Birdhouses and letters
Jan 9, 2011 by Sushi Bird
I was looking through some pictures from Christmas three years ago, and I came across some small birdhouses I had made, resting on top of a beautiful hand-written letter from Hanne. She would always write the most beautiful letters, intricate swirls with black ink pens, on top of old sheet music paper and with images of trees and the sky to accompany it all. I am not sure why I made birdhouses and what I used the birdhouses for in retrospect, they were too small for birds and too big for jewelry. Maybe I have become too practical now – I do not keep much unless it is useful. I used to collect small rocks and shiny objects just because, and I used to make useless birdhouses just because it made me happy.
Do you still write letters by hand? Do you keep or collect things you do not need?
I don’t usually write letters but I am planning to write to my friends attending folk high schools this year. I feel it is more personal than writing a Facebook-message and recieving letters is so exciting! At least I think so and I hope my friends do too.
I collect a lot of things – some more useless than others. My giraffe collection is probably the most useless – my giraffes figures have no other purpose than being decorative and reminding me of pleasant trips to foreign countries.
It does feel a lot more personal with a real letter than a facebook-message, I wish I was better at writing both. I love composing cute hand-written letters and draw swirly things, but I can not think about what words to write – handwritten letters seems so important in a way – I want to write the right things.
The birdhouses are so cute! Some time ago I was actually thinking about making some birdhouses of my own, with perches big enough for a budgie to sit on and putting round mirrors over the openings, to have both as wall decoration and for a place for the birds to sit. 😉 I could never figure out how to decorate them in a way that would both look nice and be bird-friendly though, so I never quite got around to that.
And regarding letters, I tend to feel very self-conscious about writing real letters now, in the day of e-mails and instant messages, which is a bit sad. Inspired by reading a lot this past year I have been writing some letters, and I want to write more. I think it’s a shame that so much of our communication with people will probably just get lost eventually, and there will be so little left for future generations to look back on.
That sounds like an absolutely wonderful idea, but I do understand that it is not easy to make stuff budgie-safe, they would probably chew away all the layers of paint and gloss, no matter what you covered the little houses with.
About communication – I have actually thought the opposite (but with the same outcome) – with the amount we communicate and send messages and email and facebook-messages – the future generations will have a hard time finding the things of value between all the junk and random tidbits of information floating around.