Forgotten Letters

Summer break gives me entirely too much free time. With that vacant space, my curiosity takes over. I've searched nearly every drawer, and every cabinet in the house over the past 2 days to discover new things, old things, and some possessions I'd never even seen. Amongst the most fascinating to me were the ancient. Those items stowed away in some surreptitious place, long forgotten and slowly collecting the faint grime of dust and the yellow edges we so frequently tend to connect with forgotten memories.
I found letters. Too many letters to count. Birthday letters, old pen-pal letters, notes I meant to send but never had and now I never will, and even those little notes I used to pass back-and-forth between my friends. Remember those? The ones you fold up into careful little triangles, and they end up making a perfect square with an origami flair?
Written word seems so much more powerful than our modern communications. Of course, I say this as I sit typing away at my laptop. The image of another being, sitting down, pen in hand, periodically gazing off into space to remember what it was he or she intended to tell the recipient next. The jagged lines, sometimes deep carved into the paper, the ones that make us wonder why such force was used. Was the writer angry? Distracted? Exhilarated? So many things to provoke our thoughts and wonders.
Words really are my life. They give my entire being a different flavor, more crisp, more distinct. I write. I write because there are all of these thoughts, scattered about in my head, constantly running into each other and their surroundings. I need an outlet for these ideas. I'd be wishing my life away so frequently with things I'd never say aloud if not for the written/typed word.
Writer. That word evokes a tenderness in me; a knowledge of who I am, a compulsion, a purpose. Isn't that what we're all here for anyway? To fulfill a destiny or purpose we may not even be aware of.
Essentially, we all have five senses. I'd like to think I'm using them to the best of my ability.
I want to be interested in the world; I want to see, think, and describe objects, situations, people, and ideas. I want to show the world what they might be missing. Being a writer is almost akin to being a small child. The two are quite synonymous in so many ways. I feel like a kid in the backseat of a car, surrounded by people who can't see what I do from my position. They're so focused on where they're going that they can't acknowledge where they are. When I point to the cows in a field, or an old homeless man, they pay no attention. I'm so frustrated trying to show the world look. Look at what you aren't seeing! I can't get everyone to listen, or look, or feel, or taste, or hear the world the way I do, but that's not to say I'm not trying.
I hear the whispers of the unspoken words of night; the crickets singing each other to sleep, the leaves rustling quiet murmurs, and the silent presence of the bats in search of a good meal. I feel the heavy, moist sea air, and the way it has a different pressure than that in the city, or the country, or anywhere else for that matter. I taste snow, so distinct. Made essentially from the same molecules as any other double hydrogen attached to oxygen, but yet so different. Slightly sweet, a sharp flavor; in a way the subtle differences are acknowledged by myself in the same way a connoisseur of fine cheeses or liquor can sense much more powerfully than the rest.
Maybe you don't like me, urging you on your drive to look around at life. Maybe you don't want to acknowledge the beauty, the subtleties, the oddities, and sometimes the sadness in the same way as I do. But I'll be here, tempting you to pause and observe life from the backseat. Because I'm a writer. And this is what I do.