On Mailmen

I love letters. Finishing the letter I was typing this morning made me think of the great joy that postmen must have of carrying "real mail." Carrying letters between regular correspondents must be intriguing. If I were a mailman/mail person, I would make up stories about what they were communicating and probably as a result deliver the wrong mail to the wrong house (or serve plum pudding with a sauce in which a mouse drowned).

My family has a rich tradition of mail carrying. Okay, so it was only for two generations--my grandfather was a postman and two of my uncles are mail carriers. What an agrarian occupation! My grandfather, when he hears of an old friend or acquaintance, will often list off his address--"Oh, he lived at 222 Lynn Street." Mailmen intimately know their place and facilitate communication; as we know, place and communication are two of the greatest goods.

Here is an excerpt from a letter of E. (Elwyn!) B. White to his new wife: "Dear Katharine (very dear): I've had moments of despair during the last week which have added years to my life and put many new thoughts in my head. Always, however, I have ended on a cheerful note of hope, based on the realization that you are the person to whom I return and that you are the recurrent phrase in my life. I realized that so strongly one day a couple of weeks ago when, after being away among people I wasn't sure of and in circumstances I had doubts about, I came back and walked into your office and saw how real and incontrovertible you seemed. ... [B]eing with you is like walking on a very clear morning--definitely the sensation of belonging there."

This reminds me of the Lost a couple of weeks ago when it was the communication with the woman he loved that saved Desmond and helped him stabilize in a particular time and place.