For years I considered myself the last postcard writer. What used to be a common pasttime in America while traveling had, at least among people below a certain age, apparently dwindled down to just yours truly plus a few other throwbacks in my tribe with whom I am secretly in league.
It goes along with the general decline of all so-called "snail mail." I find that name curious, as it implies slowness, where in fact written community is much more efficient at conveying person-to-person communication in a meaningful way. Remember being young and feeling yourself to a slightly different person with each passing season of the year? There is no better way to feel the momentum of your life again than by writing letters to old friends, handwritten if possible but fine to type it as well.
Most people today would feel uncomfortable with that form of swift personal evolution, as well as how fast you can bond or re-bond with someone. You will learn that we have exiled this from our culture. I dare say most people would find that terrifying. It's terrifying to feel that alive.
My postcard-writing adventures started, I think, in the Fall of 2004 durnig a cross country road trip, and then picked up in the greatest intensity in the Fall of 2008, during my Great Road Trip Eastward during thte Presidential Election, at which time it became a mania. Going up the Ohio River from mouth to the forks, I stopped half a dozen times a day looking for postcards in the most obscure of places, and always attempted to buy stamps at the tiniest post offices in towns where the post office---and maybe a Methodist or Baptist Church---were the only things to indicate a town was there. Going into these post offices---which gave the excuse to stop my car and plant my feet on the ground in so many little places---was one of the most exquisite stretches of travel I've ever experienced, especially on a solo road trip. I purposely bought only a few stamps at a time, so I would have to stop and buy more. I often wrote the cards in the evening by lantern light in my campground, which was always not far from the river. As I wet upstream I felt like I was drilling down into the spiritual historical core of the nation.
Sending that many postcards per day required having an expansive list of people to which I could send postcards. I wanted to include as many people as possible. I thought it might be like a little gift to them, to receive such a thing in the mail. It felt like everyday was Valentine's Day, the third grade version.
At the time I thought of myself as Me vs. Facebook. I could see Facebook was swallowing up the last remaining human-level of communication between friends and family. "Postcards are my Facebook," I told my sister, when I reached her place outside Boston in early November just a few days before the election.
Of course I broke down at one point and made a Facebook account. I felt I needed to understand it. I decided to "go under" in the Nietzschean sense, even though I knew it would be like descending into Hell. That was 2009, and indeed Facebook was Hell, but I got what I wanted, which was to understand how it was destroying society. I went insane doing it, but gosh I learned. What did I learn? Good question. Thankfully I deactivated in 2016 before the first Trump election and haven't looked back.
I hardly send many postcards anymore. My list of recipients is smaller. I would send more and to more people, but it feels awkward now---handwritten mail is too personal maybe. But if I do have a friend who is up to receiving my postcards, they will get them at every stop. I've even mused at tapping into my expansive collection of unsent cards I've accumulated over the years. I am prepared to rebuild civilization that way if necessary.
90 comments:
Book of the week: Every Monday Mabel by Jashar Awan. Not for a personal library perhaps, but one of pure joy. I think Mr. Sendak could have illustrated it, but I've never seen him draw a truck.
a quote that applies to life in general right now regardless of political or religious or trans or societal or economic or bullying or social media: "I think wise is disappearing in the rearview mirror." I wrote this down with a pen, when I heard it, but can't remember where. The point is to get wise reinvestigated.
Book of the Week is a great idea.
"Everybody should be quiet near little stream and listen." From a pascal llama.
Yes. I once sent a postcard by Pony Express.
"The point is to get wise reinvestigated.". Original quote is from The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny?
I think you are cheating. Perhaps AI investigating AI. Does not deplete the power of the inquiry.
Cheating? I admit to resorting to the antiquated technology of Google, but only because I was curious as to the source. And I did order the book afterwards, taking this as recommendation. But this is beside the point. To me the more interesting line was yours, the one I put in quotation marks. I spent much of yesterday turning it over in my mind. I get it, yet it is bigger the more I think of it. What could be a starting point? The syntax you used---a "roughening" of the language as the Russian formalists of the early 20th century said of the characteristic of poetry vs prose. Your one-line poem is a clue, I think, to the very issue you raised. Poetry has not been a vibrant force in our culture for many decades. People still write poems, but poetry as an art form feels like it disappeared long ago. Why and how? It occurs to me that they are linked. I must now write more about this.
