Messages by b-cline
What a strange and beautiful and mysterious place this is, where people come to leave their messages to the ones they love, or loved, or lost, or haven’t found yet.
In an age when we can text, email, call, or simply scribble our feelings on a piece of paper and have it magically end up in our intended’s mailbox, why do we resort to throwing our words into the ether in hopes that someone might guess who wrote them?
I do it too, leaving the faintest of clues here for my beloved. At first it was because she didn’t want to hear those words and I still needed to release them into the world somehow. And maybe that is still the case all these months later. Sometimes I wondered if the words I was reading were meant for me. So often I’ve wished that they were hers (“Do you know” or “My heart says I love you”)
I find myself coming here often to read the echoes of love and loss, the song lyrics and admonishments and things we think we can never say in person, all written with some blind hope that maybe, just maybe, the object of our adoration or consternation will read these words and understand us. Sometimes I see people connect and I feel some relief for those souls. Sometimes I see people talking to each other without really knowing it is the one they are searching for – like two cars passing on the highway at night. But it seems that most of these words, so ardent and heartfelt, float off into nothingness after 45 days of patiently waiting to be read.
This place reminds me that love is not ephemeral – it is transcendent, and it is worth writing down on paper, tangible and indelible.
– J
This “message in a bottle” has to be at least 5 or even 6 years old. I frequently found missed connections like this, but “J” from Western Massachusetts wrote the sentiment oh-so-eloquently that it seemed worthy of preserving.
