Found:
(Between pages 108 and 109 of Papillon in the used book sale perpetually taking place in the entry of the local library)

A 4"x6" envelope with the following features:
- Postmark: "U.S. POSTAL SERVICE, MA 021; 1 PM 6 JAN 1976"
- Stamp: Two blue-and-white 10-cent stamps bearing an image of the Jefferson Memorial, with "We hold these Truths..." on top, just above Jefferson's signature.
- Addressed: In black ink, a woman's name (probably common but certainly unfamiliar), a quite local address currently the site of a real estate establishment.
- Miscellany: "AIR MAIL" is written and twice-underlined in black ink, the word "MAIL" obscuring the year on the postmark; dominating the adhesive flap is a picture of an orange striped kitten looking amiably down and to the right at a small red bird, separated from the kitten by the right diagonal edge of the flap, which is not straight but a series of small arcs; the bird is looking back with an indeterminate expression, and the kitten's tail goes over the top and onto the front of the envelope, just touching the left side of the postmark.

The envelope and kitten are torn, the latter approximately through the midsection, head and ear. The envelope contains a letter, written in cursive in black ink, which reads as follows (names omitted):

[Front]

1/6/76

[Affectionate nickname corresponding to first name of the addressee],
This letter will sound long and complicated, maybe even
cruel in some parts. I hope you can understand it.
I felt that I found the real you on two different
nights. The first time was the night we met at the club.
You seemed so happy and caring. We talked easily and
got along fine. The second time was my first nite in Erie.
On those 2 nights you were exactly the same, a person who
I could share things with and maybe even love with.
All the rest of the time you just seemed to be "going
thru the motions," being polite or talk like you were forced
to. It was like that when we said goodbye the first time
and when I was at your house. You were just plain cold.
The Erie trip had so many events it was unreal.
Thursday nite was fine. Instead of being careful you got a
sunburn and then you were real bitchy on Friday. The
only good thing about our dinner was the food. I ended up
dropping you off at 8:30. Saturday we spent most of the
day waiting for [man's name]. Real fun. Saturday nite I just kept
drinking because I finally got pissed off at you. I
wasn't angry because we didn't sleep together, although
at that time it was the only thing that would have evened
things up. Sunday you said goodbye, but it felt to me that
you wouldn't have cared if I had gotten killed driving home.
[Back]
I know it's cruel but I feel that even now. You just don't
care about me and I care about you. That's why I
write and go to the club - to see you. The only times
you were nice was when you were drinking. If it
takes alcohol for you to be affectionate then we should
both give up. I would even try to come down to Rider
on weekends if we could have a good relationship. And
don't say it couldn't work because I've got friends
who've made it work.
There's only one question I'd like you to answer.
Which person is the real [nickname and last name] - the kind, affect-
ionate person that shows when she's drunk or the cold
and strange one when she's not??

I drove thru N.J. on Saturday on my way to Kentucky.
I was so close, and yet I didn't even stop to see you.
I guess you make me feel unwanted, yet I really want
you. If there's another guy, tell me. The sad thing is
that I might even be able to love that person from
the Playboy Club, yet now I don't know if it's worth
a try. It's up to you now; want to try?
Take care and write me about this, ok.

your friend,
[man's first name]

The last line of the letter is the last line of the paper, spaces were only where I indicated them. The book in which I found it dates back to 1971; perhaps the letter remained there for decades? Otherwise I'm forced to conclude that it held some real significance for the addressee, and perhaps I should make some effort to find her so I can return it. This may be difficult, given the facts: her last name is likely different now, and the address is no longer hers.

I, Product: A Belated, Trifling Response

"Belated" is possibly understating things: this is the internet age, after all, and it was over four years ago that Jamie Kellner, CEO of Turner Broadcast Systems, responded as follows to a question about why digital video recorders are damaging to the cable industry:

"Because of the ad skips.... It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial... you're actually stealing the programming."

Kellner skillfully maneuvers the situation to pretend that the transaction he's concerned about is one between the network and the viewer. The network provides and viewers both pay and recieve by idly watching. Certainly most people who read the above quotation didn't take it too seriously, either because it sounded so ridiculous or because they took some delight in Kellner's frustration. It's certainly possible that some folks bought the complaint as legitimate, but hopefully more of them recognized its absurdity. After all, there is no transaction taking place between the viewer and the network. There are indeed contracts in place, but they are between the network and advertisers; viewers are the product. Kellner, by identifying as contractual the relationship between viewer and network, implicitly states that we can enter into a binding legal contract simply by being present in front of a television during a certain period of time - a most passive equivalent of signing on the "x."

Advertisers pay great sums of money with the understanding that the networks will manage to coerce a set number of people into watching what is charitably referred to as "content," but should be referred to as "bait." The sole effort of the networks is to seek out viewers, to entrap them. We are nothing more than quarry, and when the mouse manages to remove the cheese from the trap without being trapped, it is ridiculous to complain to the mouse that you had a deal. You must more firmly entwine the bait and the snare. In the context of television this is known as product placement, which is generally undesirable because it exposes the true nature of the system.

Perhaps you are willing to adopt Kellner's rendition of the situation, and consider yourself party to a deal taking place. If this is the case, I beg that you recognize what you are in reality delivering as your half of the bargain. If you decide that each hour of "content" is worth surrendering a few more slices of your brain for, then by all means, return to your television and sign.