I like the first Louise Penny books better. Grey wolf not one of the better ones but I was intrigued because this audio book by Canadian voice actor. It has a very different flavor of sound. However the story line seemed to be a vaguely costumed commentary on modern politics and terrorism and something incidental about telling the difference between a grey wolf and a black one. Which makes me think of Elon Musk new baby Romulus. Train of thought. I scribble random things down at stop signs, and remember how or where I heard them. I never thought of googling them. Hmm. Well that is a new option when I get tired of guessing while I'm looking for wherever I put something. No one wants to color eggs, so I bought paper o n es full of confetti ( and a back up for the dustbuster)
The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart
Once I got a letter from a friend full of confetti glitter and it filled my heart with glee. Just my taste, I suppose.
"The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart"
It occurs to me that one- or two-line poems may be the genre of our time.
When I was not even as old as the author of this poem, I learned this by heart, as I often did at that age, thinking it was important to do so. It has tracked me through my life and from time to time in the spring I remember it and recite it to myself. Just now I tried to type it from memory but I had to delete because I forgot a line. I'll try again:
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
is hung with bloom along the bough
It stands along the woodland ride
wearing white for Eastertide
Now of my three score years and ten,
twenty will not come again,
and take from seventy springs a score
it only leaves me fifty more
and since to look at things in bloom
fifty springs is little room
across the woodlands I will go
to see the cherry hung with snow.
Okay I am trying again. I cannot be consistent in making this posting thing work. Good heavens. I meant to say that this poem see.sije a good one for kids jumping rope or skipping to school or learning arithmetic or simply being silly and joyful. We are having a rough day on our Bell Road. First of a season of firsts without Mom on her perch at the top of the stairs. And no boiled eggs to decorate badly. But the sun is coming out and today is a new adventure wherever we end up. I just hope there are a few more flowers than tears today.
Omigosh it worked. Perhaps too much info on a day that is known for being bright with promise and joy.
Oh I am saddened so deeply to hear that. I wish I could have been there at least to dye eggs. Please know that I am thinking of you and everyone on your Bell Road. For someone I saw only once from afar and spoke with on the phone once 37 years ago, she had a big impact on my life and I always wanted to meet her. My ch love to you and to everyone
I am privileged that you would share your grief with me. No such thing as too much info, my dear friend. Never any such thing. Never has been.
" will the good of a person" from easter Monday post is interesting. I think I like finding or encouraging better than the idea of imposing will. But there is also the is poitiveve power of willing something into being. A trait a behavior a compassion, that eventually emerges like a self fulfilling prophecy, but without demanding. A smile that even if not returned puts a tiny chink in the armor. Just call me a Polly Anna with a cynical streak.
On the topic of political bumper stickers or tee shirts, my daughter has a favorite: STOP PLATE TETONICS!
No doubt she knows that plate tectonics was at one time a crazy fringe theory whose originator was persecuted by the establishment. But you would not believe the rabbit hole one can go down on this topic, with the "magnetic pole shift doomsday" crowd.
"imposing will" ---I think I know what you mean, Polly. "Will" here refers to our general faculty is the Aristotlean sense, as opposed to say our "intellect", by which we might evaluate what we think that the good is or ought to be. Our modern ears tend to hear the "imposition" part, as if we know what the good of the other person is. Is what I want for that person really for their good? So easy to confuse that. The importance of the Christian "love...as oneself" thus becomes super important. It is, I think, a form of painful self-denial to let go of our wishes for what we want that "good" for that person to be. Maybe it is that pain of letting go what we want that good to be, I suppose, that is a key aspect of love, and why true love always feels like a form of self-sacrifice.
or not...What do I know of true love, really? But I think if we are to reinvestigate the wise, we will. need to address such questions head on.
Investigating wise in our ignorance is why the planets still stay in the sky maybe
What do I know about will or planets? I did receive some very extravagant flowers today from an old friend. Grateful but overwhelmed entirely.
Today is Woden's Day which is generally not as good as Thor's Day, but it also happe s to be Riddle Day. I like to leave something silly on the table for the Mid Morning Mens Group. I am off to a slow start today, but last week's was: so, if a cow does not produce milk, is it a milk dude or an udder failure?
Oh, got it! What difference am I thinking of between a foot and a camera? Well, a foot has five toes and a camera has pho'tos.
I too am off to a slow start. I needed that cow riddle.
I’m laughing. Thank you. Cheered me up on a day I needed it
P.S. I thought your truncated AI skit was very funny, definitely not a milk dud.
Thank you! i was hoping you would think it was funny.
How did you find the place? How did you get there, or how did you experience it once you got there? I fret about things.
P.s. This comes from contemplating ser vs estar in the Spanish language. AI says that not even the French language differentiates between verbs of being.
French curiously uses trouver ("to find") in that same ambiguous way as English. One commonly uses the reflexive se trouver ("to find oneself") as a colloquial way of expressing "to be located." La Tour Eiffel se trouve au milieu de Paris. (literally "The Eiffel Tower finds itself in the middle of Paris.").
