February 10, 2011
My postal phantom receives a letter from the Undeliverable Mail Office
Kyo Maclear’s 2007 novel The Letter Opener is about a woman who works at Canada Post’s Undeliverable Mail Office in Scarborough, and as I am a postal enthusiast, I devoured the book with delight. I also really enjoyed Maclear’s essay in the back of the book about “Postal Phantoms”– those people who inhabited your home before you and whose mail you continue to receive for years and years. How you come to understand these people’s characters through the return addresses, and they become so familiar that it would almost be disappointing if you one day encountered your postal phantom in the flesh. (I wrote about my own postal phantoms in this post, back in 2008.)
So worlds collided today when my current postal phantom received a letter from the Undeliverable Mail Office! (This phantom is not mentioned in my other post, because I’ve moved since that post was written and left Amanda Lee Hickman behind. In fact, no doubt Amanda Lee and I are now postal phantom-ing it together back at my former address.) I wanted to call up Kyo Maclear and tell her all about it, because it’s really quite remarkable– this means that my postal phantom is out there in the postal phantom netherworld sending mail to undeliverable addresses. What a menace this guy is!
The root of most of his problems, I think, is that his old/my address is still on his cheques, which was how the Undeliverable Mail Office tracked him down (misleadingly) to my house. The whole thing makes me feel quite sorry for that postal employee (and in my head it was Maclear’s Naiko) who took care to open his envelope, redirect his letter, and even include a standard notice about why she had to open his mail that ends with a happy face and the message, “We care”. She must have felt so satisfied, tracing this piece of mail (with no return address, mind you. My postal phantom is so careless!) back to its owner, and I hope she never realizes that she’s only sent it further amiss.
And yes, I do open my postal phantom’s mail. We have been in this relationship long enough that I feel like his letters are really for me. Now I may have to track down the actual person behind the phantom, because it would only be responsible. But then I’d also have to explain why I’ve been opening his mail, which might get a little bit awkward.
*I recently read Maclear’s picture book Spork. It’s awesome.
November 4, 2010
Found things
1) Who knew metaphors were so useful? Who knew a box could be so poetic.
2) The very best postbox in our whole neighbourhood. Also has a delivered package waiting in the door. Coincidence?
3) We found Mabel Murple’s shoes abandoned on the sidewalk!
October 12, 2010
Thankful
This weekend, I covered our family chalkboard (which we like to call “The Real Twitter”, even with hashtags) with a list of things we’re thankful for, and with more than 140 characters, I still ran out of space. Another thing I’m thankful for, that I didn’t include, however, is that I’m not usually reticent about conveying my thanks to deserving parties either, but I’ve decided to start taking it one step further. Whenever I intend to send a grateful email in the next while, I’m going to write an actual thank you note instead and put it in the post. I’m a prolific thank-you note writer anyway, but usually in response to gifts or dinners, but how about, “Thank you for writing that story I read last night”, “Thank you for hosting us all in your magical apartment last Thursday evening”, “Thank you for your marvelous company on Friday afternoon”? An actual object in the world as testament to my gratitude, and I think I like that. So I think that this will be my plan, until we go bankrupt from too many postage stamps.
September 2, 2010
Rereading A Memoir of Friendship
The first time I read this book, I read it in a hammock, which makes me despair a bit at how much life is changed since then. Because we’ve moved, of course, and (seriously) the tree that hammock was hung from has since been chopped down, plus there is the matter of Harriet who is the very opposite of hammocks.
The book is A Memoir of Friendship: The Letters Between Carol Shields and Blanche Howard, thirty years of correspondence between two writers (and wives, and mothers, and working women, and intellectuals, avid readers and dear friends). The first time I read it, it was with absolute joy, and I’ve been wanting to reread it for awhile since because I’ve read so many other books since and there will be all kinds of references I didn’t get the first time around. I was interested to see what newness was there.
