Street Mail 🌳

From Chapter 5:

I really get bored with the outside, because there’s never anything to do except look around. Nature is so messy, especially after a rain. There is mud splashed up on the sidewalk, wet soggy leaves and twigs have fallen everywhere, and the the street mail, what little there is in a neighborhood like this, is ruined.

But the street-mail thing is authentic, I can vouch for it. It’s one of those things in life that are based on the premise that you have nothing to lose, like Pascal’s theory about believing in God: you might as well, because if there is a God, then you’re covered; if not, what’s it matter? Who’s to care? It’s the same thing with street mail. In this world of infinite possibilities, countless permutation (of course I’m not crazy—this is the language of a sane person) and multiple choice, there is a chance that there is no chance.

I mean, what have you got to lose? If you don’t believe in this theory, you simply have the regular litter of the world around you. If you do believe in it, you have street mail, personally addressed to you. Paper clips mean you should be collecting something, tying up loose ends, making some kind of connection between things. I usually find a paper clip when I feel that my world is coming apart, or a straight pin will say the same thing, since that’s a masculine paper clip. Money is clearly and simply a reward, always showing the true worth of any job that you’ve recently completed. I always find money when I clean the house; for example, sometimes two cents in the bottom of the washing machine, a quarter in the couch cushion, a nickel when I weed. God does not believe in minimum wage, of course, and remember, you can find street mail everywhere—inside as well as outside. Book markers and holy cards are inspirational, and reading other people’s marketing lists and unpaid bills is an important way of finding a common denominator in the human condition. Mittens and winter hats are the way God takes care of you—you just pick them up and wash them, and you’re warm—remember the lilies and the birds never needing to buy clothes? If you happen to see a lot of the same thing drifting by, bottle caps or rubber bands, for instance, and you can’t see any reason for picking them up and yet you can’t get over how many of these things you see, then it’s simply a metaphoric message about something very particular to your life and you just have to file it away until you make some sense of it. God loves to hide behind a metaphor.

Being sensitive to street mail makes you look at life as if it were a game in which you have an active role and the clues to your next move are always right there in front of you. You simply have to learn how to read them. But you must never try to force the game along—the best thing you can do is to ask for a new piece of mail when you’re needing some direction and then promise that you’ll read it and abide by it when it comes. 🐔