Year-End Stats

First of all, let me get this off my chest. Mexico is decidedly not the country to go to get postcards. What precious few I could find were faded, curled, sandy, and cost more than a taco. I bought them anyway, though they did not substantially add to my collection. (It costs less to buy a set of 20 Mark Rothko postcards at a MUSEUM than to pick up seven dirty nasty ones in a village near Puerto Vallarta.)

Not that this forbodes anything. While the end of December showed a sharp decline in my sending and receiving, I plan to spend 2013 trying to beat my 2012 record.

Now for the stats. Through the U.S. postal service:

• I sent 200 postcards in 2012 and received 120.
• I wrote more than 90 cards and letters and received at least 68 in return.
• I didn't send a single Christmas card and my loved ones didn't hold it against me: I still got 20 holiday cards.

Not even counting the few packages that were shipped and received, this amounts to more than $182.50 in the Postal Service's coffers. Actually, it's way more, since many of you are not nearly as thrifty as I am, and put 45-cent stamps on postcards plus double or triple the number of stamps needed on a letter. Good job.

We did well, my friends. Let's continue the trend and make it a hobby in 2013!

The Meta Postcard Experience

In my year-long experiment with mini-correspondence, I had the most meta of meta-experiences the other day. I opened my mailbox to find a photocopy of a postcard sent to somebody else. Understanding the significance of my recent singledom after years of serial monogamy, the original recipient felt compelled to send it to me. Here's what it said:

she liked imaginary men best of all

It made me laugh deep and hard. Then I read the note. My friend and I have long agreed that men and women would get along better if they didn't co-habitate. The original sender of this clever card is happily married to a man who lives in an apartment in the building next door to her.

Two messages in one; two validations; two reminders that it's okay to be different - to try and fail - to never stop trying to invent a new way, an alternative path to happiness. 

Things You Weren't Supposed to Read

Last century, when I was in college at San Francisco State, I fell in love with a boy who was in love with someone else. Though he was moving to England to be with her, it didn't stop him from falling in love with me before the semester ended. We said good-bye in tears as I boarded a plane for Germany, determined as I was to beat him out of the country.

Three months later, back in San Francisco, I received a package from my mother: a large manila envelope stuffed with 24 fat letters, each one addressed to me and postmarked from a small village in England.

The gist: he loved me, not her, she was insecure and needy, he had to get out of there, he was flying to Florida, meet him in Orlando, move to the Caribbean, work on sailboats, bask in the glory and splendor of our love.

Based on three weeks and 24 letters, I packed up my life and moved 3,700 miles from home, never asking myself what he told the English girl, or how she might have felt had she read those letters. It never even occurred to me.

Half a year after that, our relationship as worn and crusty as a derelict boat, I picked up this notepad of his that was always laying around. For the first time in my life, I read something I wasn't supposed to read.

It was addictive.

Especially when it turned out to be letters to the girl in England. And now it was me he no longer loved.

Back in San Francisco, I moved into a flat with two roommates. In no time, I was reading their letters, their journals, anything I could get my hands on when they weren't around. I learned in the pages of their flowery diaries what they thought about each other. Even more sickly satisfying: what they thought about me. In person, Jen said, "How cool!" as I walked out the door wearing a fedora to a Humphrey Bogart retrospective at the Castro. In her journal, she mocked me with mean little jabs. Vividly I remember the knotty pit in my gut as I read it.

It hurt, but I kind of liked it. It felt wrong the same way I imagined shoplifting felt wrong to Winona Ryder. A thrill it was, like jumping out of an airplane, freefalling into private thoughts as I listened for the key in the lock. It was deliciously toxic, that mix of good and terrible. I craved it like a smoker for a cigarette.

When I moved out, I quit, cold turkey, never again. In that year of living dangerously, I learned suspicion is not your friend. If someone doesn't have the guts to tell you their truth, then you have to trust your gut. It's the best evidence you'll ever have, and no written words will ever prove better than what you feel and carry inside you.

The Original Snoop Dog's Love Letters

I heard a great story about Charles Schulz on "Morning Edition." In the 1970's, when his marriage was deteriorating and he hadn't yet met his second wife, the creator of Peanuts courted a young woman named Tracey.

He sent 44 letters and 35 drawings to Tracey over an eight-month period. Most of the letters were brief; in the drawings, Schulz let his alter-ego Charlie Brown stand in for him to deliver the bittersweet messages of love. In the report, a manuscript specialist described how unsatisfied Schulz felt during that time in his life. The collection, then, reflects - however briefly - the way correspondence can sweetly fill a void.

In my youth, Snoopy was a great love of mine - that wacky little dog who dreamed of being an author. One of the illustrations Tracey received was an excerpt from Snoopy's novel. "It was a dark and stormy night," it began, accompanied by a cover note: "Who else do you know that gets a manuscript from a dog?"

Does anyone have an extra quarter of a mil I could borrow? The auction starts on Friday, and I can't quite come up with the opening bid.

Click to read (or listen to) the whole story on NPR

Letter from a Dog

The other day, I received a piece of correspondence in a legal sized "envelope," really a piece of construction paper folded and taped with packing tape, addressed in crayon in the writing of a child. No return address. Curiouser and curiouser.

I had to cut it open with a knife, and inside was an unsigned, typewritten letter. I knew instantly who'd written it, because the author referred to my dog, Bill, as "Sir William of the White Lawns" and I know only one person who does that. The letter informed me that my dog had learned to use a computer, and written the story of his life. "He doesn't type well because his paws are too wide, and his nails (he refers to them as his "claws") get in the way."