I don’t know that I’ve ever loved rereading a book so much in my life. Even though I’ve only been reading it in dribs and drabs all summer long (usually while flossing and brushing my teeth, to be precise), because it’s long and I also wanted to savour it. The book makes its reader privy to the workings of two sharp, curious minds, to the trajectory of two different writing careers (and reading careers), to the trajectory of life in general (getting old is terrible, unfair and unrelenting. This book makes no bones about it. I admire the candour.) Privy also to little bits of gossip, literary and political. To the books they loved and the books they loved less, and also the reviewers that made their blood boil. Reading this book, one is privy to wisdom.
I made special note of the books Shields and Howard mutually appreciated, gushed over together, and have decided I want to make an effort to read this in the near future. They are:
The Home by Penelope Mortimer
The Odd Women by George Gissing
Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages by Phyllis Rose
Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson
Days and Nights in Calcutta by Clark Blaise and Bharati Mukherjee
Le Divorce by Diane Johnson
Mother Nature by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
And though I’m not much of a crier when it comes to books, once again finishing this book had me weeping. I mean, so much so that it disturbed my daughter and she came over to try to make me laugh and deliver me a hug. To think of Shields dying and leaving a life and a world she so loved, and then to consider all those who loved her and would have to remake their lives without her. Somewhat selfishly, I also think of books unwritten. But I am also uplifted by a life that was so determinedly well-lived.
July 28, 2010
You've got to court delight
You’ve got to court delight, I think. By which I mean that things don’t just turn up in the post. You’ve got to send small gifts across the country to get a thank-you note in return, and subscribe to literary journals and magazines, and have a friend who lives in Antarctica who sends a postcard from time to time. Or rather, you have to go out of your way to buy a red teapot so that you can be a person who has a red teapot (unless you’re a particular fortunate person for whom red teapots arrive in the post).
Anyway, the point is that I received two letters in the post today upon whose envelopes my name was inscribed by hand. (And it wasn’t even that deceptively handwriting-like font that Bell Canada puts on all their envelopes when they send missives begging for the return of my custom.) Two handwritten envelopes is practically unheard of! I tore them open in a hurry and was not the least bit disappointed by what I found inside.
But let me backtrack. I joined The Barbara Pym Society earlier this year, because it seemed a strange, funny and Pymian thing to do. (I was inspired by this article.) And I also made friends with a brilliant writer/almost birdwatcher, and had her over for tea last week. As a result of these two things, I today received a lovely letter from a fellow Pym Society member who is looking for a Canadian meet-up*, and an absolutely beautiful thank you note from my birder-writer friend (who is truly as master of the form). Both of which made me exquisitely happy.
So you do have to court delight, I think. Though there’s also the point that if you wish to be perpetually delighted, just look for the pleasure of tiny, wonderful things. (Or perhaps I need to get out more…)
*Fascinatingly enough, the Pym Society member had sent me this letter unknowing that we’d corresponded in the past! Three years ago, she published a beautiful essay in The Globe, and sent me a note after I’d mentioned it on my blog. And now we find ourselves two of the very small population of Canadian Barbara Pym Society members! How marvelously tiny the world truly is…
June 30, 2010
Serious print overload
Honestly, today was an amazing In The Post day. I received the latest issue of Canadian Notes & Queries, whose cover is gorgeous (as you can see) and embossed (which maybe you can’t). It gets even better in-covers, with an interior re-design by Seth. It’s “The Short Story Issue”, which means I can’t wait to read it to pieces. I’m looking forward to everything, and a new story by Rebecca Rosenblum in particular.
In another envelope, I received some textual treats from my friend Alyssa (and I get to call her my friend, because I met her once in real life about ten years ago, and we didn’t become online friends until some years after that). Not only did she send a card with a photo of her beautiful son, but she sent me three little books from The Regional Assembly of Text in Vancouver: “Crust Test”, “Things They Loved” and “Encounters with Jesus”. Love it love it love it.
Seriously, this is print overload.
Further, I’ve been magazining it up like a madwoman lately. The day after my post on magazines a few weeks back, I received LRB, Chatelaine, and an subscription offer from The New Yorker in the mail, which I thought was sort of funny. The Chatelaine was even worse than the last one, incidentally. My biggest problem with it was the passages they’d highlighted so I didn’t have to go to the bother of reading the articles, and I was insulted by the idea that had I ten minutes to spare, I’d spend it spray-painting a hideous piece of crap. I don’t like how everything is so rigidly compartmentalized, and how the backyard depicted for relaxing in had a motor boat in the background.
