Dear Samuel,

It is not often that I sit down to write a letter not having received one first, a template for a response I suppose, but it seems unlikely that you should write me, being that I’ve yet to acquire an address, so I’ve started this letter here, as you must plainly be able to see if you’ve gotten this far. I do hope so at least, or it should be rather a waste of time to write. Though perhaps wasting time is what I want most now, at the moment I’m escaping the East coast and Bucks county, and settling into life with better air and more plentiful cheese and milk products, and the calm of this part of the country. I think perhaps I ought to take up knitting or pipe-smoking or mahjong. But those are all so much less romantic than letter-writing, that I much prefer to sit and write and allow passers-by to think me elegant and old-fashioned and to wonder about my letter. And of course then there is the feel of my hand on the paper, and the ink on my fingertips, and the pleasant ache of writing by hand rather than typing. Though writing now makes me feel guilty at the length of time it has been since I last contacted my Aunt, who has in large part made possible my current travels. I should be writing to her now, and not to you. You hardly expect my letters as she does, and it is hardly fair for me to choose writing to you instead, but I’ve been thinking of you since I was out last night. The bar at which I enjoyed my ethanolic poison of choice reminded me of the Northstar and for a moment I became nostalgic towards Philadelphia, and a little homesick. Rayna met a man there last night and hasn’t gotten back yet. I’m currently having a solitary breakfast in a none-too-charming mid-western café, if you could call it a café, sipping coffee, if you could call it coffee, and I think I just got some on this page and I do hope my newly smudged letter is still legible. Though I suppose that until I can find your address, the content of my letters is moot. I shall have to continue to rummage through my baggage I suppose, though I am beginning to have some concern that I may have left that particular piece of information in the state of Pennsylvania.

Until such time that I am better able to express it by in fact posting my mail, I remain sincerely yours,

Meghan

Adrienne D. Mishkin