Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
The Japanese have a saying….
To “save face” and not “see face”. They send their stories of the landscape, snow and cherry blossoms, the importance of family and honor. they write to hear stories from fellow humans who walk on the other side of the world. They wait for the aerogramme with anticipation. They gather together to hear about poisonous snakes and spiders and consuming fires and droughts. When the words are read out loud they feel the heat of the fire and the desperation of the drought.
Originally I thought…
The letter was from an admirer or a mysterious relative who had left not money but a challenge or an adventure in a remote and faraway destination . I held the aerogramme and turned it over in my hands feeling the edges and imagining where it had travelled from, the hand that posted it, maybe wrinkled with past knowledge and secrets. Was the sender looking behind them as they slipped the letter into the box. I kept it sealed for an hour then a day , then the weeks passed . I couldn’t bring myself to open it.
Open the window…
If I cant bring myself to open it. I need to set it free. I cannot have it sitting by my bed, on the table, the bench, in my car, beside me ,in my pocket, where it mocks me to open it. I fold it into a paper plane and unfold it several times, refolding it to make it streamlined and swift I teeter at the window… Next minute the wind turns back on itself and the aerogramme shaped into a plane comes back at me refusing to fly out landing just behind me. was this a sign, a sign of what and why wouldn’t I open it . was it fear of disappointment or excitement and too much of that to deal with, or perhaps worst of all the solving of a puzzle, the end of the mystery.
This is not what I was expecting……
I grappled with that unopened aerogramme for weeks , I called in sick for work. It followed me around the house out walking , to the shops. It consumed my waking and my dreams. It was no different from any other day that I had not opened the letter when I finally did. It had been sent to the wrong address another person was meant to be the recipient . It was an ordinary letter detailing an ordinary holiday written without imagination, nor inspiring me to visit the place where it had come from.
What I learned….Is that anticipation, desire ,fear, magic ,intrigue are best left enclosed to be anticipated, desired, feared and imagined.