Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking, B2?

I called up my Aussie friend Suzanne Tuesday afternoon (Wednesday morning for her). I used two calling cards and we ended up talking for about an hour and twenty minutes. Not bad for our first vocal conversation in five months. I met her this summer on my trip to Europe…she was in my tour group. Back in July, when we said goodbye and parted ways, we barely knew a thing about each other. Since then though, we’ve stayed in touch through AIM and plenty of emails, and now I consider her a close and valued friend.

It’s strange to think that she and I cultivated a friendship almost entirely through written words. For the past five months, Suzanne has been nothing more than a memory of a face and mere lines of text on a monitor. But obviously those lines of text have truly spoken to me, which explains why I was compelled to make an international call to freaking Australia.

The written word is a beautiful thing. If it weren’t for all of our letters and our chronologically misaligned AIM conversations, Suzanne would have been nothing more than a fading memory from last summer. There’s a unique kind of power in the written word. At its best, it offers us all—in this disenchanted world—a glimpse into the beauty and the endless potential that enrich our lives and our very existence. Writing has the ability to build friendships, to educate, to soften the hard of heart, and even to change entire nations. But you know, I’m rambling without much purpose again. Three cheers for the written word. And Suzanne, if you ever read this, here’s to you, you crazy Aussie chick.