Staying Open

Maybe you don't know what it's like.

I've entered Month 11 of my postal project and it's a comfortable routine now. I have routine correspondence with a few fellow letter-writers, and I send and receive postcards at regular intervals with many more. I've worked through the wishing that everyone would write back, and let it be okay that most don't.

I kind of feel like this is huge. I live in a world of mandatory reciprocation, a very, very transactional world. I give a clerk money, she bags my purchases. You slide your card in, your gas tank gets filled. Even in nature: I water you, you bloom. I feed you, you return to my garden.

It takes effort of a different kind to give without expecting anything back, and maybe that's the underlying point of my project - to teach myself how. It hasn't just been to fill a basket with postcards from all over, or fill a box with letters. There's more to it - a depth I haven't touched yet - beyond the sending of tangible post.

For now, I'm thinking it's this: take the experience of sending mail without expectation and turn it into a lifetime of openly giving. And then to keep giving, to never stop giving, no matter what.

It'll take some practice.

New Handwriting

I love hearing from the regulars now. It's a thrill to open the box and see familiar handwriting on the backs of postcards and the fronts of envelopes. A stomach-flipping-over joyous rush of yay.

And then there's this different kind of jubilation, a rarer occurrence: new handwriting. A stomach-flip-flop of Who's this from? Glance at the postmark. Be tempted to skip over the writing, straight to the bottom, find the signature ... but No. Read it. See if you can detect the writer through his or her words. Do you hear her voice? Is there something familiar in his message? 

There always is. It's like a Magic Eye picture in words, slowly coming into focus, and if you don't rush to the ending, if you don't spoil the surprise, you figure out who wrote the card before getting to that last line.

And that gives you a kind of thundering roar in the belly, not unlike applause.

(Thanks for the roars, ladies.)

From Sally:
Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival.

From Sherry:
"The Be Bop Boy and his One Man Band."

So What

Just click on this link and press play and give it a listen.

http://www.beyondtheperf.com/miles-davis-edith-piaf/

Read the beautiful timeline of the paralleling lives of Miles Davis and Edith Piaf. Listen to "So What," that legendary Miles tune, as you peruse this page.

Don't stop till you reach the bottom, where you'll read ... well, here's just a sample - never enough - like a riff of Miles or a refrain of Edith:

"Like music, stamps speak an international language - an idea fully expressed when two nations agree to a joint issue. The U.S. Postal Service and La Poste, the French postal administration, are proud to present two stamps that cross borders, cultures, and generations -- Edith Piaf and Miles Davis."

Then go buy your own damn stamps and send me a letter. (If you can send it to me from France, I'll love you even more.)

Little Gifts

A few weeks ago, at the Mark Rothko opening in our local art museum, I attended a lecture by the curator of modern and contemporary art from the National Gallery in Washington D.C. Harry Cooper spoke eloquently and freely about Rothko's history and evolution, from a young artist experimenting in different styles to the iconic rectangle guy we know today.

He had a slide show and a lot of facts, and an interesting disdain for a particular early Rothko, "Man with Green Face." He mentioned it more than once in an unflattering way.

When the lecture ended, there was the requisite Q and A, and a bunch of poser types had to show off their knowledge of All Things Art, asking incomprehensible questions loaded with jargon. After five or six of these meandering topics leading nowhere, I raised my hand.

"How come you don't like the 'Man with Green Face?'" I asked. I'm proud to say that Harry Cooper was speechless for a moment. Then he chuckled and said, "Well, I don't know, really. Why do you like him?" I chuckled back and said, "I'm not sure I actually like him. I just wondered why you didn't." I paused, and then continued. "Maybe I do kind of like him. He reminds me of Frankenstein, a little." This got some nervous laughter from the posers, and then Harry said, "Well, there you go. I just don't like Frankenstein."

I only mention this because of a series of little gifts I've received lately. My friend Sherry was also at the lecture, and a few days later we met on Main Street for First Thursday.  She had a gift bag for me. In it: a Frankenstein serving tray and cocktail napkins. Then an article out of the Houston Star arrived in the mail from Lu, about a whole movement in Generation Y toward bringing back the lost art of written correspondence. (Picture me, green as the green-faced man with envy of the 25-year-old who's collected about 1,000 postcards and sent more than 800 in two years.)

Just this week, a small box arrived in the mail from Evette. Inside: 10 notecards and 10 Forever Stamps of 20th Century Poets. (Evette likes to think of me as a poet, has always encouraged me as a writer, and I know she must've seen this gift pack and immediately thought of me.)

