Sunday, February 5, 2017

Postcard #149: "for a bowel movement"



Sent a reply to A./A.
Politics and current events have crippled me in my armchair.  I can not have phone calls with people without devoting time to talking about politics.  Which I find dumb...more and more often.  This sort of shit is why I can not let myself on facebook anymore.  This is the sort of shit I want to type into peoples facebook's.  I can't. I am just tired of everything while being tired.

There is always a little voice inside me that strives to motivate the desire for self improvement.  The voice that sarcastically inserts the idea "Hey Tom! Instead of typing furiously into a comment box perhaps you could debate whether you should or should not be on an SSRI?"  I've always been a fan of the concept of entropy.  But as soon as reality starts to devolve into chaos now I am scrambling for some sense of structure.  Some sort of understanding...a mental algorithm to make things appear to make sense to me.  There is no monochrome.  No way to know if I am right or wrong or just repulsive.  I hope I am at least equally all of the above.

I am reading over the postcard now and I am glad I don't have her address.  I am a phony.  Right, wrong, a phony and repulsive.

Text:
"I wish I had your address, but I don't. You just posted something dumb on social media and it took so much willpower not to call you a fucking idiot.  It saddens me that I am proud of myself for that, like it's some accomplishment for not calling someone out on facebook.  I think it's great people are engaged in "debate" but as a friend of mine recently explained when discussing "the validity of facts one person is just fucking wrong and another is wasting their time on a fucking idiot who will never get it." -(J.S.) It is sort of pointless to call you a fucking idiot.  I can not insult you into engaging reality.  I wish in student government or class council I could have asked you, "Hey, do you think when you are older you are going to elect a racist, lying, sexist, philandering coward and businessman in name only to be president of the free world?  Do you think the president of the free world should take steps to ensure it isn't one?  Maybe I should seek a root cause?   Let's entertain for a single moment the unforgivable...that there is no god to repent to and we must rely on our own actions to be good people? Perhaps ultimately there is noone to ask forgiveness from?  We must own our demons and it's our children who must endure the hell that we leave for them beyond our graves."

Postcard #148: "Tina"


Sent a reply to Tina.  I realized in two sentences that even though this card had magazine style backing to it if I were to keep using the sharpie pen I was using I was not going to complete the entire card.  I had to use my normal pen and just hope the ink will not smudge.  Luckily it worked.  I hope the postal service is not going to challenge just how water proof the ink is...

Text:
I liked the piece so much I bought 2 postcards of it when I was in Salamanca.  I have alot of postcards at this point.  Some better than others.  I have quite a few that are "mine".  I try to send those to people who I think have the remotest chance or appreciating or being enamored the same way I was when I got the card at the giftshop.  I've learned its all subjective...Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and half the time people don't even realize what they like just what they are supposed to like. I try to get people the cards they ask for on postcrossing ...some what collections or certain types of cards... many people just do not want certain cards Ad cards, "multiview" cards, or oversized cards or "Homemade" cards.  I am on the fence about that but I will reserve my opinions to a homemade card.  Even know I as I draw to a close I wonder if I missed the point of what you wanted in a postcard I am not sure if this was personal enough even though I was writing this for you.  As you can see sometimes I underestimate and over estimate the space on my cards all the time.  - Tom
PS.  Loved your card.  Will be in FL in April perhaps we can meet up for dinner?"

Postcard #147: "Dead To Me"



Sent to Bill S.
Front text: 16745 Looking East From Vista House - Columbia River Highway, Ore.

Back Text:
www.minormumbles.com
Bill, 
This is where I had my revelation that New Jersey was dead to me.  The expanse and power of the wind being pulled from the Gorge.  The are only a few things in my memories that leave me speechless...all of which require a considerable drive to observe. There is nearly nothing in New Jersey that is as humbling as this...with the stark exception of one thing. Hurricane Sandy.  That was so utterly incredible and devastating simultaneously.  To witness first hand the power of a world I could no longer say I shared.  I just happen to live in it.  So it certainly begs to ask if Oregon possesses so much beauty that exists as a sort of present "potential" energy to be observed.  What is Oregon capable of when it wants to show me it's "Sandy" level of humility or active "kinetic" energy?

-Tom