The Dead Letter Box of Pleadings

There is a site on the Internet with the url www.thedeadletterboxofpleadings.com. People began to be attracted to the site about ten years ago. The site is neither inviting nor welcoming; there are no promises or exhortations nor advice or encouragement. There is nothing offered to be sold or bought, no exchange, no solicitations or introductions.

In appearance the homepage is colourless and bare except for the title of the website printed across the top of the page, a text box below the title on one side and a short statement explaining the site. To say that what appears on the page is an explanation of anything is perhaps too generous a description of the few words that are there;

To submit, enter text into text box and follow instructions.
Text submitted may not be viewed, retrieved, edited or corrected.

No details of the writer are required and no passwords given to anyone to enter the site.
Whether there is a password to the site is doubtful.

Even if there was the means to unlock the site, it is unlikely that anyone would even bother to do so. The range of pleadings and outpouring of feelings that are sent through the text box are too vast for any single person to bear, leave alone explore. Nor in any reasonable way can more than one person, say a team of people, set about to meaningfully explore the site, because unlike the topography of the physical world, feelings have no objective existence, they cannot be surveyed, measured or mapped. Besides, there are just too many deposits to read and what is there is for most parts repetitive, boring and often forlorn – of love, of love unrequited, of love tediously expressed with words from a thesaurus, of blind worship, of unsolicited dedication, of hate, of anger, of confessions, of forgiveness, of repentance, of guilt, of defeat, of loss and lamentation. Most of the letters that multiply in the site are directed to someone, sometimes identified by a name but in most cases by terms like, ’my only love’, ’to the soul of my life’, ‘my other soul’, ‘my precious, precious darling’, ’to one who has wronged me’, ‘to the one I have wronged’ and the like. Sometimes the declarations or complaints are addressed to more than one person, even to the dead or someone who walked out his home one day never to be heard from again.

In the infinity of the Internet of which the space of the site is part, the letters that accumulate there are like the spit of the tiny polyps emitted when they die to make up the huge coral reefs that are found in the warm waters of oceans, for like polyps, those who send their formless missives have no conception of the mass that is created by their contribution. There is no end to the pleadings or feelings the human heart bears or to their permutations when directed at another soul. Oh, do not think that what is expressed in those submissions have no mass; the mass of the world we live in is built (and one may add, unbuilt) upon desire, satisfaction and disappointment. All its buildings and bridges, its roadways and railways, its seaports and airports, all of these stem from those sentiments of the human race just mentioned; they make the world’s history, the mass of which is the debris of destruction and the neat rows of headstones on trimmed green lawns; its art, its poetry, its literature, including those words even now being pushed through the text box, all flow from desire, satisfaction or disappointment.

There is a counter on the top right-hand corner of the site that resembles the odometer of a motorcar that shows the number of times the submit button was clicked. By the end of the first year, the meter showed more than 35 million entries and the numbers on the counter were ticking over faster than any meter of its kind found in a car, even one driven at very high speed.

As the counter revealed the magnitude of the outpourings into the site, uncounted millions of letters criss-crossed the synapses of the Net to spread news about the site, attracting even more submissions and speeding further the rotations of the counter. Then, as the letters multiplied, the tenor of some of them changed from mere information to testimonials; they spoke of implorations answered, lost love returned, broken relationships repaired, illnesses cured, lost things and people found and the return of those who had strayed. As the number of the latter form of letters increased, there appeared on the site a second text box and on the left hand top corner a second counter. Over the second text box, the words were printed that simply said ’answered pleadings’. The second counter turned slower than the first but it turned steadily nevertheless.

The construction on the hilltop

A hillock stands on the southern approach to the city that is visible all the way across the valley that cradles the city. It is a bald hill with no trees to crown it. The expanding city had cleared forests and marshlands and flattened other hills to build its buildings but the hillock was left untouched. Not even a communication tower was built on it. It was once rumoured that the hill was made of a single huge, granite boulder which is why no trees grew on it or anyone ventured to build anything on it.

People driving into the city on the old trunk road first noticed work being done on top of the hill when three large cranes appeared there one morning. For months, only the silhouettes of the cranes were seen, until slowly it became apparent that what was being built would occupy the entire crown of the hill. As the weeks and months passed, the building continued to grow in height, then narrowed in width but still continued rising higher and higher. It was clear from its shape that what was being built was a tower, but by whom or for what purpose remained a mystery.

After two years, the tower took its final shape; rising from the plinth-like base of the building on the crown of the hill, it reached out to the skies like an arm; in the shape of an arm; and like an arm it ended with an open palm with not five, but six cupped fingers. It is of such astonishing height that even those who had seen it rising gradually as they daily drove past the hill were not immunized from the wonder of the completed work. But neither the height nor the shape of the construction prepared anyone for the sight that was revealed when the dark blue plastic sheath was stripped off the surface of the tower - the entire tower from its base to the tips of the petal-like fingers that opened to the heavens was made of crystal; crystal so clear that sometimes the structure just diffused into the ambient light and disappeared. As the light changed with the rising and setting of the sun, people gazed entranced as the tower shimmered, shone and reflected the colours of the sky and the clouds. In the mornings, the light of the first rays of the sun caught the lotus palm and made it float high in the sky. In the evenings, for a few moments as the sun set, the tower becomes a burning column of the orange-red rays of the sunset, fading to a gentle glow as it bade its long farewell from its supreme height to the parting sun.

But it is in the night, in those moments after the end of the day’s chase, when hearts and minds drifted to dreams and disappointments, desires and repressions that the hollow apparition of the tower standing against the vast darkness of the sky appears most wondrous, offering an abode for those fugitive feelings of the night.

With the completion of the construction, the mystery of the project was partly resolved. The Minaret 2M Project, as it was described by the contractors, was they explained, a monument to the passing of the second millennium. The benefactor desired to remain anonymous but hoped that the minaret would be an attraction to lead more tourists into the country.

Visitors climbing the 352 granite steps that are hewn into the side of the hillock will come across a vast garden of pools and fountains with a broad paved path that leads to the portal of the Minaret. Inside the cavernous chamber formed below the hollow of the tower is a large crystal dome that funnels into the base of the tower. Light diffused through the tower and from electric bulbs concealed in the dome light the chamber in a permanent twilight. The floor of the chamber is marble, seamless it seemed and as vast as a lake. But what catches the attention of everyone entering the place is a large electronic screen that is fixed to the inner wall facing the entrance. On the screen is the website www.deadletterboxofpleadings.com. It is the same plain website with the two text boxes and the two counters turning endlessly. As their eyes accorded with the soft light of the chamber the visitors will see several dozens of small cubicles lined against the walls. From inside the cubicles can be seen the shimmer of computer screens. Inside and people tapping their messages into the text boxes of the website.

Every year millions of people visit the Minaret. They come from all over the world. Nothing has changed inside the great chamber with the crystal dome except that their messages have now to be recited to men and women in crimson robes who type the messages on their behalf into the letter boxes on the website.