I’m absolutely in love with this correspondence on Letters of Note!
In June of 1956, Frank Lloyd Wright, a man posthumously recognised as “the greatest American architect of all time” by the AIA, received an unusual letter from 12-year-old Jim Berger, a young boy whose family home had been designed by Wright 6 years previous and who now wanted a matching house for his dog, Eddie. (Read More)
PS: I kinda love how Eddie hated the house! HAHAHA.
Enjoy!
S.
Kids say (and write) the funniest things. Check out these funny notes from children. The ones below made me laugh out loud!
Also, I think Emma is a pretty smart six-year-old.
When a friend or loved one is going through a dark period, sending some written words of encouragement is probably one of the best things you can do for them. I remember when I was sick and deeply depressed my brother (bless his heart) came over to my house while I was out and tidied up my apartment, brought over some homemade snacks and left this note on my kitchen table:
I still have the note and every time I’m feelin’ blue-ish, all I have to do is look at it to lift my spirits.
Brother, you’re the best!
xo.
Sister.
Last Wednesday, I navigated through my day in a dismal funk. Work was work and the sadness from Monday was still weighing heavy on me. After work, I moped around my house in sweats, ate a bunch of cheese (it didn’t cheer me up) and used up the last of the Kleenex boxes. I just wanted to crawl into bed and cry when I got an e-mail from a total stranger. My first piece of “fan mail” to be exact.
It was so nice! Really nice. Someone I didn’t even know took time out of their day to pay me a compliment. I actually woke up with a smile on my face Thursday morning. And you know what? That e-mail probably only took 2 minutes to write, but it lingered with me for days, giving me the push I needed to get me through the rest of the week.
So thank-you again, Madeline.
Go give someone a compliment today. Words make all the difference, writes the writer.
S.
Three weeks ago, I moved out of my condo and like any unsupervised adult, I waited until the final hours were dwindling down to begin packing up my life into ratty, and slightly unstable cardboard boxes. Alone in my living room, I surveyed the mountain of cardboard that was carelessly chosen to be carted along with me into the next chapter of my unwritten life; and as I bid adieu to the waterfront view I was leaving behind, I silently cursed myself in the still summer night:
I thought I’d have it all figured out by now.
The only thing that calmed my fragile nerves besides the cold Corona in my hand, was knowing that nowadays most twentysomethings thirtysomethings have the same recurring nightmarish thoughts. The truth is, most of us don’t have a clue what we are doing. We are all just walking around with out-of-sight hands shoved deep within our pockets, where our anxious fingers can be found tightly crossed. We’re all silently pleading for that long overdue Aha moment to finally show up, or bump into us like a familiar stranger on the street, quickly ushering us to the next phase of our lives.
A year ago, in the midst of a personal crisis, I found myself temporarily homeless and sleeping like a battered dog on my brother’s couch. One afternoon, my brother came home with a brand new typewriter and I did what any writer would do, waist deep in the depths of despair — I wrote.
I wrote lists of things that I wanted to accomplish, I wrote hate letters to those who had attempted to destroyed me and I wrote thank you letters to the people who had literally yanked me to my feet. And when all the Hilroy paper had run out, I ripped up the brown paper bag that carried my therapeutic vessel home and I wrote out my favourite last two lines from Mary Oliver’s, The Summer Day, and this time I addressed the letter to myself:
During the last tumultuous year, with its typeface slanted and letters fading, this scrap of a letter has found a permanent spot on my bedside table. It’s the first thing I see in the morning, and the last words I whisper out to myself at night. When I moved into my new place three weeks ago, the letter from my former self was the first thing I unpacked from those ratty and unstable cardboard boxes.
It arrived, crumbled and slightly battered with no Aha attached.
S.
Check out this cool website I stumbled upon last night.
Dearest Stranger,
I find myself thinking of you often. Pondering what you’re doing at this very moment… what it is you’re feeling. I miss you terribly. We met once. Just once. You’ve stayed with me for years. Your face is permanently burned into the depths of my memory. I feel you all around me… I know how absurd that must sound. But it is the truth. You are everywhere.
My darling.
My ghost.
The elusive creature that resides within my dreams.
I love you.
I have always loved you.
I just adore lists. Although I’m a big fan of writing out my own to-do-lists, the best is when I come across lists that aren’t mine! I like to think of them as a sneak peak into the unfiltered thoughts and ramblings of people I’ll never meet.
I have a habit of picking up old scraps of paper that have been abandoned on the ground, in the subway, in grocery carts, etc. - in the hopes to find old discarded to-do lists. Grocery lists are by far the most interesting (pure gold, if you ask me). I am absolutely fascinated by what people have set out to buy before they embarked on their journey to the store. Often people check or cross off only half of the items on the list; and then I wonder if they just got lazy mid shop or if they became distracted and went home without the milk and cat litter.
S.
