8/7/11

Dear Stranger,

             

              I have been dating my girlfriend for a year and a half but I am in love with somebody else. I won't break up with her because I refuse to break her heart. It's hard to look into her eyes because I can see the love she has for me in them. It's even harder to look into the eyes of the person I'm in love with. He is so very handsome.

7/17/11

Dear Stranger,

I was looking at photography online the other day. There was one picture that caught my attention especially. It was a picture of a birds nest, and three or four eggs in the nest. However, right in the center of the nest, was a small empty bird cage. I believe that it symbolized that from the moment of conception, we are already destined to end up a certain way. This made me sad, in the fact that I don't want to already know how the rest of my life is going to pan out. I want to go out and live, and make last minute decisions, and take risks. I don't want to safely walk down some path to somewhere where I was already predetermined to go. I want to stray off this path and make my own road, and have my own adventures and end up somewhere beautiful that no one has ever been to before. I don't want to end up like the poor old bird who was destined to land in a cage. 
It showed me that if we follow the crowd and go where everyone else is going, we're going to end up in a cage, like everyone else in the world. 

We all have to be our own person right? Unique. 
If we're afraid of taking chances and straying from the crowd, we're never going to find a beautiful haven.

“It’s very beautiful over there.” I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful." -- Thomas Edison.

7/3/11

Dearest Stranger,

If you really knew me you'd know my tragedy. I'm simple and small, so easy to fall. Surrounded by heart ache, I can never get a break. He's gone and it's ripping me apart, He use to call me his sweetheart.From the day we got married, it was the love that we carried. Now he's looking over me, but it's him I can no longer see. Although this is my tragedy, I am only one of many.

Letter From A Soldier

I normally do not set up pen pals, but I recieved a letter today from a soldier in Afghanistan who is looking for someone to correspond with.

He likes play dough, jazz music, being in the woods, and Snack Packs (vanilla especially.)

I can only select one person to forward his letter to. If you are interested, please send me an email:

I've already found someone. Thanks to everyone who volunteered. :) You guys are great!

6/26/11

Dearest Stranger,

Night is a marvelous time in the countryside. Night is splendid everywhere, but it is naked when there aren't thousands of lights everywhere. On a truly full night the limits of vision are expunged from your imagination. You see the world not at all, but the things you want to see, everywhere. The world becomes a game, an uncharted map, familiar yet unknowable.

There are many types of darkness. There is a silky liquid darkness that trickles into your pores and eyes like nothing else; seething into you like a living thing. There is a soft, warm blanket of darkness, that feels more like wool than air, that hugs you with humid persistence unless you force it to change with obnoxiously loud air conditioning. There is a blissfully icy cold drenching darkness; it fills the gaps in things, like ink, and leaves the skin feeling oh-so-alive. There is a barren, stagnant darkness, a sad darkness confined to closed spaces and dreariness; it is something often found in attics and tunnels, businesslike, it's most assuredly dead next to its brethren. There is a darkness that comes from inside you, and meets the darkness outside, they sometimes dance, sometimes repulse like wary cats, and sometimes they never manage to touch at all. There is a darkness that feels like music, that hums with a vibration just shy of real hearing. There is a darkness that feels nervous, not quite willing to touch you, but wanting to very much.

All of these fill the night. Darkness gives night another dimension sometimes missing from the day. There isn't a fear to be had from darkness, rather it is a lonely person, and it wants to be your friend. So, as you read this, in a dark room, at night, reach out. Turn off your monitor. Make believe for a moment, and find yourself less than alone.

6/19/11

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5/24/11

Dearest Stranger,

What's a mile in your shoes? I expect it's tiring. I hope, though, that it is also colorful. I hope that every inch of every mile shapes you, and every leaf passed by enters your mind's inner catacombs. Once you no longer see, once you no longer feel things, you begin to die. I don't want you to die, it would be horribly wasteful. If that slow death has already started to sink in, I implore you to kill it mercilessly, for even though death does not die, the implements of death are easily found and eliminated. Here, I write to you about just this one. I write about this one because unlike drunk drivers and unnamed diseases, you can control this. Just find the sources of apathy in your life, should there be any, and remove them. Know that the context of your life is not your life, and does not own you. Your existence in this world is independent of your job, family, school, friends and lovers. You are your own person, from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet is yours. It is all that truly is yours in this world. This may sound like a materialistic loss, but it is a gain as well. You don't have the burden of being more than the person you are. You assume roles of action and ownership at your own discretion, not because there is a natural law forcing you to. In this way you need not own sadness or any other burdens on your soul. Foul memories can be forgotten. Foul emotions can be replaced with ones you want. Foul habits can be unlearned. A foul life can be discarded and made fresh again.

Your life is in your hands, more than you realize, and less than it ought to be. Never let the world overwhelm you, don't succumb to the apathy this world engenders in its inhabitants, not for me, but for the proof that you are your only owner. In order to claim your life as the thing you own totally, live the world, and strive through it, but never let it become you, or you it. Once you are no longer yourself, and living true to that, you are dying.

5/16/11

Stranger,

You know, I have always been a writer. I think even as a sat through 7th grade math class years ago, willing myself to be the most Rational and Logical, I was still a writer. But who are you? I know only one thing about you. That you are Stranger. Stranger than any people I know, and Stranger than I am to myself for certain. You are Stranger than Mother or Father and you must be Stranger than at least one other of your type. But yet I am soon to be called Stranger by you, too. So I wonder, with childish fascination, which of us is left as Strangest?

