Lost Postcard 1

The man enters the building unimpeded. In fact, though it is large, heavy and foreboding, it draws him in as if its created gravity that obliterated other options. He is prepared as he entered. He has all the things he was told he would need. In the bustling neighborhoods surrounding the building were kiosks and stalls selling pamphlets, magazines and pinging his phone with guides, diagrams and evaluations, each informing him of a unique requirement that was of course, conveniently available at the same location. He was bright. He took these scams for what they were. But still, he succumbed to the atmosphere of caution and equipped himself minimally, but at great cost. Stepping across the threshold, he takes stock. He is trim and manicured, dressed stylishly but not at the expense of utility. His clothing is fitted but loose and durable. He brushes his hands over is pockets, reassuring himself of their contents: high-end multi-tool, unassuming pistol (very comforting), micro hygiene/first-aid kit, and of course his phone, uploaded with premier mapping, how-to, social connect and identifying apps. Finally, two flasks -- one hydration and one whisky, both high-end contents. No one could say he was unprepared,  he considered with confidence. Entering the anteroom, he is surprised to find it more of an atrium than a receiving room, or a hall. It's wild and feels vast, more dangerous and expansive than the manicured grounds. He moves through it, unable to determine where he should next go. Doors are bolted or rusted shut and overgrown. The phone offers no help and only says "seeking, seeking...". For the first time in his adult life, he man feels scared and groundless. He makes himself overconfident.

Postcard 73

In a rush from the car to the house in the too cool air, he remembered to grab the last few days' mail. Unease from the dark driven into, and sharpened with the headlights cut, followed him in. He fumbled keys and dropped the mail in a clumsy fan in his unnecessary rush. Sure to shut the door firmly behind him, he sought the lights. Switched on, he saw the postcard kicked past the threshold alone on the cool tile. What is this? Not a wish you were here, or majestic nature, nor mighty buildings in their dotage. Not even bikini-clad humor, but a chopped assemblage out of context: a masked, or unmasked and disembodied woman with hair cast like fire, the wrong hands crawled past her, reaching from and into some impossible gate, like a theory drawn out only to fulfill its uncanny form. The moon, or a planet, loomed and pulled and cast a ring of dripping black gravity. Behind all this random words floated down and settled in deep mysterious drifts. He flipped it over. It was only vaguely addressed to him and bore no return address. The text started and stopped in an irrelevant middle and was frustratingly self-descriptive. It sung along like a blind wire, and seemed even to attempt impotently to describe him in the moment. The strange epistle held in his hand had a charge as if written under moonlight. He looked away from the card and let it fall, fluttering silently away to a dark corner. He felt compelled to see himself and stepped further into the house to a half-lit mirror. The man gazing back did not menace, but was decidedly unfamiliar. They examined each other with curious unease.

Postcard 72

There was a woman who spoke only music. I say 'was' because she is gone now. I say 'music' because that is what came out of her, not words sung, no words. Not just humming, though hum she did, and whistle and click and clack and spit and sigh and warble and sing in any way you might imagine a person would make music without words, and many you would not because your imagination is not up to the task, bound as it is by words and syntax. That is how she would communicate, call and respond anyway. Her teachers, when she had them as a girl, were more than sympathetic. They were not martinets and she filled them with awe and wonder. She's not doing what she should, they would say, but we let her be, so unique and wondrous a child. The system of school, however, could not tolerate her and she was made to leave. Many people could understand the girl, a young woman by then. People from all walks of life: teachers, children, engineers, trash-men, doctors, fast-food-window workers, it did not really matter. Some did, some did not. There was no rhyme or reason, just a facility of reason open to her tones and rhythms. So it was perhaps just a series of misfortunes that led her through the people who would decide her fate, destroy her. The first was the social services worker who decided she needed to be evaluated, and who grew more resolute in her decision as the singing woman voiced her dissent in angry stochastic melody. Next was the evaluating clinician who could hardly be blamed for her evaluation, for her subject's songs grew confused and dis-harmonic in response to the dizzying evaluation questions. Of course, one could blame the sadistic operators of the institution that held the woman, who's neglect and torment tortured angry bellowing opuses out of her, filling the halls and rooms with ominous climbing and descending adagios. When they broke the woman, when she took her life, only the ignorant laundrywoman heard the haunting song.

