On the subway I saw someone reading a letter in a foreign language.  It reminded me of what it used to be like to read a letter from home (the reader’s seriousness was especially striking and nostalgic).  With a letter in front of me and in my hands, the lost world used to be present – actually there in tangible form.  But gradually the letter became a piece of a world far away and lost.  The letter taunted me.  It said it came from there, but that I couldn’t go there.  Eventually, it became a dead object that meant nothing at all.