Let me tell you a story.

There is a city far to the East named Izveraii. There is a woman there carrying baskets full of flowers. Roses, tulips, lilacs, and wild dandelions, stalks of field grass and grand sunflowers. It is a city of giving, where each person thrives by giving all they have to the person next to them. The woman gives her flowers to a man who heaves satchels full of compasses and he to a child who leads around a hundred fluffy rabbits, brown and white, and black and grey. But they give problems too. The man is given disease by boy and his rabbits, in return, and the woman's back becomes sore from the heavy bronze compasses she receives from and heavies for the man. Everyone is given a problem for their generosity in Izveraii, and the city of giving takes each soul at a time. The rabbits will eat the flowers someday, and the visitor to Isveraii watches and learns that it is only by sharing problems, not gifts, that people become close enough to escape it.

With love,
Your Stranger

4/25/11

Disabling Comments

Though I've never particularly wanted to do this, it looks like I am going to have to disable comments on posts in order to prevent general crudeness and disrespect toward writers.

If you have a criticism about any of the letters you have read? I challenge you to write the letter you want to read. Send me something you think is better, and I will post it if I like it. This is an empty notebook, and anyone can write in it.

Though I'm disabling comments on posts, I don't want you guys to go unheard. So, I am going to start working on a forum, which would allow more community, and better moderation options. If anyone wants to help out, I'll be looking for moderators. You can find my email on the submissions page. :)

Thanks again to everyone who has written so far!

Katie

Email Submission: 4/11/11

"Dear Stranger,

I watched a sunset last night for the first time in a very, very long time. For once, I took a second to myself, away from the noise of the TV, the dishwasher, and life in general. Not something I get to do often. Sitting on my front porch just enjoying the coming night. It was a cool evening, but warm for this time of year. And while I watched this beautiful event, I started to think about life. How poetic, right?

But not just the same old boring things. I started thinking about my family and how they're like that sunset. Each family member is unique, just like every sunset is unique. Each person has their own quirks and traits that make them like no other on this planet. Those are the things that you love about them. My dad with his perfectly crooked smile. My mom and her forever giving heart. My grandmother with her worries and her cares. My grandfather and his serene demeanor but loving laugh. My husband and his goofy ways and loving heart. My daughter, with her innocent face, chubby cheeks, and gorgeous smiling eyes. These people are the light of my life, and some time I take for granted that they'll just be there, always. But they won't. And whether it's they fade away, or I do, one day they'll be gone over the horizon, never to be seen again. But their memory will live on in my heart forever, like the memory of a very special sunset.

Then it got me thinking about sunrises too. And that lead me to think about the day my daughter was born. Shortly after she was laid in my arms for the first time, my husband and I watched a beautiful sunrise out of our hospital window. I won't say there was anything remarkable about it. There weren't fireworks and UFOs flying around. But it was a dawn on a new life for us. And it was quite possibly the quietest, most peaceful sunrise I've ever seen. And it was beautiful.

I guess in closing I can say that my point is, take time to watch the sun make it's way through your life. Sometimes you think of and make memories of the most amazing things when you just take a second to take it all in. Maybe these things have been said before. But I can guarantee they've never been felt the way I felt them watching that sunset.

I hope you take some time to watch a sunset sometime soon.

Sincerely,
Your Stranger"

4/5/11

Want to submit a letter?

On My Absence

Hello Strangers,

I just wanted you to know that there hasn't been much activity on Letters From Strangers because I have been struggling with some health issues for the majority of this academic semester. I have still been getting your letters, and will continue to post, although somewhat irregularly until I'm doing better. If you're still waiting on a letter, don't worry, it should be on its way soon. :) Some of your letters have really helped me hang in there.

A big thanks to everyone who has contributed to the project so far,

Katie

2/13/11

Also, I have a question for you guys. You can view a larger version of the letter when you click on the image, and I think that makes it pretty easy to read, but did you prefer it when I wrote the transcriptions too?

Email Submission: 2/9/11

"Hi Stranger!

I'm writing to share a beautiful thing that happened to me here in this beautiful Island I'm currently working. I feel wonderful and sad at the same time. I met this creature with the most beautiful pair of eyes I've ever seen in my life. He came to the resort the other day, with a girlfriend unfortunately. I thought he was really beautiful. His eyes were captivating. Today he joined our table for a bit to interview my boss for a newsletter that he's working on. I couldn't help not to stare in those beautiful eyes of his. I apologized for apearing to be foolishly unable to concentrate on whatever he was saying and just stare.. He didn't look away, and said he doesn't mind. For a minute we were just looking at each other's eyes, and I thought I didn't want it to end.. He was wearing a gray shirt and I thought his eyes got the shade of gray. I asked him if they change color and he said 'sometimes'. depends on what shirt he's wearing. I said I wonder how they'd look if he's wearing blue. He just smiled and said nothing. After an hour he came up to me and my boss while we were working. And lo and behold he was wearing a blueish, ash colored shirt. And when he looked at me, amazingly his eyes were pale bluish. He said his goodbyes, kissed me on the cheeks and walk away.. They're heading back to the city today...
  
Now Im here in my room, still in the same island.. but feeling different. Did I just miss my chance of happiness,.. I wonder.. or was it really just that..  a piece of one sweet encouter with just another stranger..

till then,
stranger from the island"

2/6/11

1/9/11

And I love it when strangers get creative with the envelope, too:

Just remember to read the terms before submitting. :)