Postcard 69

I love you, he says. What does that even mean, she replies.  I love you, he says. You do but you're not very good at it, he replies. I love you, she says. He leaves the room, terrified. I love you, she says. Me too, she replies. I love you, she says. They change the subject abruptly. I love you, she says. I know, he replies. I love you, he says. You're a fucking liar, he replies. I love you, she says. Do you? he asks. I love you, they say. Then why do you hurt me, she asks? I love you, he says. Right now, in this moment, he replies. I love you, they say. I love you too, they reply. I love you, he says. You know better than that, she replies. I love you, he says. I didn't ask for that, she replies. I love you, he says. Its only fucking, she replies. I love you, she says. Prove it, she replies. I love you, they say. Please don't, he replies. I love you, she says. I used to love you, they reply. I love you, he says. Say it again, say it again, she replies. I love you, she says. She is asleep. I love you, she says. He is only a photograph, says nothing. I love you, they say. Goodbye, she replies. I love you, he says. You don't even know me, she replies. I love you, she says. That used to mean something, he replies. I love you, she says. Yes, you do, she replies. I love you, I say.

Postcard 64

I woke today to a discomfited world. The air hung like coal grease and the wind, when it came, was too warm and from al the wrong places: refinery wind, desert strip-mine wind, smelter and kiln wind. I filled myself with this taxing air and my body responded in kind. My back and palms were damp and tacky - what had I touched? My armpits and crotch began a great primordial cultivation, little white pustules and an itch that grew angry with scratching. I got dressed. The news came on like a broken gasket faucet: disease, pestilence, starvation, (I could not turn it off) mass murder, corruption.... My sock fell into my shoe. Great institutions fell like pussy denigration. Leaders cried out like the squirm of eels, leeches, lampreys. Figureheads were the flies on the face of maddened beasts. There was grit in my ear. There was grime and stiff bristled hair in everything I touched, dark and crimped. I went outside but the sun was burning. I felt the cancer crisp up on the rims of my ears. I scratched the inside of my nose and pulled out blood. Death was everywhere, and worse still, pain, and beyond that, discomfort. My loved ones were weak and spiteful. My confidants were liars and cheats. Avarice and malice coated their actions like tar.
Did I ask, where is God in all this? No.
My pulse quickened at mention of rape. My knuckles strained for violence and my spit boiled to tear down.
Not where is god. Where is man?
These are the days when try means try.
Where am I?

Postcard Project Revisited

As I pass fifty postcards posted, and probably closer to a hundred made and mailed, I must call myself into question: What am I doing here?

If I am trying to share with a wider audience, then I am failing. As far as I can tell, I have about ten faithful readers. (This is a good exercise for sublimating the fragility of my ego.) I am not above self-promotion, but neither am I very interested in it. I have been putting off a few ideas to widen my audience, in fact. When I do fret about it, internally or externally, I am immediately aware of the pathetic sound of dross. It is similar to me of the feeling I get when I attempt to synthesize the sublime into some sort of linear coherence.
Which does lead me to what I am doing here: I am synthesizing my sublime -- transcendent and despairing -- into a parceled, non-linear coherence. Reviewing my cards is like watching the arc of my philosophical/spiritual/artistic development in a statistical scatter graph in many dimensions. This was not at all my intention when I began, or even when I began formalizing and sharing. Here is an explanation of my original intent.
I can see now, that I am creating an historic documentation of an informal world view as it examines itself and develops. The form itself is of course feeding back to that development. Its not that I think in the 4.5 x 6 inch boundary, but that I am engaged in a one sided conversation without feedback or reference that would normally be of no more significance than the thoughts that whirl around in my head and fade out of memory. Regardless of the limitations and looseness and loneliness of my form, the structure of writing and the vulnerability of sharing creates responsibilities to both internal veracity and posterity. This is all a lot to say about so flippant a "project", but I take it seriously (but not too self-seriously, I hope):
I have gotten to the point where, on a variety of subjects, I could reference a postcard that would at least begin a conversation on my perspective. I am often tempted to do that,or to tack the link to some specific card onto an online conversation. I have also gotten to the point where I feel that anyone who would take the time to read each and every postcard as part of a larger tangentially connected whole, would have a pretty good sense of the person they are engaging, that is me.

So, taking this project -- that has become a project, that has grown legs enough to have essentially taken over my blog, that has ushered along and matured a perspective to make the more static ideas of my novel fall into question, taking this project as it is -- not seriously, but engaging it, I move forward with the intent of mass and momentum:


I will self promote while hopefully barring my ego from the process. 

I am constantly curious about serious, educated and well developed philosophical ideas as well as ideas in science, the arts,religion and literature. I have no interest in specializing in any of these; I enjoy remaining a dilettante, in fact I feel it is a helpful tool for a writer, but I would like to cultivate a type of feedback that could be transformative to the development of my perspective.

I will be more formal about my postings, aiming for one each Monday afternoon. If you enjoy catching my postcards, that gives you something to look forward to. 

I will continue to make, write and send postcards