Subscription postcards: A cold glass of holiday delight

January 22, 2013 by campbell Leave a Comment

Postcard collage: Woman on surfboard in front of an oak tree backlit by sunset. Text: Don't run from the weather. — Hello Bridget, and welcome to 2013! I hope you like this card, it’s one of my favorites that I’ve done so far. Fun fact: The flower design on the left-hand side of this card is taken from the barf bag that sat next to my bed during last summer’s hospital stay. It’s probably the nicest barf bag I’ve ever seen. Supposedly it is even fire resistant. Which is good if you don’t like fire, but bad if you don’t like brominated flame retardants. If you don’t like fire or brominated flame retardants, it’s a mixed blessing. Life is complicated like that.

Right now I’m at the Stumptown location on Division Street in Portland, and the Paul Simon album Graceland is playing on the stereo. It reminds me of a 1999 Onion headline: “Burned-Out Coffee Shop Employee Just Lets Paul Simon Album Play for Fifth Time”. This is a special subclass of life imitating art: Life imitating art that really only made sense when compact discs were the dominant storage device for personal audio media.

This last summer I downloaded a mix from the Kleptones blog called “Paths to Gracland”, and I listened to it while replacing the transmission in my van. Look it up and give it a listen; I think you’ll like it. Anyway, there you have it, another installment in my series “Stories About Things That Remind Me of Other Things”.

On an unrelated note, I spent New Year’s Day in the Columbia River Gorge, hiking up to a place called Angels Rest. It was clear and cold and windy, and the dogs were with me and there were whitecaps on the water. Which reminds me of something I’ll tell you about later.

01-Don't-run-from-the-weather-(inside-text)

01-Don't-run-from-the-weather-(rear)

Postcard collage: Man on bench feeding pigeons while two gingerbread men fly above him. Caption: Pour a cold glass of holiday delight. — Hello Jennifer! The world didn’t end on December 21st like some of the doomsday-minded people had predicted. It was a letdown for eschatology enthusiasts but a good thing for everyone else. The problem with doomsday scenarios is that eventually the world is going to end — we can say this with pretty much 100% certainty — but so far all the apocalypse predictions have had a 100% failure rate. I’m pretty sure that scientists are right. One day the sun will expand, the oceans will evaporate into space, and eventually the Earth will be engulfed and incinerated. I’d put money on this prediction, but unfortunately I won’t be here for the one to five billion years it will take to collect on my bet. Jeepers, this is a bleak postcard. I should end on a positive note. Predictions for 2013: Humans will continue to love their dogs, and dogs will continue to love humans.

Postcard collage: Man with backpack walking toward cliff. Text: The natural genius. They say or hint yes, he walks away. — Hello Beth! Happy New Year, and here’s hoping that 2013 is a good year. I just wrote a postcard that dwelled too much on the Mayan calendar apocalypse hypothesis before I went on to ruminate about the fate of the solar system. I’ll try to keep it more upbeat here. When writing postcards, it helps to focus on more of a human timescale than a cosmological timescale. So here’s a list of things that help me to stay positive:

– Listen to the 1963 Lesley Gore song “Sunshine, Lollipos, and Rainbows”
– Bake cookies; eat some of the dough but not more than half
– Go to the public library, put inspirational notes between the pages of random books
– Write lists of things that help me stay positive
– Self-referentiality

That’s all I can think of right now. Happy New Year!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.