The letters are dead.

In my country, letters are dead. 

The Philippine postal system is one of the most corrupt agencies of government – and mine is a country where corruption is replete and as common as the housefly.  What do they do?  They open your mail in order to see if there’s anything valuable inside.  If there is, then it will be stolen and most likely the mail will end up in the garbage.  Or they’d just make a little hole, a small tear, to peek inside, then tape the torn portion roughly and place a note that says “this letter was received in this condition,” or some such other ridiculous lie.   Every family has a story:  a letter that was delivered late by months or that never reached them at all; a Christmas card that arrived with its envelope obviously torn and then taped together again with a note that says it was “received in this condition”; important documents that have been lost (most likely stolen) or arrived in such a damaged state that they might as well be invalid; letters that were delivered to the wrong address and if not for the kindness of the strangers who pass them on to you would never have gotten to their intended destination; and so on and so forth.

You would think that in a country that has tens of millions of workers slaving away overseas the government would at least have the decency to provide a reliable service that will allow them a trustworthy venue to keep in touch with their friends and families at home.  Sure the internet is there, you might say, and no one writes anymore.  But then you probably never felt what it’s like to be so homesick and lonely, and to suddenly receive a handwritten letter from your family, or a birthday card with sincere wishes that you could be home to celebrate with everyone, or how lonely Christmas would be without you.  The internet is fast, convenient, and reliable.  But NOTHING could be more meaningful than a letter that is painstakingly handwritten, and had literally travelled a long way to reach you.  You keep it safe under your pillow, and reread it dozens of times over until you’ve memorized it, and you imagine the person who wrote it taking the time, pen in hand, bent over the paper, a crease forming on the brow as he or she carefully tries to avoid making mistakes while writing.  NOTHING beats that. 

And how about the foreigners who are here in the country for tourism, business, or any other reason - aren't the postal service employees ashamed of the embarrassment that is our postal system?  Why do we insist on saying that this country is peopled with friendly, welcoming, perpetually smiling citizens, when the first chance they get they will tear open other people's mail?  I'd say the whole situation is deplorable all around.

Nowadays if you want to write a letter and send it out, the next immediate thought is, “Never mind,” because you know where it is likely to end up – nowhere near where or how you intend it to be.  I have about ten thousand reasons to hate the way this country is being run and the people who are running it, and the tragic failure of a postal system is just one of them.  Perhaps not everybody who serves in the postal system is bad, perhaps there are a few of them who are still honourable, but until this has been proven by actual reliable service, who would be stupid enough to believe it?  And until people cannot say that the postal service is untrustworthy anymore, shame and curses upon you all who steal or open other people’s mail.

The Lost Art of Letters

Now that summer is here, I might actually have some free time on my hands. Or rather, I intend to make some free time for myself, since I believe that I deserve it after another year’s worth of hard work. Believe it or not, I am genuinely looking forward to boredom - I maintain that I deserve it. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have anything to concern me. I’m so anxious for it that I’m actually planning what to do once I become bored (damn, I should get a life!), after wallowing in the sensation for a few hours, of course.

I’m going to write letters again. Real, hand-written, takes-forever-to-get-to-where-it’s-going letters. It’s a lost art, and only after a few years since the birth of e-mail. In one of my classes, where we tackled a story aptly entitled "The Letter", I made a shocking realization. Very, very few of the young people nowadays know how letters are written and sent. Most of them don’t know the formats used for letters (the headings, greetings, signature, etc.), or how to write the address on the letter and on the envelope itself, and the concept of a post office has become nearly pre-historic to them. Many aren’t even aware what their home address is since it’s probably needless information to them. I find this utterly tragic. I’ve nothing against technology and all its conveniences, but I still say it simply cannot compare to the thrill and anticipation provided by receiving something you can hold in your hands that has been painstakingly and carefully created by someone else and is intended solely for you. The mere thought of another human being going through the motions of preparing the paper, taking pen in hand, pausing in thought, translating the message through words and into ink, carefully folding the paper and sealing it into an envelope, then sending it out unsure if it will even get to its destination - nothing in the world can be more personal than that. With the letter travels a person’s soul - the contents of his or her mind, the strokes of his or her unique penmanship, and the fervent hope that it will be received with as much warmth as was infused into it. I’m sorry to say that no matter how many smileys there are in an email, it just cannot compare.

