There was this contest in Walrus Magazine where people had to submit love letters of all kinds. Megan (my cousin)'s boyfriend Julian Smith submitted one, and his got on the website and made the runner up list! I thought that was pretty exciting.. so I'm posting it. It's pretty cute.
Let me explain...
It's impossible to write a clever and eloquent love letter to a stranger and have it ring true. Love's just not like that. Its expression has to be clumsy and blushing, and that never comes across right unless you know the author, and can imagine him slaving over it, late into the evening, thinking of you. He's a bit embarrassed but thrilled by that embarrassment. He squirms at what he's written and laughs at himself, but leaves it there on the page anyway, deciding to risk it, deciding you're worth the risk. He's drinking tea by the potful and is up all night working on those few paragraphs of highly unpolished prose, only stopping to pee (which he needs to do often, because of the tea). He knows he can never get them perfect, so he just tries to get them, somehow, right.
So this is hopeless. Writing to a stranger like this. I want this to be poetry, to thrill you and make you gasp. I want to dazzle and impress. But you'll just find it all a bit embarrassing.
And you'll be right, because that's what a love letter is all about: schmaltz, sap, corn, cheese. It's inelegant and highly uncool. It's about giving up all pretense of cool, swallowing your pride, and saying it: I love you. Eye-rollingly trite, overused to the point of meaninglessness, hackneyed beyond belief, and true. Coming from someone you know and care about it can be intimate and profound, an act of humility and faith. Coming from me, a stranger, it will be awkward and pathetic. I can imagine handing it over to you now, introducing myself for the first time (after days spent plucking up the courage – plucking and plucking and plucking) my hands shaking. "Read this," I'll say and then I'll turn and run and probably never see you again.
So this is my solution. I know you read this magazine – I see you reading it at Susie's Cafe sometimes. (I know how that sounds, but I'm no stalker. I've never followed you home or anything. I just notice you there from time to time – notice and try to still my wildly beating heart.) And this magazine (the one you're now reading) had this contest, which, if you're reading this, you'll know about. And, if you're reading this, of course, it also means I've won the contest, and that's an achievement worthy of at least a little respect, don't you think?
So that's what this is all about. It's about doing the impossible. It's about declaring my love for you, with all the embarrassment and clumsiness and blushing that that entails (in a public forum, no less), and yet not seeming entirely pitiful.
If you'd like to meet, the ball's in your court. I'm at Susie's most weekends. I'm the one with the stammer and the blush and the wildly beating heart.
Love,
J
(here's the link to the site http://www.walrusmagazine.com/loveletters/?ref=2008.12-competition-love-letters-contest&page= .. enjoy!)
