Correspondence

All my fuzzy intentions to revive the blog have melted in the summer heat. Every attempt on my part to stoke the flames of passion that were the fount of my writing prior to my “quitting” in protest has fizzled out. Why am I suffering this impotence, what was the underlying issue? After all I write on a regular basis anyways for a different public, and blogging was my refuge and relaxation, my space for meditation on topics at a level that is not possible in an online or print newspaper. Why couldn’t I perform as I did between 2008-2018 on Mikocheni Report?

There is no pill for this lassitude, no quick fix. I have let it lie, having learned over a decade of blogging that one cannot expect to be as energetic as an adult as one was as a younger adult. My energies are split as is my attention, there are a few more demands on my time and while wisdom comes with age it seems to demand the sacrifice of some vigor in exchange. Besides, change has happened too. There is a period of trauma there that has changed me in ways I am still learning about. Not just personal trauma, but the effects of a communal experience during a specific period of time in Tanzania. We are not all traumatized, but many of us are. I think the Zanzibaris might be more truthful about understanding this than we Tanganyikans can allow ourselves to be.

In the event, what could I bring to blogging now? Against the insistence of many I still do not consider myself a journalist in the traditional sense. I am a writer, I write. Blogging comes naturally for many reasons- of independence and editorial control, convenience, lack of pressure. Also: it is just fun. But why should I keep blogging, what for? I am tired, oh. My knees are beginning to creak and what little patience I had once upon a time is fast disappearing as I become more like my precedents in temperament. I am cranky.

I am cranky… unless I am writing, or better yet reading a missive. And that is the key- that is what is going to keep this blog limping along is the lifelong joy of correspondence. Writing is about audience: one can happily write for oneself and many of us do as we journal in some form or other, keep diaries and records. Then there is writing with the reader in mind, what I have been doing since school days and now do voluntarily for a living and sometimes in spite of a living. Truth is, perhaps since the very first notes passed in class and the very first letters received in boarding school, I have been hooked to the type of conversation that can only be had via the written word.

It’s different isn’t it? A letter or  note can be slipped in the pocket and read and re-read infinitely. There is the careful choice of words that went into it. If one is lucky enough to get a hand-written note or letter there is an entire dimension therein: the loops and lines of someone’s actual making. When you write a note by hand you are really drawing a story for them with code, and that’s lovely. As a child I remember looking at the differences between my mother’s neat and rounded vowels and my father’s kinetic overblown consonants with sharp edges and long strokes. Their writing was gendered to my eye! And each seemed imbued somehow with their life energy. Of course I have kept as many letters as I can, that is what collectors do. And perhaps it was those letters and notes and the few pen-pals I had over the years that are truly responsible for the kind of writer I am.

I am a (repressed) poet and an essayist, really. Fiction has declined my invitations to visit and stay a while, at best perhaps a short story or two in my past worked out. But letters? Letters I can write. I’d rather write you a letter or even leave you a voice note than entertain a phone-call most of the time. With technology this habit has gotten even more acute: honestly phones have come to their best form allowing us to ignore the voice aspects, turn on silent and simply text. Text, text, text.

Text. And that is how, and that is why dear reader I think I will continue blogging.

The time of seeking work and trying to attract readers is a little bit past me, I think. I want to go back to the simple days of writing you a letter. So I will, and hope that you write back from time to time.

Hello. How are you doing?

Yours in faithful correspondence,

Elsie.