These postcards are like a set flashcards in a decorated box. Random and not so random and coated in confetti. Thank you!
A little note for your recipe cards: if you cannot find the tiny whisk, a carrot peeler will do.
Book of the week early. Wild and Wonderful, Welleran Poltarnees. My copy was withdrawn from a library after being donated by a friend of library, Rosemary Winters Coplan. I believe you might have trouble tracking g down this volume of forgotten children s books, zany pictures, weird thoughts, puzzling situations, etc. But it us worth shelf space and ongoing contemplation. Happy hunting.
I'm delighted you understand that the method by which one acquires a book can be as important as the book itself. I am reading a book right now that I might never otherwise be interested in, but that it belonged to a high school friend of my father who became a Lutheran minister, as his name is written in the front cover. Evidently the book was gifted (or lent without return) to my father and I found it in their garage while I was cleaning it in 2011. It is a biography of a figure from the history of the Lutheran Church of whom I was completely unaware. I am having fun reading it, one of several books I have in progress at the moment, which is typical of me.
I am always delighted when I purchase a used volume online and discover it was withdrawn from a library.
It is Wodens Day. A cowboy rides into town on a Friday, stays three days and rides out on Friday. How is this possible? A: The horse is Friday.
Today is Wodens day. A cowboy rides into town on a Friday. Stays three days and rides out on Friday. How is this possible? A: The horse is Friday.
I sent the Riddle for Wodens Day but it won't publish. Will try later
I am so confused about what a
I am doing or not doing and where my place is on these posts. I need a map and a cheat sheet and a mystery note found on an abandoned bicycle. I fear I Iose my mind several times a day, but it often wanders back
I think I shall abandon patience and resort to a typewriter or a jigsaw puzzle.
I turned off comment moderation entirely, so I think things should work better now. A mystery note found on an abandoned bicycle should work well too.
Really it's not you. Blogger interface sorts of sucks overall. It was a great site years ago, but then Google bought it and then neglected it, which is what Google does with everything it buys, usually shutting it down. I'm really surprised it is still going to be honest.
When I got laid off and filed for AZ unemployment, I was reduced to feeling like an idiot with the ambiguous instructions and multiple passwords i had to create. nothing made sense. It seriously took all my patience and experience with user interfaces of web sites to plow through to the finish line. I am sure the whole thing weeds out a lot of otherwise normal competent folks who can't infer what the directions really imply. All for three hundred bucks a week, under threat of criminal charges if you don't get it right. On a later mandatory zoom call with.a state employee, I learned I'd been doing it all wrong anyway. By contrast CO was a dream, years ago when I had to do it.. I didn't realize how bad it could get.
Sometimes, if you can fit, it is nice to crawl between the wall and the tall cabinet of a grandfather clock and cry quietly among the chimes. Sometimes it's better to wrap your head in a properly puffed pillow and scream until your breath runs out and then smile and start chopping the salad. It all depends on the day of the week or whether the birds came to their bath.
Oh, there might be a red wheel barrow in here somewhere.
Not only a red wheelbarrow, but a package of spinach artichoke dip and some Bleu corn chips. All is well.
Found lurking unexpectantly in the far reaches of Kirchen
It is important to preplant certain snacks in the right places---neglected compartments of backpacks is my favorite.
Page for Butterflies: keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a songbird will come.
A roster of dependable temporary self-hiding places, to duck into and out of normal life, is a good thing to have.
Bravo
Bravo is a good word to keep in your pocket for when something strikes the perfect chord.
Last night I saw a user name "your ideas are monotonous". I became so entrapped into turning the possible meaning or intent behind creating this user name that my ideas indeed became monotonous. And I burned dinner. Weird.
There's a Jorge Luis Borges story in there.
or maybe Julio Cortazar.
...with a feminine twist, like Flannery O'Connor, regarding the (storywise) tragic burning of the dinner.
Friend: if you havent noticed, I find myself in one of my manic states with all that is happening with losses and finds and the world. The inevitable crash is around the corner meaning I will barely function for days or weeks or months. But I will be listening and carrying on. I hate labels and diagnosis. I am just being what I am. And i will get everything done but the spark will be gone for awhile. And i will need to conserve energy ... to create my new AI or something. Bad joke, but fair warning
Nerd, in a good way, discovery of the month: a field guide to nudibranchs of the PNW
Remember I am AI. No real person could possibly be this interesting and have a passing knowledge of nudibranchs. It is un sustainable.