I share the the text of that letter here, unedited. It is relevant to the story how feebly I hail Bill when he's run off into the woods behind my house. I clap twice and say "Bill, come here." He rarely, if ever, complies. You might need to have a 9-year career reading the writing of students with disabilities to decode this letter, but if you try hard enough, you will surely laugh from the belly, until tears come out of your eyes. Or maybe you won't. Maybe you have to know Sir William of the White Lawns personally to get it. Do let me know.

                                            my life asd clapc lapb illec om ehere.

My bnanme isz c lapclap b iloycomkehere. I found a person dwebrqa wjhere I livgfed wjhen I wazs b orn. I saw debrqa and tolldx her I was her dovgv. My name was boy when I was boern and debr4qa named mje c lap clap bill c omehere. Mty sjort name is nobil.

Ilove debra.she lovews me. we libve in a gungle but she doesn't go in there sdhe like her box kmore than to live in a gun gle. She wsmells so good. She put hot wqatfe3rf on me and made me smell baed.i still smell bnad and feel baed. Ican get under the3 couch next time. When I had anotnhner houjse I hade to go to I would poop in teh carf. Inever poop in debrazcar I lovedd debra and debrqa lovfedsmed. I dont let people hurt debrfa. She hqas monsterrfsz that are afdrid of me.thwey come in and hide evedrywhere wjhen ewee go outrsdide but ialways find them rmonsters rhright awazy and mazke them diee. The enf. Clsapclapbiklcomhere.

This regal animal is literate, too.

The Xmas Letter

My mom is the expert at Xmas letter writing. She's not one of those people who shrinks the font and expands the margins so she can fit every last detail of all 365 days on both sides of the candy-cane bordered quality paper from Office Max. No. She is brief. She is chipper. And she does that thing that everyone seems to do - she brags about her kid. I am 46 and haven't lived at home in 27 years but my antics are still prominently featured and yeah, I kind of love it.

Recently, my mom attended an Xmas Letter Writing Workshop. Yes, there is someone out there teaching people how to do it (and it isn't my master mom). My secret fantasy is that this teacher concentrates on brevity and the limits of braggadocio. "Cut it by 75%" she says in a commanding voice to gasps of horror across the room. I admit, I'm throwing pebbles inside my champagne glass home, having been the guilty writer of more than one overlong, over-boastful Xmas letter. But let's not dwell on my shortcomings...

Back to other people's letters, the senders with the incredibly perfect lives. Their children are in AP Honors classes and winning soccer trophies. They themselves have just purchased their second Mercedes SLS. It's all yang and no yin, all pictures of beaming, beautiful children. You are left to wonder what your old friends, the letter-writers, look like, and you just have to assume they are wrinkly and fat. (Unless they're working out at Crossfit and running the Ironman. Then, you'll see their photos, too.)

Wouldn't you love to get an Xmas letter someday that says, "This year, my husband left me for a man and my kids dropped out of MIT to deal crystal meth"? The only problem with that is, should such a letter ever arrive, it'll conclude: "Everything's worked out fabulously - my husband's lover just redecorated my home and my kids? They're making more money than they ever would have with college degrees so ... they're flying us all to Tahiti! Happy Holidays, Everyone!!!"

I've decided not to send an Xmas letter, and not just because there's been an inordinate amount of yin in my life lately. I usually try to never say never, but I'm not sure I'll ever write another Xmas letter. It just doesn't fit my plans, which are to write, and continue writing postcards and personal correspondence for the rest of my life. Why jumble it all up with a form letter?

If you hear from me this holiday season, it'll be something like you'd get any other day of the year.

However. I still want your Xmas letters, each and every one of them. Especially if your husband's a secret homosexual and your kids successful drug dealers. As Dorothy Parker famously said, "If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me."

One Fell Swoop

I had all my hair cut off.

Well. Not all of it, though I was briefly tempted to do a Jamie Lee Curtis, or a G.I. Jane. I did it spontaneously, in anguish, having lost something dear to me that I felt unlikely to ever get back. I didn't donate the hair; it was an act far too impulsive for that. I was just sitting there, crying and crying over this loss, and I wondered What would make me feel better? A full body tattoo. Free-falling out of an airplane. Catching the next overnight flight to Paris. Ah, yes, but what would make me feel better that I can do right this minute?

Armed with four photos hastily grabbed off google images, I drove to the first Great Clips I could find. I sat in the chair of the first available stylist - I think her name was Tiffany. I showed her the pictures: Sheryl Crow with hair the length of mine; Michelle Pfeiffer with hair just below the shoulders; a pre-facelift Meg Ryan just-above-the-shoulders; and Charlize Theron an inch below the chin.

Obviously, I'd been on the fence up till the moment I sat in the chair. "Somewhere between this and this," I blurted, pointing to Meg and Charlize. "So... just above the shoulders?" Tiffany asked. "Yeah, but be careful, 'cause my hair is super heavy, so it will spring right up once you cut it... go longer than you think."

I guess Tiffany didn't hear that part, because I wound up with something more akin to Meg Ryan circa "French Kiss." Clearly, my dangerously high celebrity standards had, once again, backfired.

And yet it's perfect. Tiff got a really fat tip on the $11 cut. (Yeah, I know, right? So much cheaper than a full body tattoo.)

Thus I went from a 14-page double-sided letter about boring ancient history to a postcard from Biarritz in

ONE

FELL

SWOOP

of the scissors.