Summer is here and finally I’ll have some free time. I’m going to use it to revive an old art and at the same time, refresh an old friendship. I’m looking forward to writing letters again, and I’m very sure they will be warmly welcomed and treasured as any hard-won prize could be.

(posted elsewhere 28 Mar 2006)

copy & paste

Writing palanca letters has never been easy. When I was in high school, my teachers said there should be three things written in a palanca letter: a) the addressee’s strongest/best qualities, b) the addressee’s weakest/worst qualities, and c) words of thanks and encouragement for the addressee. So you see, I’ve always tried to keep these things in mind whenever I write such a letter. The problem is, if you’re writing a letter each for forty or so people, problems start coming up. Though I wanted to be as faithful to my goal as possible, it’s simply impossible.


When you’re in this business, you have a basic goal which basically applies to everyone: you want people to learn as much from you as you could possibly teach them and hope against hope none of them end up destroying themselves in one stupid way or another. So you try to tell every one of the forty or so people to keep doing their best and live without regret, to not lose hope, to count their blessings, to aim for the highest goals, and so on. And try as you might to keep each and every letter a personal treatise to the addressee’s significance to your life, you end up with forty or so letters that say basically the same things since you want the same things for everyone. It’s the most frustrating thing to attempt to be original and end up trapped in a hopeless copy & paste situation. Oh, but anyone who could say the same thing in forty or more different ways deserves to be worshipped for his godliness. Sadly, I’m pretty sure Hell will freeze over before I achieve any semblance of godliness.


I learned three things in my frustrated attempt to write forty plus original palanca letters. First, my handwriting sucks. After falling asleep on the keyboard trying to think up of more ways to say the same thing, I had to write maybe thirty or more letters by hand (oh, my poor calluses!). Second, I’m not as verbose as I would like to think myself to be. This situation has aptly proven my creative, verbal, and literary inadequacy. I thought I could be more imaginative than this, but surprise, surprise. Third, I should not be in this profession in the first place; but this I’ve always known. I am quite sure I’m not cut out for all this teacher business; I’m more of a recluse/hermit type, really. However, as long as people still ask me for palanca letters, maybe I still somewhat end up mattering to their lives in my efforts to do my job. So I guess I’ll just have to attempt to improve my handwriting, since trying to say something in more ways than one is far, far more difficult, not to mention frustrating.

(posted elsewhere 10 Feb 2006)

Letters to Daphne

She had to leave for another land, but somehow, she always stayed. Jeepney rides and pizzas shared, the uncounted instant mami noodle meals… Soon it was letters we began to exchange. What letters! No one writes like that anymore - sometimes more than five pages, back to back. Stories from across the oceans became conversations. I sat alone for how many times with my feet up and those sheets of paper in my hands. Her familiar voice and laughter in my head came to take the sound of susurration between sheaves of friendship, proof that distance is trivial.


They stopped. Unreliable postal services, busy schedules, preoccupations, etc., all the many reasons were there. E-mail, why not? Pictures on the computer monitor now showed her, glowing, in the arms of someone she loves. Sweet, sweet, life! It’s mysteries unravel themselves for her. The wondrous child she now holds in her arms, once upon a time was a beat in her heart. The world and its seas have kept turning. A few brief words now and then, "How are you?" "Take care always." "Congratulations!" Terse, trite, but true words nevertheless. Connection, still. Across oceans still.


The letters have stopped, but what they stand for never did. She’s always been around. She’s been my friend for more than ten years. Even across words and oceans. There’s a box I keep under my bed where I still have the papers to prove it.

(posted elsewhere 22 Aug 2005)