Dinosaur Bees

Picture of a Postcard
Davy Carren

The mail’s late. The mail’s not coming. Saturdays are Sundays. The cost of a radio is not affecting the letter rates. In the nicest while, a discovery was made: being P.O.-boxed to the afternoon has left a late snail’s trail of federal crimes to take a peek at. Realer fakes like ours let us get the worthiest sentiments exactly incorrect.

For the latest news on life-penalty sentences please refer to the “Umpteenth Times Decadence” section of your Renter’s Manual. Findings there will be updated weekly, or as often as the mail slot’s girth allows—on weekdays only, of course. Do not be fearful of dogs. They will vomit socks before biting. Gradually come to accept them, spiritually, into the fold of your warmest thoughts. Cockle them. You will have time, or, laughing in the face of time, you will make time do it for you. Either way, make the least out of your satchel’s purse-like droop, and skim return addresses as much as delivery schedules will allow. Go for it. It is a bada boom to your bing.

Mail my regards to Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca. He’s expecting them. Please include six self-addressed stamped envelopes for his pleasure. Also, bill Dante Alighieri’s family for the cost of the transaction, including all foreign fees and sung-canto credits. Suspicious activity will cease to be monitored until we’ve made up for a certain to-be-announced amount of our debt. This is not a warning: keep your shoes without holes. Compensation will not be rewarded.

Basically, you have fourteen options (ref. RM, pg.14, sec. 1.4). Don’t lead yourself into thinking about the differences between them; just stop before you go for broke; think about what you are not missing, what you don’t have, and what will make you rabid, mouth-foamy, and mercilessly kind. You are not about to get off difficult. Recommendations: eat two hotdogs per bun, return your salt to the ocean, and highlight whatever other clauses in the appendix that you think will be necessary for the most faded content in the manual to make more sense to laymen and scholars alike.

Think about what you hear on the street, things like, “I am the ragged man who places industrial-strength black trash bags on the sidewalk during the day. I roll them up neatly at night, line them up against the wall, and squat down and check them for traces of chalk or brittle leaf crumbs. People who walk by look at me rarely. As for me, I smoke Gauloises cigarettes and watch dawn crumple. I dream without a reply.” If you become distracted by these things it will become more of who you are not. Remember: walk; do not stroll.
The mail’s not here. The mail’s not there. Some like it in the slot? It’s hot. It’s cold. It’s arriving. How young? Not older than months, days; or not instantaneous. Like us: not registered, not assured, and not dazed. On the way. Crossing continents. Horses, boats, planes and trains. By foot. We are merely instruments in an odd form of torture. We are not mailing; we are mailed.

Waiting has not made us old. Steps must be taken (ref. RM, pg.46, col. b-7) to coddle oversleepers who hall-pass through pre-noon hours, to depend on the groggier motives in sidesteppers, to crenellate and sponge-seal envelopes, moisten, refresh, elude pigeons and walkway gardens and patchy lawns, to stride with sincerity while riffling through satchel, to slip between metal walls, to not crinkle, to not crumple, to not leave outside without a note to the inside reading, “Good. That’s not better.”

Discovering one is lousy hardly does bad for the instincts. The manuals here have run out of paper. Order more. That’s an order. Lousy works too, you see, and you are, as always, a strange sort. Harness some of your effort. It’ll be don’t-or-live for a while.

The mail’s out, and the mail’s back in. Post it. Let her rip. Swirls of penmanship. Typewritten. Hardy. Tiny pictures. Boring junk of leaflets, magazines, glossy advertisements. Your emotional relationship with the future is warped; it is only what you long for. The mail’s delivered. The mail is not sold.

We doubt it is necessary to look any further into the matter.

Consider this: sensitive notes on indicators of excitement levels in fans of restrictive binding labor are and have been kept under wraps for more years than most of us can remember. To do this job well one needs to take into account the things that would make this job more difficult while making it seem like one is doing it with the greatest of ease. A trap? No. The pavement here is stained with the blood of innocents, gone through heaven and back it would seem, and never are we supposed to plead for a raise in thoughtfulness. Fatter to grow hungry, it is immoral to impede the mail’s progress. We must tromp onward. It is bound to our survival. And your timing, somehow, will someday be magnificent.

Ben Franklin dealt in bulk too. Consult the minutes of the 2nd continental congress. So hitch up those suspenders. Headaches were not invented by Thomas Neale’s letters and pacquet dispatchers. All waterways lead to other homes, after all, and now (in striped blues and grays, some with large-brimmed hats, some with white gloves) we march onward to P&DCs all over the land, dumping whatever we’ve stashed away into the DPRCS, washing our souls by the parcel sorters. We are postmarked and bar-coded. We are ZIP-coded and M-bagged, money-ordered, bundled and Dead-Letter-Officed. So sing: “Carriers, clerks, handlers, and processors unite!” Be robust and forwarded and carried away. Remember, you are the reason the streets are named and lighted, why houses are numbered and sidewalks exist. Down from seven to once daily, we still thrive on regularity, punctuality, and the indomitable force of footsteps charging with certitude through the weather’s worst. Be not short in the mouth (ref. RM pg. 1, sec.1, col. 48-b).

While you sort (registered mail, of course, not included), try to maintain dignity, at least in appearances. If a bystander (guilty or innocent, as it were) should ask, “Whence goeth thy belles-lettres?” You will insist, with a small drop of ironic fury in your tone, “Where to when, or if, well, there ain’t nobody knows,” and promptly, without a coy or rebuking look, return to your task.

Warning: (esp., i.e., when it comes to parcels) Do not grow weary of express, tracking, various classes, priority (have yours, please!), postage meter imprints, eVS, C.O.D.s, and restricted deliveries. Be not perturbed. There are more signature confirmation packages in heaven and earth than could be dreamt of in all of your branches, offices, stations, classified units, ISCs, ASFs, RECs, or any of the myriad postal facilities of your philosophy. Be at peace with the constant ebb and flow of it all. You are all a small part of gargantuan, wondrous whole.

The mail is happening. The mail is there before it is here. The mail arrives. Vehicle fleets. Flats. Schemes. Notes slipped under a door. Couriering away what remains of the past. Love drawn on an old receipt, torn to bits, sprinkled into a Side Seam flap. We are less than what makes us more, and we ship, sternly, devoutly, what does not belong to us, delivering and taking away what’s left of others’ lives. Be not careless. What beauty borrows from one, what is swiped from lost joy, a trinket fallen through the gears of time, can be relabeled, shifted, redirected, and brought home from away. There is always hope stored as the value of what items we choose to send off to places unknown. And if they are returned, inked, “No Such Person At This Address”? Well, in this case, please refer to RM pg. 17, sec. 2, ln. Xv-ii. Be brave and continue with purpose. The world will not stop and wait for you; but still, remember, you deserve to be here. So, be kind. After all, you must admit, despite all inspections, deceit and foul play and various types of fraud and abuse and political patronage and myriad other malfeasance, this here world is still a pretty swell place to do your kicking around in. Strive to be received with good cheer.

DAVY CARREN is a writer living near the top of a small hill in San Francisco, California.

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