Weekend Roundup

I know it's not the weekend anymore, but let's pretend I posted this yesterday, shall we?

I got my first mail of the month - not a postcard, but a nifty letter featuring Domo-kun. A highlight of watching the NHK Trophy figure skating competition every fall is seeing all the little Domos in the "kiss and cry" area where skaters await their scores after competing.

As you can see, this is one of those envelopes-and-letters-in-one, and I had a hard time opening it without tearing the edges. It's been a while, what can I say?

Mailed Feb 5:

Édouard Boubat, We Prefer Life 1968

Here's a great image that was almost wasted - I started writing to someone using this postcard way back in 2012, but only got about a sentence in. I kept this great image, though, so I decided to continue the correspondence and send it anyway this year. No big.

This is a map of the world created in the 1540s, I think. I've been reading a lot of historical adventure/exploration books lately, and it just amazes me how people made maps of the globe before all the major land masses were known. I mean, there are definitely some errors here - the USA was not connected to Russia and China 500 years ago, and I don't see Australia on here at all - but it's pretty amazing how close this gets, all things considered.

Sent to my niece, who is about to spend a semester abroad.

It was weird to not mail anything yesterday. Of course, I was going to get started on the letters portion of my month and didn't. I'm such a procrastinator.

Old School Cassette Night

In keeping with my last post, here is a letter I received at the end of February:

It's not a postcard, but a card, and check out the envelope...

It really is a pity that mixtapes are a thing of the past. They are such a marker of a specific time and place. I've made a couple of CDs for friends, and while it's a lot easier than recording cassettes, it's not as much fun. The flaws in homemade tapes - the scrap of the DJ's spiel from the radio, the abrupt cut when you don't push Record at just the right moment, the self-conscious soliloquies - often stand out even more than the music.

I still have a ton of cassettes from high school, college, and beyond. I break them out every once in a while to play on a Friday night when I've got nothing else going on. There's that moment when the music ends and you have to fast forward or just wait to reach the end of the tape before switching sides. Or you leave the room for a minute and when you come back you want to hear the song from the beginning and can't just hit a single button. Every time I play one of my precious, irreplaceable mixtapes I say a little prayer that this won't be the time that my boom box eats it. Dang Ramona got me a device that was supposed to convert cassettes to mp3s a few years ago - but the instructions were in Chinese and we could not get it to work, so I keep my boom box and I keep my fingers crossed.

a smattering of my cassette collection

So, this letter...
Like a new cassette from an old buddy, one who's been gone long enough that neither of you know where the other's musical tastes lie anymore, but somehow it all fits together, the familiar sprinkled with something totally new. This is what I have missed about correspondence.

MOMA moment from Mom

I am procrastinating. I have a new refrigerator that will be delivered tomorrow (my life is SO exciting!), and I should be defrosting the old one, throwing out items that have been lurking in there for far too long, cleaning the kitchen, moving the furniture to make it easier for the delivery, etc etc etc....sounds exhausting, non? Fortunately, my mailbox had a couple of interesting items today to distract me from such boring endeavors.

First up:

The Vegetabull, Jan Lewitt, 1943

"Read the fine print! xxx Mom"
                                                    is all she wrote.

I'm not really sure if that's a literal instruction or a figure of speech. There is one line of type so tiny it couldn't possibly say anything relevant - but I do know this image was part of a very groovy exhibit on kitchens that my mom and I went to in September 2009 at the Museum of Modern Art. It might be a surprise to see vegetarian propaganda from the mid-20th century, but the message - "a vegetable dish made with dried eggs or household milk is as good as a joint" - is not espousing an ethical, non-meat diet; it's a positive spin on wartime rationing.

I also got a card (not a postcard) from my friend who was in town last month, and in light of my last post I had to share one line:

"So many times I've wanted to return your fabulous postcards that you've sent with an extra cool one from me, but, no dice. Sorry!"

See? For some reason, correspondence creates pressure, even though it should just be fun. And no, I didn't pay her to say my postcards are fabulous. All I can say to any potential correspondent is: in this day and age of mostly electronic communication, anything other than bills or junk mail in the post box is a huge thrill! it's not so much what you write - it's that you write at all!

Happy Equinox

I realized too late that I should have sent out a postcard with flowers on it today, to honor the beginning of spring. And by that I mean I realized too late that I don't have any floral postcards to send. Instead, I dispatched a very groovy and unequinox-y Japanese cartoon postcard to a friend that I fear I'm in the process of falling out of touch with.

I'm not sure if a bunch of late night thoughts jotted down on a postcard of animated toast people and snaggle-toothed squirrels are enough to affect the cyclical ebb and flow of friendships, but a girl's gotta try.

I still wanted to send something spring-like, so I found this card to send to another friend, whom I hardly ever see or talk to but when we do it's like no time has passed.

I just bought a box of these cards - they are old polaroid pictures - and I thought they were postcards even though the box clearly says notecards. That's what I get for not paying attention. No matter, I can mix it up from time to time, and no need to discriminate against envelopes.