Category: Mail

Nobody Knows the Postcards I've Been

4/8/2013

April is National Poetry Month, a fact which has little or nothing to do with my Monday Blog. But in anticipation of all of the events this busy month promises, I've been feeling, well, somewhat poetic of late. In the tradition of this blog's tendency to go slant on its subjects, I'm throwing in a little creative bonus this week. For each of the next seven days I'll be offering a rectangle of art along with its inscription, similar to something you might find in your mailbox. I'm calling this small series Postcards I Have Been.

Fasten your seatbelts and enjoy your travels—

MONDAY: POSTCARD the FIRST

Dearest Vincent,

Something has happened. It involved a derailment. Shorn fields, filigree, a vanishing point. I have been feeling outside myself. I would like to say I have seen your stars, but the sky is plainspoken and pained with daylight. When I try to look into it, I can only decipher the beginnings of bruise. But I wanted to tell you of the sunflowers, how improbable they are. And true. Were.

TUESDAY: POSTCARD the SECOND

WEDNESDAY: POSTCARD the THIRD

THURSDAY: POSTCARD the FOURTH

POSTCARD the FIFTH

SATURDAY: POSTCARD the SIXTH

SUNDAY: POSTCARD the SEVENTH

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Baby, It's Cold Inside

10/22/2012

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At 5-something this morning, through the haze of my post-dream stupor, I heard the TV weatherdude introduce his forecast for the day: If you hated yesterday, you'll hate today.

Well good morning to you and thanks for the cheer, I thought as I rolled over and wrapped myself in the cozy blanket of just a few minutes more.

It's not that bad. Actually it's not bad at all, and I think our weatherdude's just a tad grumpy about October meaning it's off with the Birkenstocks and back on with the socks. However belatedly it arrived, our summer lasted a long and easy while, though I will admit it's hard to wave adieu.

Here in Oregon, autumn takes its time revving up, and while some trees have already turned to sticks, others are lackadaisical about revealing their colors, the oranges and reds creeping into their leaves like trick-or-treaters sneaking up to a shadowy porch.

Now the sky is about clouds. And intermittent rain. And swirl and bluster. The temperature has taken a dip, and if you're anything like I am, refusing on principle to turn the thermostat up before November 1st, the chill can be a bit shocking to the bones.

Yesterday, on my neighborhood walk, I captured a maple leaf and brought it home to slip in a card I'll send to a California friend. It's not an easy labor, choosing just one leaf to represent an entire season. I thought of Joy Sexton, daughter of the poet Anne. Early October, 1974: Joy away at school and selecting her own such leaf, slipping it in an envelope and mailing it to her mother. By the time Joy's offering arrived, Anne was dead, lost to a turn of key and a gas-filled garage.

I've often wondered if Joy regretted sending the leaf, disintegrating symbol of all that would forever be left undone. Or did she manage to hold onto a small sort of glad—for the reaching out, for the having tried?

I'm thinking about my early morning weatherdude, assuming yesterday's script has already written today's. I'm thinking, too, that every dropped leaf presents an opportunity. Just listen to the way each one shuffles when your feet plow through.

But, by golly, I'm not turning that thermostat up for another 10 days!

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Sock It to Me, Baby!

4/16/2012

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I'm missing a sock.

It happened yesterday after Kobi, my cat, had his way with my sock drawer. When I was finished re-pairing the un-paired, I was left with one extra sock. (Or left with one missing sock, for you fans of negative space.) What happened to the other one?

Yeah, yeah. We all know the mystery of . . .

But I'm not here, really, to talk about socks.

I'm here for the mystery. The maddening world of the unsolved mystery.

For instance: How did the the container of cottage cheese find its way to the bookshelf in the office? Where went the e-mail never received, the one I spent at least 40 minutes writing but now I can't find in any of my folders? The asparagus fern, robust and content, all those years in the pot by the door? What made it die and flame orange overnight? And that package I waited for all day at home? Had it really been sitting on the porch the whole time?

Whenever anything inexplicable happens, I consider myself the first and prime suspect. Failure appears as the common denominator, and I've always assumed that failure to be mine. I'm an expert with the whip and paddle.

I worked for the post office for 26 years. Once, when I was a new letter carrier, I was offered a fast and tidy lesson. I'd finished walking one of my loops, delivering mail into boxes and picking up the patrons' outgoing pieces. When I returned to the truck, I tossed the letters I'd collected into a plastic tub. I was rearranging my cargo, moving that container to a different location, when a sudden gust of wind lifted the top letter right out of the tub. It was a utility payment—I recognized the characteristic brown markings on the envelope—and I watched the envelope lift with the wind and cartwheel right into the pocket of the truck's sliding panel door. In the space of a second, the letter was gone. Had I not been watching, I would never have known what had happened. I would never have known to return to the office and report the the errant payment to the maintenance crew so they could extract it from that impossible and improbable spot.

Had this situation not been resolved, I'm certain that the person who'd mailed the letter would have wondered why that payment never arrived. And of all the scenarios she or he might have imagined, surely the real story would not have been among them. The fact of what happened was a simple thing. But the truth was in the act, not in the imagining.

I've wasted a lot of time blaming myself for things unexplained. But I can't possibly be at fault for (all of) the mysteries in my world. The fact of my imagining something doesn't necessarily make it true. I need to accept the lesson of that letter: there are answers I will never have; some mysteries just can't be solved.

Hey! What's this sock doing on my keyboard?

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Nobody Knows the Postcards I've Been

Baby, It's Cold Inside

Sock It to Me, Baby!

Nancy Carol Moody

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