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postal prank from Chris Stadler,
with rubber stampings by T. Brown,
using the stamps sent by A. Warner |
Not all mail art is delivered by the postal service, though most is. Delivery by private citizens is the rarer method. For example, the package of old New In Chess magazines from one "Magnus Carlsen" showed up in the hallway of my apartment building yesterday. Further research determined the sender to be one Christopher Stadler, an associate of Mail Art News - Media Specialist, Ariel Greenwood. And then there's the set of rubber stamped post cards from rubber stamp collector, Amy Warner, which made their way to me via Tom Warner, another associate of A. Greenwood from the Pratt Library. If it's art (pranking is an artform) and it came to the Mail Art News headquarters in an envelope, it's mail art. As a reminder, we're in the process of relocating our headquarters from Baltimore to Aberdeen, Maryland.
And so, as in an attempt to shake this tabasco sauce addiction, and after the UFO invasion of a number of cities in Asia, which was quite out of the blue, I decided the logical thing for me to attempt was an invasion of Antarctica. The visitors from an, as yet, undetermined planet do possess high technology, but they're also hindered by crippling social anxiety, so while they were able to take control of various governmental and media systems remotely, they have not been able to summon the nerve to take over the agricultural industries of the people of Asia yet. Just to be sure though, the citizens have taken to growing as much as they can indoors, or as close to their dwellings as possible, should the aliens decide one day to have the courage necessary for seizing the larger fields and farms.
I'd been living in Philadelphia and Rome at the time, traveling back and forth as needed, and frankly I'd had enough of the whole UFO business. I made the decision to single handedly conquer the continent of Antarctica to once and for all earn an article about myself in National Geographic magazine, which I'd started reading almost religiously in my most recent previous life. Was I not at least as important as some long prophesied alien arrival?
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| even more mail from A. Greenwood's Pratt Library associates |
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| even more mail from A. Greenwood's Pratt Library associates (1927) |
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| even more mail from A. Greenwood's Pratt Library associates |
With the blessing of the Sears, Roebuck, and Co., I headed south, waaaay south, beyond places like Atlanta and Miami. Far beyond Havana, and Devil's Island, and the Amazonian celebrants of Carnival in Rio De Janeiro. I made one final camp in Tierra Del Fuego for a few weeks, where a postcard from
nonlocal variable found me, with a reminder to get my daily dose of micro plastics. That would not be a problem, as I was going to be swimming the rest of the way to the vast frozen wastelands of Antarctica, so I was sure to come upon any number of floating trash islands or if I was feeling bold, perhaps I might steal a fish from some gullible seal.
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| incoming from Amy Warner |
After checking to make sure my wetsuit was screwed on properly, I ate a heavy meal, including a delightful trilobyte stew, with some local clowns. I filed all of my memories away. I wouldn't need them where I was going.
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incoming from Amy Warner
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I won't bore you with the details of the swim from Tierra Del Fuego to Prima Vera Base, which I successfully captured from the Argentines using nothing but a list of carefully selected puns.
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| incoming from Amy Warner |
This family of penguins was quite keen to learn more about the game of chess. One of them even spoke a little Spanish, though regrettably I was not fluent in the language, having spent so many years in public school learning the dead languages of ancient Mesopotamia. Imagine if you will, a younger me rattling off Hammurabi's Code to my parents and trying to enslave my siblings and the other kids in the neighborhood. "But Mom...Marduk says it's ok!" Boys will be boys, as they say. I outgrew that phase once I learned how much food I could eat in a single sitting. Man, I was a good eater, growing up.
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| incoming from Amy Warner |
I would often dream of the older women in the neighborhood bringing me strange new foods to try. I'd grown so tired of cereal and Doritos, but what else was there? We were upper lower-class economic migrants from an Age of Industry on its way out.
We'd arrived.
As I reached McMurdo Station, I snapped out of the trip down memory lane, chiding myself for thinking memories had any value or meaning anymore.
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| incoming from Amy Warner |
I got into a heated argument with the unofficial mayor of McMurdo Station, a fish who was also coincidentally named Thomas Brown. He said he had always been here and that this was his land, but I knew he came from somewhere else. If he was in fact the true Conquistador of Antarctica, would I not know, deep in my heart? My mind's eye saw through him entirely.
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| incoming from Amy Warner |
What had I gotten myself into this time? Did I really just have an argument with a fish? My judgement was clouded by the accumulation of so many karmic lessons. There was only one way forward. Obsessive and compulsive cleaning. The Ross Island jazz ensemble was pretty good, if you like falling for jazz.
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| incoming from Amy Warner |
When I learned I wasn't the first person to throw it all away and for riches and fame in Antarctica, I dropped so many F-bombs. The whole world was in fact F-bombing Antarctica.
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| incoming from Amy Warner |
Dozens of men and women had ventured to undertake this fool's errand before me. He we all are.
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| incoming from Amy Warner |
Did I even need to leave home to learn this lesson? Was there not some YouTuber who could have conveyed this message to me on my break, in the lunch room at work? Perhaps I was worshipping the wrong neurons.
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| incoming from Amy Warner |
One thing was for certain though. The Intergalactic Space Lords and Space Ladies were on my side, at one point. Had I gone too far, or not far enough? And with that, I realized I didn't need to be the first, only the best. The best me I could be.
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