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Found
Since I moved here, I have received a short supply of mail. The ordinary complaints of bills, mailers and flyers. Searching through stacks of savings coupons, I find nothing that makes my eyes wider. Nothing. Seriously nothing. Just a few oversized red envelopes with my Netflix DVD rentals. And I am usually forewarned of their arrival by another type of mail, electronic. So no surprises there. But today, I received a package from a far away place. Name and address written in hand. Not 'Resident' or 'Our Friend at' such and such street Santa Rosa. It was a brown padded envelope, the undersized kind, and it had many soft-colored stamps of birds and bridges painted with the black postal mark from a foreign country. A purple-blue 'air mail' sticker was cocked to the side of my name and address. I squeezed the padding. Turned it over in my hand, read the barcode for no reason than to confirm this was not Made in the USA. I exited the gate locked mail-box area and walked briskly along a winding path, sided by a dry creek that trickled these days with flow from the previous week's rain. Arriving at my apartment, I fumbled the key in the lock, lighted the lamp and sat Christmas-like with anticipation of finding out what was inside. By this time I had known the sender. A faithful friend and correspondent. A sharer of many things from sipping on hot coffee and staring at the sea. I opened it. I unearthed a little black book. Dark as a starless night. But inside, white pages were shining as if you were staring into the sun. Silent screams rose from the pages as I fingered multiple turns. They wanted me to block out the blinding white with pen marks in blue and red and pencil gray. Pristine. Before it is filled. And precious when it is complete. Accompanying my present was a post card of Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. Tender is. In a three-piece suit, looking dapper with a sensitive smile. The card was with my friend 'in good times and bad' and wore warm written thoughts, worn edges and the sole circle of a pinprick. This card was cherished once and will be cherished again in another part of the world where electronic mail was the only correspondence that brought these two computers closery together. Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my writer's block of a heart. This gesture means more than you know. Even if.... Even if my harvest notebook had been returned - reward if found. The paperback notebook was found in a Mexican take out restaurant stuck between a supermarket and nail salon in a strip mall near my apartment and it remained there for three weeks, magnetically clipped to the side of a soda machine. When the unidentified number rang my cell and the thick heavy accent of a Mexican woman asked for me, I didn't even recognize the name of the place or the memory of eating there that fateful day. I looked at my last entry, nothing to the extent. But somewhere in between the loss and the distress, somewhere someone was thoughtful enough to return it to me and another rewarded me with a new book, never to be lost. Again. This is the way the world should be. And this is the way this journal entry will end, as other thoughts are eclipsed in shadow. Your faithful note taker and sharer of words on electronic paper.
Post - November'06 Back to home...
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