photo: Paul Wade
It is gloriously sunny today.
I am sitting with the sun streaming onto my back and it is an absolutely lovely feeling.
Today's letter was quite short, only two, very small, pages
See? They're about the size of my hand.
It strikes how much the paper varies, in size, in texture, in quality, from letter to letter. There was obviously a very wide range of paper available, which surprises me somewhat. As with the emphasis on shipping and side-hustling (the watches, the cameras), I am surprised by what a material world this is. I do not associate such a consumer goods culture with war.
Paul told me the other day that he passed a newish apartment building in our neighbourhood that has a glass entryway that you can see into and the concierge's desk was buried beneath parcels from ASOS.
Because you can't quarantine without acquiring a whole new lounge wear wardrobe. Apparently.
There is an iridescence to this paper that I am trying to capture. I'm not sure I'm succeeding.
To be honest, I can't really see what I'm photographing because of the sun. But I refuse to move out of it because it feels so good.
In this letter, the camera saga continued - the faulty one has been shipped back, but sans lens, the lens being considered too expensive to risk "another 10,000 mile journey." I wonder. Have I ever been 10,000 miles from Harrisburg? Let's see.
It turns out I haven't - Moscow is 4,000 and some, Kuwait 6,000 and some.
The distance from Harrisburg to Manila? 8476.67 miles or 13641.87 kilometers. So a bit of a miscalculation there. 10,000 sounds better.
Anyway, back to the camera itself and its purpose.
In earlier letters, he's talked about wanting to take photos, so she can see what it's like there.
He imagines them sitting at home, with the slide projector set up.
It makes me think how this sense of needing to photograph something to make it more real, to hang on to it, to prove it actually happened is really not at all something that emerges with smartphones and social media.
It's slower and there's more delayed gratification, but the impulse is the same. To collect, to prove, to materialise the ephemeral.
Why are we so quick to decry our humanity? To condemn it as weak or selfish or absolute proof of the inevitable decline of humanity. It's that even more self-aggrandising and ridiculous than acknowledging that humans like to take photos and collect souvenirs, which might also include said photos?
It strikes me that in this letter that there's a reversal of the power dynamic we see in the earlier set of letters, from 1941 to 1942.
It's curious that there is no back and forth in the collection - just two one-sided conversations. We only ever get half the story.
I'm reminded of Winnie's wishing Jack would write to her, hoping for his letters. And here he is now, wanting the same thing, he's the one playing the waiting game.
This letter mentions something else I haven't thought of for a long time - 'native' or foreign dolls.
I had a collection of foreign dolls, mostly gifts from my Jack and Winnie, who travelling around Europe when I was young, and my Aunt Sue, who was a buyer for J. C. Penney and did a lot of travel in Europe and Asia.
I don't know if these are still a thing - little dolls, often quite cheaply made, in native dress.
I don't know what happened to mine. Some of them were kind of scary to be honest.
Right, let's leave it for there today. Enjoy the sunny quarantine holiday weekend. I'll be back next week with more Stories of the Present War, but until then, I remain,
Your hubby
PS - here's that fabulous music we were listening to earlier.