i have had the luxury of working in the paper room most of the week. my paper room sits high in the trees on the second floor of my studio. the side garden with the horse-shoe pits waiting for summer, is directly below with the sparkling lake just beyond. it feels like a treehouse, but also like a ship, with the wind turbulent and boisterous as it writhes around my little room. i curl into the big chair beside the window and revel in the towers of old paper threatening to topple all around me. there are papers that i recognize from 25 years ago that i'll never let myself use, but i love seeing surface in the tangle of the familiar. cigar boxes and drawers and folders and shelves and tables and tins, all spilling over with paper. my paper room has a delightful sloped ceiling that tucks me in it's fold as i sit on the floor sifting through maps and dictionaries and instruction booklets and old currency and collections of letters. the beautiful wide hemlock floorboards entirely disappear beneath what most would consider a horrible mess. books and torn pages and baskets like little mountains sprouting from every bare spot in the room.
but this is where i can lose myself, immersed in my work with no distractions, where my mind can distill all it's questions and ideas into journals and collage that i love.

friends came by the studio as i worked today. i cut squares of fabric for quilts and ironed scraps that will be cut into smaller squares. the sun was strong. the energy was bright. i planned a new size for a quilt. and i talked to courtney about letter writing. after she left, i continued to ponder on the fading art of hand-written correspondence. there is an intimacy about a hand written letter that is rarely equalled. letters come from a silent place. ink and paper, such a physical extension of the hand and mind. the writing of a letter becomes not only a transfer of thoughts and ideas, but also an aesthetic communique. the variations of hand-writing. a coffee stain. the rapid scrawl of a sudden idea. the jagged edges of paper ripped from a spiral bound notebook. or the creamy silk of fine stationary. i have boxes of letters, saved from different stages of my life. the round loopy girlish writing of letters received while i was in boarding school. the longer, more serious missives while in university. and living in paris, the swoon when i saw a white envelope and it's angular address. letters from men i loved. and from men who loved me.

i also have collections of letters i have purchased from estates. they are fascinating, even without knowing the full extent of their context. i have one little bundle, tied in a tattered and faded light blue ribbon that are saved from the 1920's. letters of a summer love and the heartbreak that ensued. another collection that ranges from a son's letter to his parents, in the 1890's, telling of his intention to marry, letters from his father to the future daughter-in-law, letters between the newlyweds, letters from this couples child to her parents, and ultimately letters telling of the death of her father.....3 generations of a family, distilled to pages of writing.

will we have such historical treasures to leave future generations? letters carry more than words in them.