Yup, i ramble on about items arrived by post and think you should hang out (i’ll make tea)
Opening a big santa sack of recent items by post including aerogrammes/ aerograms, passports, international driver’s licenses, documents, hotel letterhead, records (namechecking recent interview on Rice Field Records), postcards, etc from Nepal, Monaco, East German DDR, probably i dunno… Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, United Nations, others i don’t quite understand.
Also mail from Ukraine which allows mention of intrepid postal workers delivering despite war and displacement, + blabbity blah about guest coming to visit, feeling discombobulated after #MECFS “crash mode” – that’s it except the parts i forgot. Argh prob a ramble about the “passport forgery project” {recalling i riffed about taking “intimate documents” and adding life to them}
Bonus: Rice Field Records Interview
{this should and will be a separate bonus post but in the meanwhile…}
While in Sri Lanka for extended Ayurveda treatment, and later rambling a bit, I met an earnest young artist named Rasika specializing in postcards, diligently hand-painted and reflecting visual motifs of his culturally unique homeland.
a variety of Rasika’s handmade postcards
I, unsurprisingly, purchased many many postcards from him and struck up a friendship. He would come to my villa to work on paintings and I would sometimes visit him at his stand at the market in historic Fort Galle.
Rasika and his pals and me, (top left) at villa, (top right) in tuk tuk, (bottom) at market
I mailed many of his postcards around the world so hope his spirit lives on refrigerators and in shoeboxes and scrapbooks as well as in hearts.
Rasika’s card (along one from Stick no Bills) on a fridge in Utah
I purchased him a special ink stamp as a token of friendship and he also help me acquire a return address stamp.
Archives mailed to an invalid address, delayed upon transition, relevance no longer relevant, however, archive as needed if needed affectionately assembled
Remembering shelter from the storm every possible kind in San Francisco, “here are the keys tie use anything you like“
Postcard, written last year, was waiting for an address, now acquired - as such, sent this curious chap on his journey from the scotch and cigar "Drawing Room" at the Majestic Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to a mountain town across the Pacific. Red Velvet jacket not included.
Also: “I find that postcards require something quite beautiful between countries beyond politics and governments In that that little slip of paper touched so many hands making its way from me to you. It carries so many memories and so many intentions…
At first glimpse it’s just a goofy picture scribbled up but that original photo came from me on a meandering healing journey, not all that long after we sat together in San Francisco or I hid out at your house… in the “drawing room” at the Majestic Hotel in kuala lumpur, I made friends with a barman named Sunday (wrote a poem about him), wore a red velvet smoking jacket, drank hot toddys as i picked up a terrible cold on an overnight train from Thailand where i shared a cabin with a Buddhist monk in his saffron robes, a suitcase full of cigarettes and gold watches.
From one Leo to another, we carry-on, gently, kindly and intrepidly”
It’s just me tidying up, please keep expectations in check
Absolutely Nothing of interest, just tidying up – like Japan’s version of Marie Kondo – in the “Giggling Piglet Studio and Consulate” in a re-purposed storehouse barn in provincial Japan.
Music incidentally plays in the background by “John K Samson / The Weakerthans” something something ++ “Back Country New Road” album “Ants from up Here”.
Really nothing, except for a Nepali Topi hat and moving scissors and papers I suppose.
Arts and crafts update from the Kura barn withrecent dossiers of various mixed media projects including: Suez Canal panoramas, more Kerala India spy photos & sherbet-coloured houses in oil pastels, poetry & travelogues on hotel stationæry, and the circular story of a postcard series from Cascadia, also a fun-gible Shiba Eno stamp.
From Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel (i have my own version of this item now)
Due to an affection for stationery, letters, scrapbooks and whatnot, i notice such items when viewing moving pictures. As such, i am often inclined to capture screenshots for my memory.
Sometimes, oddly enough, these are printed and put into scrapbooks in a sorta meta-remix. Either way, to keep these tidbits close at hand, assorted specimen are collected within.
