All Love Letters Are Ridiculous. Diego Maenza

of her misadventures because she could not say that she loved a boy, despair that ends with suicide. This novel seems greatly influenced the youth. Girls, who were exalted when they finished reading the story, sparked a wave of suicides. This prompted me to read it. A encyclopedia tells us: The tribulations of the young student Dögg was imitated by not only young people in the locker room, but also its tragic end: it is said that it caused more suicides than words inside its pages.

      When reading it, the magic ran out. I realized it was a novel of that time and that, under any circumstance, it could influence the present.

      Letters have served a purpose: to express situations, ideas, feelings and the thoughts of those who write. Technology gives us now electronic letters, which performs the work in a faster way. Texting has been another means that similarly shortens distances. The unquestionable predecessor of the cell phone text message is the telegraph.

      Despite the positive side, I would also like to raise some objection. Although these polished technologies shorten space and time, they suffer from the defect of the ephemeral, while a royal letter immortalizes the moment.

      This is a good reason to consider the value of a letter (in the traditional sense) as irreplaceable in a demonstration and exaltation of the bond we have formed around our love. So I like that we write. I consider that the letters (which have been written since the time of ancient Greek philosophers) have a much greater degree of permanence and significance than any other means.

      Perhaps there are people who still hanker, in romantic imaginations, to wait for answers that took days or weeks to arrive. Imagine how it would be to write a letter expressing what it´s felt or known, as our good philosophers did. But it is likely that nowadays it is totally exceptional that people think that the exclusive use of traditional letters is the best form of communication. On the other hand, each era has its options and people acclimatize to its resources.

      A few centuries ago, the first chronicles began to be published, what a century later was called news (and that today they can be read every day, precisely in the newspapers ), and people had another means of communicating them. The nineteenth century had the telegraph to unite people and continents. The twentieth century has the radio, the telephone, the television. Now, the twenty-first century has some powerful resources such as network and wireless media such as mobile cellular technology. Resources that had been implausible for our ancestors are, however, very possible and daily for us. And here comes the most amazing and interesting part. Resources that for our future generations will be feasible and common. Today, there is nothing more than science fiction to us. The most probable thing is that out children and grandchildren enjoy the nearby illusion of a loved one through holograms. But I am convinced that science would not stop there. It will conceive of means that these days for our little imaginative capacity are inconceivable. Means that are so impressive that today we would call them “pretty imaginations”, or in more superstitious cases we would cross them out for being curses or miracles. Some saint of the Middle Ages would have thought that it was a heavenly wonder the fact of writing a message saying where she had been, and after a few seconds would have appeared written in another very distant place. Or a former painter would have thought that it was marvellous to observe the image in a real moment on a single screen.

      In any case, it is you who will finally decide the value that each letter that I write to you should have, because they are written for you, and they will be yours as long as I keep writing.

      Yours, with or without letters (although preferibly with them).

CHAPTER FIVE

      The days began to pass with an increased desire to feel together. The custom of being near each other became so imperative as her desire to go to the bathroom during the recess. And there we were, talking about trivialities, sitting on the farthest benches. They were sublime moments, dosed by a sensation that played in our stomachs. Her smile captivated me and maddened me that loud and vivacious laugh which made be attentive to the most lackaidisical person.

      The most representative thing at this stage was my timidity. She was outgoing and talkative, and I was a shy guy with words crossed in my throat. I'm still impressed by the fact that we could relate each other. I would throw out jerky and witty phrases and she would feed them with a fluid and exuberant conversation.

      Over time, an old almond tree became a serene accomplice. He wrapped us up with its shyness and did a good third intoning the violin of silence. He kept us the secrets of our clandestine kisses that we rarely gave each other and that were prohibited in the institution.

      At the exit, I had the idea of walking with her and started waiting for her every noon. Over time, this rite became an everyday thing and a seven-block talk enveloped us daily.

      The school of my youth was private and it was one kilometer away from the main town. To get there, you had to walk through a short bridge of just five meters that was suspended over one of the stream's flows.

      Then there were two forks.

      The first one was the shortest path through a tiny hamlet of just a hundred buildings.

      The second one was covered by asphalt and although the tour was longer in the amplitude of the way, it bordered the town in the form of the letter “u”, crossing the area of teak forests that belonged to the rector's family.

      He was the one who preferred to walk through them in several moments of loneliness, without fear of isolation on his journey for lacking lights or houses settled on its edges.

      This partly explains why my intense groans never had a distress response.

      That night, lying and staring into the sky I could see, in the short moments when I opened my eyes during several occasions, how the wind of the beginning of winter was rocking the leaves of teak. Some of them will have impacted my face while I observed the clouds that crowded and covered the luminosity of the moon. The gloom was more intense.