79.

[never forget that a saint is a sinner who keeps on trying.

-Nelson Mandela

in a letter to his wife]

reflection on the past year has not come easy and has really found itself speckled in letters that loves of mine have received in spatterings about this great world. if nothing else, 2010 allowed me to find my medium as a writer. i am not sure if it is safe to claim the art of letters as one's particular art, but i am and i do. letters, like nothing else, give us a venue for honesty. envelopes are too fragile to support those arresting feelings of pride, fear, or cynicism. Like southern literature, tin can tunes tweedle-deed by old man pickers - they possess an honesty. an honesty that doesn't require backspace and rarely - if the recipient worthy - requires a single dashed line through what it is you want to share. it's a moment you spend meditating on another person with deliberate intention and most importantly with humility and usually some form of emotion that resembles features of love. not love in the romantic sense, but a love that digs far deeper than that.

it allows for writers to grow and thinker to think bigger and question askers to pose those questions without the promise of answers. honesty isn't something that is easy to come by...not the kind that is stripped down, smiling in the midday sun on a bustling city street, unashamed, as the people unceremoniously hurry to and fro.

from a return address that reads, "Ringin the liberty bell..."

"...it was the greatest treat to find your letter in my mailbox today - indeed these letters and the life we share in them are some of my greatest possessions. Someone posed to me the difference between ownership and possession last December. I will butcher it in the retelling, but simply put; to have a gift, to recognize its existence but to never truly appreciate it, or put it to work, or share it with another - this is what owning something may come to look like. But to play any guitar in the world because you know the strings, to marvel at the vastness of the ocean, to truly adore and come to an understanding and love of beauty and skill, I think this was what my friend referenced as possessing....At the end of my marriage I considered myself a failure at love, but the love that I have grown to share with my friends and my family, with that old man on the couch - its grown like wildfire and lit up my whole life. It brings value to all I possess and it is the beginning and ending to what I have of value to give."

my community of writing folks has really grown this year and in this growth, I too, have grown.

so many lessons we share with one another when we decide we are willing to, well, share.