Local Train Downtown

Dear __,

First of all, thank you for the card. It's nice to see that the "technological revolution" hasn't completely erased the need for human penmanship. But even I, writing this, realise how much more efficient it would be with a keyboard and the oft-used backspace key. As it were, this will no doubt end up on a screen yet.

As ever, I hope this finds you well and least of all healthy. From your card, I gather you have been traveling recently. I arrive at this conclusion not so much from your words as from your tone. You have written as one removed from those things that often intrude upon the joy of living, whatever that may mean at this point.

I am glad you are traveling again; you were never happier than when you were moving from one exotic locale to another, taking in every last drop of your surroundings before time and money forced you to move on to your next destination. The smile upon your lips as you made your way across the gangplank could only be countered by the unwillingness of your legs, by which I mean your heart, to leave. One can only imagine the constant struggle that must have taken place between the side of you that wanted to continue on and the side who wanted nothing more than to stay with the friends it had known so briefly. But, of course, you left every time. It became no longer a decision of desire, a moral question of what ought to be done in light of circumstances and situations. It became a matter of survival, an unspoken necessity; you had to keep going, if for no other reason than to ensure that you would never stop arriving.

And so it is now. After all this time and after all that has happened, you have arrived once more and stepped back onto my stage.