Reading old letters

Three shoe boxes of letters stood inside my dark closet. For many years they had lain there. Finally I decided to read them. Most letters went back decades, before email rendered old fashioned correspondence far less common.

Long thoughtful letters, some filled with passions that died long ago.
Some of the letters are painful and nearly break my heart. Others bring to life people I had not thought of in decades,people who seem to belong to another existence. Some make me laugh.

It’s as though I’ve lived through different incarnations. The “I” that exists in this moment is not at all the “I” that existed in moments of the past. Strangely, it makes the present “I”, the collection of selves that constitute an ego, reminiscent of Duchamps’ Nude Descending a Staircase.