letter composer

     Some of you know that a few weeks ago I launched a lead balloon called The Letter Composer. Go ahead; check it out. Because it features some of my dad's painting, it's a pretty site. And it's so quiet, too, because you're the only one there.
     Eh, that's not quite true. A number of "unique visitors" have gone onto the site, I am told by Google Analytics. I like that: unique visitors. Everyone is special. They spend a bit of time at thelettercomposer.com, looking around, going through the drawers, taking a couple of mints from the coffee table. Then they wander back to eBay, or Facebook, or Amazon.
     I've helped lots of people write this and that over the years, and letters are my favorite assignment. When I'm in session with a client who needs to write a letter, I have to bite my knuckle so I don't volunteer to write it for them. I put on my compassionate face and leave it there nodding encouragingly, but in truth my mind has wandered away and is scribbling the perfect letter.
     So I wanted to see if I could actually do it and get paid. It appears not. Oh! Sure. I could charge a lot less. Sure. But my time is worth a lot to me, and so is a good letter. I want to have a conversation with the person about the letter they need, and I want the process itself to be useful, meaningful. I don't want to write thank you letters for ten bucks a pop.
     One person hired me early on. The assignment was too tragic, too personal to tell here. The situation was so sad that I felt rotten charging for my time. She liked the letter, but what could save that impossible situation? 
     Yesterday, after my little advertisement appeared on "The Stranger's Slog" site (slog.thestranger.com/blogs/slog, where it will have an expensive five-day heyday), I got a second inquiry.
     Google analytics tells me this one came from someone in Egypt. His (this I know by the name) letter request was simple: "my aim is to thankfull my teachers and my class mattes my you know teach is like a second father when look the respect because every time or every day he teaches as what we don,t know he told as whats good and whats bad and Iwanna thankfull the lady that is prepared to correct our writting and our mistakess and Iam saying to thank you madam."
     The form asks for more information about the requested letter, and his response was:  "madam if I ask you some question do you know how to curre some diseas"
     The form asks: "How long would you like this letter to be?" The answer: "one days or two days."
     I wrote back a kind letter welcoming his inquiry, asking for clarification on his letter needs, and explaining how payment works. I haven't heard from him again, and didn't expect to. But now I am left feeling worried about this guy in Egypt who is suffering some kind of disease. He wants to thank his teacher, someone who has been like a second father. I got attached just reading his trampled little inquiry.
     Anyway, I'm not sure what's going to happen with thelettercomposer.com. I've got that egg of a project (with no one to fertilize it) and this dead phoenix of a blog. That's two dead birds more than I want. They start to smell.
     And then I found myself wondering if they are supposed to join together somehow -- the egg and the bird. Maybe they just smell dead.
     So tonight I am wondering, dear followers, if you would be interested in occasionally reading the letters that I write for myself. The ones I would share are not so much the personal letters I send. They'd be the ones I send to the World-At-Large -- hoping to make it a bit more of a World-at-Small, I suppose.
     I am thinking of a letter I once wrote to the Boroleum factory on Fisher's Island. Boroleum is a fabulous product for "nasal soreness," made more fabulous by the instructions on the tube which used to say, "place product well up into the nose." I just loved that. Don't hold back! Get it well up into the nose. A few years ago, the tubes stopped giving those bracing instructions, advising instead to place the product at the outer edge of the nostrils. I wrote to the factory to object to their succumbing to pressure from their party-pooper legal advisors -- all of whom (I would bet you anything) place Boroleum well up into their noses in the privacy of their own homes.
     It had to be said. I got a nice letter back, too, explaining the company's fears about Boroleum users misinterpreting the instructions and disaster ensuing if, say, someone tried to cram the tube itself well up into the nose. There was a nice postscript, though, from the woman who wrote to me. In the corner of the page, outside the typed official response, she confessed in pencil: "P.S. My family and I continue to put Boroleum well up into our noses." It was so good of her to come clean like that, even in pencil.
     I invite you to comment (or send me an email: paula@paulachu.com) about this idea of posting my strange letters now and then. If you don't think that would make for a good blog-rebirth, say so. Don't hold back. Place your feedback well up into my nose.