild enough that you are already imagining it is raining outside your window, and this music is coming from your black old fashioned radio near you, holding -enthusiastically my letter in your cold hands.
Do you not wish that you lived in the century when the music was classic; soft piano, angry violent, and sad cello. When dancing required two people, holding each other, elegantly, one feels the moves of the other.
When the handwritten letters were the only way to communicate with far away people. You do not only read, you sense the words, you sense the person, you even smell the paper.
Do you not feel that we are -unfortunately in a century where we know way too much than we can handle. Think about how much information you can get in one simple click. How can a human being’s heart deal with the whole world’s issues, disasters, illness, poverty, war… Every single day.
Do you remember when war was between two countries or more? Well, in our generation, war is between the people of the same country.
Life was simple. Books were more pleasurable than a small black and white TV screen with two main shows and the news.
Telephone was at home only. When you are out, you are absolutely out. When you take a walk, you are really walking, when you are having a conversation, you are concentrated with it. Today, if one’s phone battery is not full, one is insecure. Friends were people around us, now friends are a number around the world.
Literature was about language, style, and a complicated story where one reading was never enough to fully relish the book. Nowadays, half the words of a book are “F word” the other half is bunch of meaningless details, and the plot is lost between the lines.
Life was simply enjoyable. I tell you a secret. I made my apartment looks a bit like an old-fashioned house, and I try to live an old-fashioned life as in the 17th and the 18th centuries.
It was not the perfect time though; back then society was way patriarchal than now, and the misogynist ideologies continue to be in play till now, freedom was only in literature, now freedom is Online.
The first thing I do when I come back home is play Beethoven, Yanni, and Ibrahim Maalouf, I change my clothes to a floral sundress, and cook a fancy dinner for the princess (me) and I savour every single bite with a Jane Austen sentence. I enjoy the lonely afternoon tea as they used to. I most of the time talk to myself –like everyone else does, but, (keep it a secret) I try that fancy British accent, pretending that I am a young English aristocratic lady.
Yours,
PR
Erroneous Letters 