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Volume 5, Issue 2
Editor's Note
I started writing letters recently. I've sent three so far, one to an aunt, one to a friend, and one to a cousin. I haven't received a response yet, and I'm hoping that will change, but I enjoyed the act of writing each letter. Talking in long-form to someone who isn't nearby. Describing my day, and my week, and the books I am reading. Creating something for only one person.
I was inspired by a book of E.B. White's collected letters written between the late 1920s and his death in 1985. He had numerous pen pals, family members, friends, and fans. Though they were never meant for publication, each letter is funny, thoughtful, and poetic. They are functional in the sense that he occasionally confirms a time or a fact, but they're also earnest and artistic. Like he cares about each piece's longevity. It occurred to me that despite the technical connectivity of today, I don't have that type of relationship with anyone.
There's an artificial distance between texts. It has never been easier to communicate with someone on the other end of the world, or the country, or the state, or the street, or on the other side of the room. Just a few taps, and my words are theirs to read. I'm so able to connect, I forget to do it. The texts I send are a few words at most, utilitarian, or even worse, ironic. I text with people I haven't seen in months and find myself missing their personalities. It's always hard to capture a personality in words, but when I limit myself to three or four at a time, it's impossible.
My letters have been sincere. That's not to say I restrain my sense of humor or put on airs of formality, but I do try to write like I'm speaking to them face-to-face. I find myself feeling less urgent, less jabby. The game of texting doesn't exist in a letter. There are no quips or scathing comebacks or misunderstandings. Just me and my thoughts about them.
This isn't an essay on the failure of modern communication technology. This is about my love for writing. The act of writing. Premeditated writing. Taking time to share a recollection or a fiction with someone far away. There's an author somewhere out there writing a story that they want us to read, and as much as we'll enjoy their words, they're enjoying the process even more.
Welcome to the tenth issue of Rock Salt Journal.
— J.B. Marlow, Editor
Cover Artist (Huguenot Beach)
Table of Contents
Beatdown Crew
My friends and I call this place A-Town because we know “Atascadero” in Spanish means mudhole, means a place where generations go on and on getting sucked under ...
Six Easy Pieces
The boy and his friend were standing in front of the boy’s house, next to the minivan, on a Saturday morning ...
The Maine Cub
Always I had thought about the newspaper business and the ink-stained wretches who found employment there; and always I had pictured them—no-nonsense, wise to the world, amiable, gruff—hammering away at Remingtons under umbrellas of smoke ...
Lines
I have spent a lot of my time standing in lines—airports, grocery stores, border crossings, government offices ...
The Pickup Summer
That summer his father went to jail Jeff Millberg was sixteen and fully licensed, but without a car of any sort. In June Ellie Fendel became his girlfriend ...
Meadowlarks
Older sisters never wait. Peeking out the window, I see Katlynn and Frankie are already halfway down the driveway ...
The Body of Christ (and others)
The morning before I found the body, I went to church. Well, I tried to, anyway ...
Honesty's Fool
He brought a copy of A Winter’s Tale. It was July 18th and, in the dead of night, it was still close to eighty-five degrees ...
Releasing Doves
Christians devoutly imagine there are religious symbols and omens in damn-near everything: tireless bees, Jesus fish, heretical hyenas, bloody poinsettias, plantain-lined paths to salvation, thorny golden-crown flowers atop the twisted bodies of dogwood trees ...