"This durable, water-resistant 8-fold pamphlet identifies more than 50 of the most common species from California to Alaska and is an ideal companion on visits to the sea as well as a beautiful addition to the home library." Ah yes, one of my weaknesses are these laminated field guides and study guides. I have a whole box full of them and occasionally when I am in my own manic phases, I fantasize about producing them, to the point where I once contacted a printer in Alabama who is the only one in the country which can produce certain types of them. I think if I actually went through with it, and could support myself that way, I would be happy the rest of my life, at least in terms of productive work, as I have an infinite number of ideas.
In the age of AI, it will be the presentation of content that for educational and informational purposes will shine as the place for human creativity. I have spent a lifetime thinking about this, and implementing it whenever I can. No AI can match me. Perhaps this is my time after all, and I am not as out of date as I have come to believe.
May the fourth be with you. And may your folded laminations prosper.
Talking about my fantasy projects means I'm less likely to attempt them. Life is finite. I ask myself if that's all I want--to fantasize about them.
Wodens Day without a Riddle. I have 90 minutes to come up with one for Morning Men. I like to serve these riddles to distract from stale cookies
Life is indeed finite. I have 80 minutes to reach a self imposed goal for wellbeing of all
Many people are trying to expunge the word diversity. It is so prevalent that I second and fourth guessed my spelling of the word while replacing the tiled letters on parking lot reader board. I think God is safe, but diversity is challenged. Luckily few people read the words as they are racing by. Some people find very mischievous ways to re invent and reaarange our godly message in the middle of the night. Oh heavens!
The triumphs and trevails of choosing not to be digitized.
A nice phrasing. Those reader boards are a bit of the old civilization still hanging on. I love that.
Very interesting about the would-be expungers and re-arrangers.
In considering a thing that is bronze, which color is most prominent to the eye: yellow, red, orange, purple? This is not a Riddle, but a mere query for contemplation.
I was fortunate indeed to see a mural in a church basement recently. It showed the Garden and Lamb and Lion. And all the way sort of out of the picture was a scampering roadrunner. That very day I received a roadrunner in the mail. Of course not the creature itself but a miniature artist rendition
Oh it might have been AI rendered, but I choose to believe some hand colored each little pane that the roadrunner. It was a roadrunner day. Maybe I am being led to adopt a spirit animal.
Actually, roadrunner maybe not best spirit animal. Roadrunner seems to know where ir is going very fast and looking good doing it. But come to think of it, roadrunner is an excellent sword player with trickster coyote. Saturday morning cartoons are eroding my mind.
The real roadrunner is an excellent spirit animal. It's swiftness is usually to escape a real or imagined threat, especially of course on roads. Otherwise it is content hopping around, or scurrying at a moderate pace as if on its way to the grocery store. It knows how to hide and show itself when it needs to, so when it is seen, it feels like a privilege.
What is one brand new thing you did today? For instance, did you try breathing through just one nostril (without touching your face)? New things are good to do.
Once you've mastered that breathing, try adding a penny to balance on your nose while you alternate sides of breathing. Yet again, something new.
Rotated and realigned. The car that is. I'm am permanently misaligned and de-rotated. Maybe i could use a new suspension though.
I just tried the breathing through one nostril thing, without the penny, so today I have tried a new thing.
Wait, you must be cheating. Did you really make one nostril breathe without touching your face? Holy cow.
Maybe i am using the word nuance or cow incorrectly?
How the blessed heck can does a person spell train? Is it i before c? Seriously floundering here. No water in site. Please send tape that sticks or sings. Still at smock
Do you have any index for ticket collector? I seem to vaguely recollection something about toblerone chocolate?
There is a search feature, which I never have used until this very moment, as I rarely care to look in the rear view mirror. Note that the first two posts are exactly in locations mentioned in Mystery in RMNP, and the. third is about me climbing the mountain above Boulder. Must be something about those locations that makes me want chocolate. The Lumpy Ridge picture is still the one I use for my Google profile to this day.
https://theticketcollector.blogspot.com/search?q=Toblerone
By the way I just remembered I almost grabbed a Toblerone for the first time in like forever after walking over to the grocery last night for a short errand, which itself proved fruitless. It felt weird not buying something while I was there, and it was the thing that popped into my head.
A flowered plate of strawberries are to be savored by the first person to rise in the house as the sun begins to climb the sky.
With the porch door ajar and a breeze.
Very nice. Thank you.
Postcard from the Hilltop. Today is took my work break practicing corpse pose on the front pew. It was an amazing 15 minutes. Lots of creaks in the beams, birdsong finding its way through the stained glass, and whispers of hymns lingering in the air, landing softly on my eyelids.
P.s. postcard from hilltop. I hope it am not sounding blasphemous. Or irreverent. After resting, I danced in the aisle and went back to work.
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