But maybe it was because I was reading Wolf Hall, which really did call for diversions, that I began motoring through my backlog of periodicals. I read one LRB after another, and revelled in the fascinatingness. I can’t remember much of what got me so excited at the time, but the point was that it left me super-stimulated and inspired (and maybe I was just getting used to sleeping normally again). Perusing the archives, however, I remember that I loved this scathing review of the new translation of The Second Sex; Andrew O’Hagan on the moon; a review of a book called Incest and Influence: The Private Life of Bourgeois England; Will Self’s “On the Common”; review of Ian McEwen’s Solar; and then Andrew O’Hagan again.
I also read the latest issue of Room, which was the best one I’d read yet (even though I thought I wouldn’t like it, because I thought it was all about sports. It wasn’t. But even when it was, it was good).
The best thing about all this being that now my periodical backlog is not so backlogged. I’ve got three LRBS to be read, the Lists issue of The New Quarterly, and then the just-arrived CNQ. There is a distinct possibility that I might get caught up, for the first time in over a year.
And it is a bad thing that I reserve breastfeeding for reading magazines, which is part of the reason I haven’t really thought much about weaning?
May 19, 2010
I receive White Ink in the post
It has been an absolutely bumper week for books in the post. Today delivered my copy of White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Motherhood from Demeter Press. I bought this book for selfish reasons, of course, but it didn’t hurt that my purchase will help to keep Demeter Press afloat. And may I please mention other fine Demeter books Mothering and Blogging: The Radical Act of the MommyBlog and Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to the Experts. As well as the gala event this Friday to raise funds for MIRCI and Demeter Press?
I imagine I’ll be dipping in and out of this beautiful book for some time. For Grace Paley, Sonnet L’Abbe, Rosemary Sullivan, Lorna Crozier, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Ray Hsu (with whom I used to work the Saturday midnight shift at the EJ Pratt Library, I’ll have you know), Leon Rooke, Laisha Rosnau, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath, as well as many poets I have yet to discover.
There is also a Carol Potter. Do you think she is the Carol Potter,the most famous mother of all??
May 18, 2010
Figurative Devouring Only
Today we received in the post the latest from Rebecca Rosenblum. Her chapbook Road Trips has just been published by Frog Hollow Press, and is so incredibly gorgeous. The pages are a joy to caress, the endpapers are thick, fibrous and lovely, and I love the images inside which remind me of lino-cuts. And then there are her stories– I’ve read one before (though I imagine it’s changed since then) and the other will be new. How wonderful! This is one book the baby will not be permitted to eat. Figurative devouring only.
May 10, 2010
Spam in the post!
Today was amazing because I received spam in the post! A letter from Patricia Besupa Zatal, manager of a South African prime bank. She wants me to handle some kind of complicated financial transaction and feels comfortable dealing with me having already gone through my impressive profile by my country’s Chamber of Commerce. So exciting. They’re even going to give me a cut. So basically, I’m thinking about retirement.
It’s all very 1992– has Patricia never heard of the internet? What they had to have spent on stamps boggles the mind, and I can’t help worrying they might not make it back. I will also keep the stamp– South African stamps mailed my con-artists don’t arrive every day. And I’ve hung the letter on the fridge. I’m very honoured to be a part of this project and excited to see what happens going forward.
March 24, 2010
Why we read Tabatha Southey aloud
Why we read Tabatha Southey aloud at our house every Saturday morning: “And as if generations previous to us did not hang around waiting for the mail to come. One never hears a mother in a Victorian novel complain that their child is “addicted to the second post,” but a child on the Internet is always portrayed as a problem. I hear parents express remorse that their children are making friends on Facebook, which is the modern version of the old-fashion letter of introduction and “at home day” combined. Do they think their own teen years were any better spent, writing fan letters to the Bay City Rollers?”
