Handwritten

Taken from Pablo Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets

Been going through a myriad of emotions for several weeks now with all the big changes in my life and today, I felt like reawakening my romantic side which has been dormant for the past 12 years. Being a solo mom with double the hard work, I have taken for granted that part of me which has inspired so much of my creativity throughout my life from my designing to my writing to my handicrafts. 

Browsing through love poetry on the net, I came upon this beautiful piece from Pablo Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets:

I love you without knowing how, or when or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.

It was so beautiful that it felt like it was sacrilegious to merely reading it on the screen, that somehow the words called out to me that they had to be handwritten and so I did as you can see on the photo above. 

This poem made me think of how writing letters had become so impersonal with the birth of the e-mail. I remembered back in high school, passing notes and writing lengthy letters to each other were our pastime. I've kept most if not all of those letters and from time to time I'd go through them and find myself sighing or laughing. 

I even kept other people's letters, the messages of which were so touching I wondered why these people even disposed of them. My favorite would probably be the postcard written by this guy I've had a huge crush on since I was 14, until he became my cousin's boyfriend. I found his postcard to my cousin in a book several years after their terrible break-up and upon reading his love letter, I began to cry, moved by his impassioned words, lamenting over his wasted feelings for someone who hardly cared for him when here I was drowning in my unrequited love for him. If he only knew.

So despite the digital world we live in, I still am a big fan of the written word and hope that people would someday go back to using the pen to express their love.