Sometimes all it takes is a glimpse of something in the right place at an unexpected moment. This time, it was a mail truck coming out of a street onto Highway 9, which I had mistakenly decided to use as "the scenic route" today - and all of the sudden, in this area I grew up in, on the roads with no sidewalks (much less shoulders) with greenery that grows to your waist in all directions, even at the height of summer, during a day where there were thunderstorms while the sun shone I was hit with this intense feeling of nostalgia. Nostalgia for waiting for the mail to arrive.
It's weird, as I think about it, how important the mail has been in my life. When I first moved to Seattle from southern California with my family, I wrote letters to my best friend every week. I journaled incessently, and subscribed to Rolling Stone and Creem. Even when I was younger, and we moved from the suburbs to the ranch community in the hills outside of LA, I had a subscription to Tiger Beat and also Dynamite magazines, that I waited on with such anticipation. I read them over and over, memorizing all the latest news and cultural ephemera. When I began writing letters regularly, in junior high, I realized that much communication among punks and creative types was happening via letters and fanzines: which could be as simple as copied sheets of paper with photos taped on, loosely modeled on the newspaper layout I was learning in school in both junior and senior high schools (yes, AV and Paper Staff Photog nerd, that was my gig). I started responding to ads for pen pals in zines and magazines like Star Hits (yes...the '80s were a magical time of foppish brit-teen mags and skater 8x11's folded in half with one staple in the center). I lived for the mail to arrive, letters from friends, magazine transmissions that would link me to what was happening in music and politics, and even ordering things like records, sunglasses, everything I could. Every day I expected something, and knew what time (generally) the mail would come...in the summer, waiting patiently, tiptoeing in bare feel through the carport to see if the flag was down on the mail box yet (because usually I was sending something out into the world as well). I had a small thrill early in the days of MTV when I actually won a free xmas button bearing the simple M on a green background with the candy-cane "tv" logo - it was a prized badge that I wore constantly...until I gave it to a boy I liked, setting a tone for my romantic endeavors that still rings true to this day. Hey, Ty Moe, if yr out there, I want my badge back!
Anyway, as I drove I thought about how I don't look forward to mail much anymore - generally the only mail I'm happy to receive involves some sort of monetary exchange...I do love sending packages and letters though. I sent an awesome Valentine's package this year. Not that it mattered in the long run, but it was so fun to put together, and brought back that thrill of wanting to surprise someone special. Dawn, who I'll be seeing in a couple days, and I spent years sending packages and flyers and odd cards and found objects to each other. Darell and I would exchange multi-page letters every week - I remember vividly getting stressed if more days than normal passed before something arrived: was it lost? Being in a band, we booked whole tours, and did the bulk of promotion and communication via the mail. Interviews. Selling records, all of it.
I dunno where to go with this right at the moment, but I just had this intense feeling of pity for people who haven't known the joy of expecting mail. Of communication in that way, the lovely excitement of holding something in your hands that someone wrote, to you. Of their feelings on paper, to be read, and re-read. Art and trinkets to be shared, displayed, treasured. In this age of amazing technology, I miss the rush of expecting mail, of having something to look forward to...yeah. More soon maybe. I just will miss the USPS when it's gone. It's amazing that you can put a piece of cardboard that you've written a message to someone on into a box, and that it will travel around the world. Amazing. That sort of communication, that sort of connection seems archaic, I know, but it also seems so much more...what? Genuine? Not that I don't love the speed and ease of the internet and cellphones, etc, and am glad for the people it's brought back into my life...it also has taken some of the mystery away as well, some of the romance of sharing bits of yourself over time and growing close....its not better, its just different, and like so many things will merely be something I remember from my early life just like my parents remember when radios started becoming replaced by televisions. Only way, way faster.
