It has been a long time since I received a handwritten letter, but today, upon opening my mailbox, that is what I was greeted with. The sight of it made me smile instantly. I didn’t pick it up straight away, but leaned in for a closer look. Two things struck me: the dirty stains on the right hand side of the envelope and a small 3D heart surrounded by the words ‘luv from Oregon’ in the top left corner.

The letter is from a guy whom I met while recently travelling from San Francisco to Chicago on the Zephyr Line. I wrote to him six weeks ago because I would like to pay him a visit and write a story about him. He is somewhat of a troubled soul, overwhelmed by a life of grief, yet still adventurous and warm. I won’t talk about what he was doing on that train. I will save that for when I write the story. I will say that it took only a few seconds to recognise he was a rare character indeed. His letter was also surprising. The simplicity of his words was artful, capable of generating intrigue and speculation.

My trip to New Jersey was quite an adventure. Things did not go like I’d planned.

Two wonderful statements: quite without drama, pomp or elaboration. Knowing what he was doing on that train I can guess that the lack or elaboration is due to the adventures not being the kind of things you commit to paper. Not in your own hand. Not when you are supplying a return address. Still, in these two simple sentences he does not try to convince me of anything. He has resisted all temptation to romanticise and oversell. I am hooked. I want to board a plane and sit with him at a bar.

The letter goes on to discuss that which is essential to all hand written correspondence.

The weather here has been about normal: a foot of snow, a bit of rain mixed in with a few timely days of sunshine. The temperature has been between 20ᵒ and 55ᵒ for the past few weeks.

If somebody were to ask me if I would like to hear about the weather in Oregon I would leave them with few illusions on the matter. If somebody were to skip the enquiry and go straight to broadcast I would likely push them in a puddle and be gone. Yet in a letter, not only is a description of the weather on some far distant plane acceptable, it is essential. This particular description I find quite charming, as it seems to cover the full spectrum of possible weather patterns. It commits to nothing, other than to say that the weather is capricious. I have read it 20 times and still I am not done with it. Not by a long shot.

I really enjoy this understated style of writing. I enjoy the calmness of it. In the hands of the masters the undersold leaves your brain free to conjure clear images, to draw on an archive of visual references. It's the ability of great writing to trawl the reader's mind for images that makes books the original interactive media. Gabriel Garcia Márquez: His clothes were smeared with mud and vomit. J. M. Coetzee: Petrus has emptied the concrete storage dam and is cleaning it of algae. Balzac: Goriot went on eating mechanically without knowing what he ate.

I will now make a fresh pot of coffee and write a response. I will ask confirmation for a trip to Oregon sometime in April. I will not sit frustrated because my new pen pal has no email address, or because he seems reluctant to give me his telephone number. I will be patient, and check my mailbox (not my inbox) regularly.

 PS: Life is short. Live it well and say hi to Sacha for me.