The mad sweep of memories almost leaves me giddy. Postcards from friends still in high school. Lengthy correspondence from a Belgian exchange student I got to know my senior year. Mundane little notes from my mother written in that perfect Palmer Method script of hers, detailing weekly events around the house and the hometown. Cards from the Missus back when she was first a friend, then a girlfriend, and then a fiancée. I have photos, not JPEGs, of friends I chatted with in Seattle and LA (both the City of Angels and Louisiana). Long rambling letters from girls I knew, girls I liked, girls I eventually despised or ignored or just let the trail grow cold on. Endless poetry and deep writings from a girl in Canada. Even a note from my father, who writes little and displays feelings even less, penned for a religious retreat I was on. And names. In college, I was horrible with finding out people’s last names. Alumni records don’t help you much when all you know is someone named Sam who might have graduated a year after you. But the envelopes to these letters tell all.

I had a friend named Mary, in fact the first friend whom I met through the Internet first and in real life second. I remember visiting her at her mother’s house an age ago and hanging out for the day. I vaguely remember driving by a lillypad-choked pond to get there. After searching the address from one of her old letters this morning, I find that the address (and the pond) is about a mile from where I currently live. Go figure.

Sadly, the letters thin out as my junior and senior years approached. Many friends had switched to e-mails by then and those that didn’t slowly vanished from memory. Snail mail seemed so old school then.

Now as I peruse through dozens of letters and four great years of my life, I wished I had written more. A lot more. E-mail may have given new speed to the same old letter, but it stripped out a lot of the fringe benefits in the process. Mail on a screen has hardly the same effect as a sheet of paper in your hands. The differences in writing styles, the ink, the edits done with scribbles or even stickers, even the smell of the paper and old envelope glue, nothing can match it.

I think it’s time to revive a dying art. A few of the addresses I checked seem to still have someone living there who might remember me. When the snow starts flying tonight, I’ll dig out some good resume paper and a smooth writing pen and scribble out a few lines and see what comes of them.