fan mail?

dear mark,

i am a little old to be sending fan mail. is it okay if we consider this a love letter?

i don't live in san francisco.  i've never even been to san francisco.  unless you count that one time i changed planes on my way to visit my mother, which i don't.  but, i found your column in the gate by mistake once while searching for something else - actually, that's not quite true ... to say 'mistake' would be to imply error and it's never wrong to discover a new voice.  i have been addicted ever since.

i love the way you write.  i do.  intelligent. relevant. and almost always a little naughty.  the subjects are simple. the structure is so complex.  in those long, descriptive sentences, your words beg to be plucked from the page to warm the hand or land on the tip of the tongue, tickling the roof of the mouth spilling out into the room.  i want to be able to write like that.

writing is a strange business, i imagine.  committing something of yourself to the page when there is no reason why anyone should respond. (or finding yourself to be the recipient of about a million unwanted attentions ... people claiming connections that seem so false.)  i imagine people have a difficult time separating the man and the message ... who you are vs. what you do. (or maybe there's no separation at all.)

still, there is something lovely about it, isn't there?  like the small craziness of talking to a stranger.  when you write, you can just talk ... say all the things you wouldn't say to your acquaintances or best friends, because the context is entirely new. lots of times you meet someone and there is nothing to say, or you've been friends forever and there are all these things you can't say ... but when you sit down to write, everything else falls away.

i love figuring out how to talk about things. and i suppose that's the whole reason for this letter. working through the grammar, if you will. 


reading your column gave me the first glimpse of the idea that i could spend my time doing something i love in a space that's mine.   and for that, i owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude.  would you settle for dinner? next time you're in L.A.? maybe while on your book tour? 

now before you start freaking out and thinking i'm some sort of strange stalker, this is not a date.  sorry.  you should know, before you start crushing too hard, that my affections have long been engaged elsewhere (he loves listening to me laugh while i read your column aloud to him) and it was his idea to invite you to dinner. 

i think it would be great fun to hear your perspective on the business of creativity and to talk with you about the the potential of words and what it's like to abide within the energy of expression.  the country, i think, is impossibly hungry for intelligent conversation. one good conversation, one new opinion, has to be worth the possibility of making an enemy or looking like an idiot.

don't let me look like an idiot.  please?  come to dinner.  christopher will cook whatever you like.  i will set the table and keep the cat off your lap.  we'll drink and eat and have a lovely time.  and we won't ask you to write a thing.

leigh anne
http://wednesdaynightsupper.blogspot.com/