Oh! And maybe best of all! Evette included a stamp dispenser. One that reminds me of the old-timey stamp dispenser that used to sit on my Mamaw's cedar-smelling sideboard where she kept all her mail and her address book.

(What the hell has someone like me been doing all this time without a stamp dispenser?)

And how did someone like me get so lucky as to have friends like these?

Comics

Strangely, I've become one of those women who cuts comics out of newspapers and magazines and mails them to people.

I always thought this activity was reserved for mothers of adult children and perhaps elderly, doting aunts. 

But no. I see a cartoon strip that reminds me of someone and it's as if I'm driven by a deep, innate instinct beyond my control. I'm a Stepford Wife, I'm on automatic pilot, I'm a zombie marching inevitably to the scissors, the stationery, the envelope, the stamp. Must. Get. In. Mail. A.S.A.P.

Should you receive one of these odd little mailings from me, please don't regard it the same way you think of as junk or spam. Give me your empathy, your appreciation, or at least some pity. I have no children off at college to whom I might send care packages with cute little Dennis the Menaces or Family Circuses tucked neatly between the chocolate chip cookies and banana bread. I'm no maiden aunt, either (the plight of the only child). 

Since I have no one appropriate on whom to pawn this nascent urge, perhaps you can consider yourself - I don't know - lucky? It is personal - I wouldn't send it if it didn't remind me of you. Will it make you feel better if it's from The New Yorker? I'll do my very best. And think of yourself as lovingly chosen to stand in for nieces and nephews everywhere.

Why I LOVE the P.O.

Not surprisingly, about a week after I ran out of mailing labels, I ran out of stamps.

So on this warm, sunny Friday afternoon, I go into my local post office. The line is just four deep, and there are three workers on duty. I am called up within a minute or less by a guy about my age. He has slicked back hair and an air of Vinnie Barbarino about him.

"What can I do for you today?"

"Could I get a roll of --"

"-- We don't have rolls --"

"-- postcard stamps?"

Vinnie smiles broadly. "Oh, sorry! Yes, that we have! How many you want? There's a hundred in a roll, you know."

"Just one."

Vinnie pops a roll onto the counter and says, "Anything else?"

"Yeah. Could I see all the different first class stamps you have?"

At this, I expect some balking, or at least a little drop in Vinnie's enthusiasm.

But no! "Sure!" he says. He slides open a big draw with a bang and starts pulling out sheets of colorful postage. "We got bicycles, we got O. Henry. He's like, like a literary guy... we got cherry blossoms" -- Vinnie looks at me -- "You like cherry blossoms?"

I say, "Yeah, yeah, I like cherry blossoms. I'll take those and the O. Henry and the bicycles. What else you got?"

"We got baseball --"

"--Definitely no baseball for me --"

"--We got the Disney cars --"

"I've had those already, maybe this is enough?"

"We got Miles Davis and Edith Piaf --"

"WHAT?" I exclaim.

Vinnie grins and hands me the Miles and Edith without a word.

Sixty-eight dollars later, I am ready to correspond again.

Mailing Labels - A Cautionary Tale

Unsurprisingly, I have run out of return address labels. The ones I'd been using were a set of Ziggy labels I received four years ago when I gave some money to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. The others were a set of beach scenes that I again got for "free" when I donated to St. Jude's. They have my name annoyingly spelled with a lower case q. Mcqueen is just not the same as McQueen, is it?

It was a bit of a shock when I placed the last ugly beach scene label on an envelope recently. Apparently, the organizations to whom I've been doing my charitable giving stopped offering this service, and I hadn't been paying attention.

I had no choice but to resort to ordering and purchasing return address labels - something I hadn't done in over 20 years.

Back in the day, you'd find ads for these things in coupon mailers and the Lillian Vernon catalogs that my mom received. It was a quick and simple process, with few choices and almost no shipping fees.

Now, of course, there are approximately 5,500,000 companies from whom you can order return address labels over the internet. Just click on, say, the first company in the lineup and you'll find yourself with 8,185 design choices.

A word of advice: don't (as I did) spend two hours late on a Friday night perusing most of the 8,185 designs, only to have your wi-fi bog just when you've made a decision. Wait until morning. Pick something from the first page. IT'S AN ADDRESS LABEL - not a tattoo that will mark you till the end of days. Give yourself ten seconds, pick, click, and don't balk at the $4.50 shipping fee, even though the labels only cost $1.99.

Sigh. Who knew it was possible to miss Lillian Vernon catalogs?