From Miyazaki’s (ummm which one is that? Totoro?) with a Dempo (telegram) being delivered… Yup, love telegramsThe titular (Marvellous) Mrs Maisel character hanging art in her apartment – warms my heartA radio and air mail envelope from… ummmm maybe The Crown or The Americans (i should take notes, well i did “Alabama” – what does this mean?)Another radio, can’t recall from where but sure amused by the lovely inky pen detailsFrom one of the versions of GTO Great Teacher Onizuka – not the original, a re-do of some kind, anyhow the point is this great ID card/certificate with luxurious “preferential treatment” translation
While doing a photo shoot for Ichiro’s 100 days at Homare Photo Atelier here in Okayama, the photographer Yoshihiro Matsushita-san and i rocked a fun mise en scéne with:
typewriter
sea trunk
Lomo sardine camera (with yellow tiny flash)
books, various
rocking horse (just ‘cause)
my ever-present been-all-around-this-world suitcase
~ in front of a battered green paper (shade of van Gogh’s pool table) and a red rug… to go with Ryoko’s stellar Fluevog shoes & 1964 vintage lace party dress (such details!) and my bespoke-in-Chiang Mai secret agent suit, Stetson fedora & Florsheim Imperial shoes (bartered). Ichiro rocked a sweet blue Japanese onesie – gift from my dude Kitazawa Takaya-san.
Time Traveler Family, v. 2
Anyhow… (with my foggy self) we worked quickly – imaging ourselves sitting still for a bellows camera before setting sail to steam around a cape or horn – maybe Taisho-era, maybe just back from Venus & teleporter time gauge malfunctioned. There was probably a daguerreotype and/or dirigible involved, if not a phone box at least.
Time Traveler Family, v. 3
What is displayed here are 7 of the best iterations which were then made into some special cards, ergo: the digital snaps were printed on laid textured paper, then attached to handmade washi paper with rough edges with olden photo corners, annotated with a fountain pen as was custom poetry written on reverse in English and Japanese, various appropriately cancelled postal stamp glued, usual inky stamps for sure (urgent! confidential! air mail – or a suitcase) – some got seal stickers, often slightly more dangerous metallic sealing wax which caused minor fire damage #smouldering!
Then finally some received our family hanko stamp, and Ichiro’s inked finger print – truly collectible. Then… (very) delicately scanned (at this point forgotten how many digital to analog conversions overall in the project) – Just barely in time to get the “pick of the litter” posted to wish greetings on January 1 to you lovelies around this spinning globe.
Steady On Time Travelers – reverse of art card with poem in English and Japanese (plus Ichiro’s fingerprint, family hanko and other details)
Regardless, we are all the time travelers and must hold steady, be adaptable, be where we are, find the ways to blend in (or gracefully exit) when finding one’s self in an unpredicted situation, eat healthy rations (whether known or not) and ease into comfortable shelter as possible.
Time Traveler Family, v. 5
While the world spins fast, let’s breathe backwards to slow it down. {noting after I wrote this poem – alluding world is spinning fast *emotionally* and thus causing pandemonium in many ways/souls – i learned physicists also suggest the planetary orbit speed has physically increased. I do not understand their methods but seems agree with their results – albeit primarily aesthetically.}
Time Traveler Family, v. 6
Finally: the final handmade creations / all slightly different in photo & embellishments went to various thoughtful directions, ergo, 1 to seitai sensei, 1 to forestry sensei in Noto, 1 to tea ceremony teacher, 1 to ephemera master in VicBC, 1 to writing professor (ret’d, Torrey, UT), 1 to artist Noriko Miyake – 2 for archives (for the inevitable retrospective exhibit of cards, letters, visual poetry and invitations).
I stayed in Sri Lanka (near Galle) for a while doing some Ayurvedic treatments, drinking tea and wondering wtf i was doing etc. As such, i made an address stamp for ease in my copious correspondence, usually performed at a tea shack down the road.
Sri Lanka / writing letters at the tea shackSri Lanka / tea at the tea shackSri Lanka / tea shack as seen via Ggle Maps Street ViewBonus: Sri Lanka / postal stamps (cancelled)Artifacts: Sri Lanka / ink address stamp
