By Stephanie Delacruz
A small glimpse of Hokusai is there to paint some kind of beauty in a picture that has not much to admire in it. Who would care about it anyway? If it was in a gallery, no one would stop to interpret it.
The fact is that even in reality, the letters, whoever they were sent to apparently didn’t care about them either. But they exist. And they occupy space on that table.
How bad not to open them! Imagine the excitement of that first letter when it arrived in the mailbox. It expected to be cuddled. The words thought they had power. Bold. They wanted to cause any kind of emotion, even if it was bad. They promised that they would have the task of notifying; to inform, to touch. And they failed through no fault of their own.
In past decades, it was common for a person to send letters to their lovers, family, closest friends; there were even those who ended romantic relationships in written form.
Even further back navigators had the duty to write letters to their kings to record new discoveries. Great admirers of nature have transformed this activity into a beautiful art. Some critics say that Van Gogh had even more talent as a writer than a painter. The letters the artist wrote to his brother were true poetry.
“Admire as much as you can. Most people do not admire enough” – Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
It is a manifestation of feeling. The lack of courage in the form of daring. The freezing of time, it is the concretisation of the word. Some may bring sadness, but there are also love letters. The love letters, those are sorely missed. It was keeping heat on a piece of paper.
Some consider it an act of love because of how delicate they can be. These letters of affection became a rarity in a time in which communication and affinity are mostly on-line.
Letters delivered nowadays are almost never opened and accumulated on the table because they refer to charges or trivial matters; their sentimental value is vintage.
Featured image: Beauty and the least. Picture Stephanie Delacruz
