a letter to a pen pal

I copy my letter to a pen pal here because it is about writing and about blogging abd I want to share it with others. -

n Good Morning Sheila! Uma (my dog) and I are just back from our walk at the Delaware River and I was pondering this age related adjustment: letting go of what isn't really accessible anymore and recognizing what is. In my 70's I had to let go of a lot. Actually backing up to my 60's, I began shedding what was no longer viable and looking for what was. So in my 60's I gave up romance, after the good old college try. In my 70's I gave up the Outdoor Club and kayaking and hiking. Mid 70's I gave up the woods entirely - too many hiking friends were getting Lymes disease and the woods had become increasingly dangerous due to hunters.

For many years my favorite spot in the woods was Pakim Pond in Brendan Byrne forest. I had gone there weekly with whatever dog I had and often alone between dogs with never an uncomfortable event. Then I had two in a row. On one hike around the pond, when I was on the far side, a group of motorcyclists roared up. One yelled across the pond to me if there was a trail. I said there was but I knew I could get back to my car before any one of them could catch up to me.

The second event, in autumn, was the last time I went: As I drove up the dirt forest road to the pond, on both sides of the road, there was a line-up of hunters in camo with their rifles raised and aimed into the forest. My dog and I had orange vests, but the four hunters on each side frightened me off and we turned around and went home. I had seen two deer romping the week before and I was so sad to think these guys were going to kill them. It was ruined for me and dangerous.

I was thinking about your blogging with S.J. and what a good thing that was because you can write forever! The only parts of your body you need for that are your eyes, mind and your fingers! And writing is infinite - both reading the writing of others (which I can no longer do in books, but which I have already absorbed and I have an internal library from my life and career in books) and writing. Writing is an infinite practice like meditation.

Thanks to my laptop, even as my vision fails, I can enlarge the text and continue to write and I look forward to it. Of course, painting is still available to me as well, but what to do with all those paintings! I did start giving them away some years ago, one at a time to various people - my handyman, the tech guy who fixed my printers, the young fellow who is property clerk at my Friends Meeting, various friends, my daughter, but still, if I do 3 paintings for each show, they can mount up! Sometimes I have an idea that just tugs at me to be realized but one other solution lately has been small paintings. I frame them inexpensively and glue magnets on the back and they go on the fridge. Those are easy to give away too!

Your Jane Goodall portrait, by the way, is still in the SJAC show until the end of the month at which time I will seek out a box fit for mailing.

But the point is - WRITING! Writing doesn't need much. If you handwrite, an inexpensive journal (I use 12 by 10 spiral sketchbooks in case I want to draw or paint or collage in them as well.) Or if you want to avoid the material altogether, - the internet, the blog - pen pals!

One of my favorite subjects is archaeology. Making marks, and drawings, is one of the oldest cultural pursuits of human kind, even hominids! It is the basic expressive medium besides vocalizing. The very miracle of putting marks on something and someone in a different time comes across it and it speaks to them - miraculous!

Just think of you and Christine Doyle, and Elaine Simon seeing those blog posts about Salmon Harris and Tom Nicholas, as far away as all of you are - Montreal, Canada, Pennsylvania, Florida! and getting in touch and conversing with me! WOW!

Actually I did hear from other people on different blog posts but they were all one-offs. A man wrote me about Rob Sweetgall, my ultramarathoner, long since gone now, and a few people wrote to me about Slim's Ranch and a hidden historic town in South Jersey populated by a small close group descended from a freed slave, a couple of Dutch women, and a native American man.

That blog is some fun. I am glad the S. J. blog works for you and that you are writing! My big gratitude today is that I became a fluent writer and that it has helped me through so much as well as offered such intellectual pleasure.

The pen is mightier than the sword! The pen creates, the sword destroys. Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com