Sick Transit II

(Transit: The psychological deficit)

There was a time in my childhood when the automobile meant nothing to me. This was before adolescence, of course, before freedom meant to travel to a place where Mother couldn't reach me. At this time, geography was as it should be for all of us. My experience outside the home was a contiguous mass of the woods outside my home. It's not even right to use the phrase "outside the home," because my home, correctly, was connected to the woodsy world I travelled in with the Deckers next door. Contiguity may not seem like much, but it's a beautiful and healthy aspect of many of our childhood worlds.

The automobile, before I even realized it, robbed my mind of the capacity to correctly conceive of the contiguity of this world. I know my home, my work, the supermarket, but now they are individual locales, not parts relative to a greater scheme. As a child I could find my way through the woods to my local Stewart's - everything was one, there was no limit to direction. The road, with its oversimplified duality of direction, combats this by pretending two directions are enough. It is simply a line with turns. You know your home and you know your workplace, and you know the necessary turns, on that paved web dictated by others, to get from one to another. But the automobile has robbed our minds of all true points of reference, of the capacity for solo travel. Even disregarding the obstacle of distance, could we make our way to work and back, or even to the bowling alley and back, if deprived of the landmarks provided by the Department of Transportation? It is a sneaky form of dependance: you most likely wouldn't contest it, but by accepting the pavement as our sole means of transit we have acquiesced to government-approved destinations. Of course you can hike, but these days to hike is backwards, quaint, practically a throwback to a simpler day. Hiking is seen as a hobby; a liberal practice that is done occasionally for its own sake. It is no longer a means to an end. It is indeed no longer capable of being this, as most geographical ends have been moved farther than legs, as a means, can conveniently carry us.

Every commercial that advertises a new automobile contributes to the idea that the diversity in automotives is diversity in travel - and that a part of our identity is which car we select. Each is a swing of the axe, aimed, perhaps accidentally, at eliminating our capacity for self-directed travel. If ever I get a chance to return to my third-grade home and test my ability to walk to Stewart's via the woods alone, I'll know for certain whether I still have hope.

PostScript: This is only going to get worse as more and more cars are built with visual displays that no longer require us to know even lefts and rights - they tell you when to turn! Will our children even be able to mentally orientate their position in town, or their town's in the state? I, for one, will be buying mine maps of the county and pushing them outdoors.

Sick Transit

Transit is a self-destructive system, and a poor replacement for what preceded it. Flora and fauna have given way to pavement and automobiles. The former pair may have been a brutal system with chaotic rules of its own, but it seldom, at least, saw one party suffer without a corresponding benefit. The latter pair is merciless, and that without life; the automobile is created for the pavement, the pavement for the automobile, but when the act for which they are created is performed, both deteriorate. Why resign ourselves to the perpetuation of something that must crumble, and indeed crumbles from the very point of its creation and as a necessary effect of the fulfillment of its function?

Surely some will argue that if this disintegration is certain anyway, then any movement to diminish the system is superfluous, or at least not particularly pressing. Well, I part from environmentalists in that it is not the future with which I am concerned but the present. There is nothing else, after all. I resent the constant maintenance and rebuilding and repaving; this continual self-indulgent production of ever greater fleets of trolling, rolling, racing, defacing, hurtling masses of metal and glass are an affront to all living. Why must we, those of us living in this particular timespan, which began with the mass production of dino machina in the 1920's and shows no sign of ending any time soon, why must we accept our fate as the sole sufferers of this physical and psychological intrusiveness?

Aesthetic value is another issue altogether, though the visible difference between mother nature and the current dino machina that reigns as her replacement affects one more strongly than any words. ("Words are only painted fire. A look is the fire itself." Mark Twain)

Your thoughts again: "Does that say psychological?"

It does indeed. More to come.

My Commercially Appropriated Brain

I fear for myself. For my very identity. I have trouble identifying myself as an individual as anything more than my brain and its contents. We have all learned by now that an individual's identity and merit is independent of their skin color, their physical appearance, and that one cannot know a person without becoming acquainted with their mind. Old news, but this is the source of my fear...despite the fact that the brain is a person's essence, I find myself a member of a society in which pieces of this essence are doled out to highest bidders, for payment between external parties. With each brand name or owned image that I see, my identity is stolen from me, through the appropriation of a piece of that by which I identify myself. This is no passive side effect of commerce. The strategy is a deliberate one - what will stick in my head, what will I be unable to forget, what will change my behavior and my tastes, to benefit others. This alone is frightening enough, but the wide reach of so many advertisers condemns me to a darker sentence - an identity that is increasingly similar to that of the stranger I walk by on the street. I try not to envision my brain as a pie graph, for this makes me bitter with the futile frustration of being an increasingly acute wedge. At what point will it cease?

I decide not to stick around and find out. I make the perhaps childish decision to purge my home of brand names and advertising, in the interest of a counter-offensive on behalf of the portion of my brain that is still my own. It frustrates me that each product functions also as an advertisement for itself, every time I look at it. I drag a garbage bag around my apartment and fill it with colorful labels that adorn too many surfaces, labels that extol the virtues and disguise the deficiencies of the products they adorn. It takes hours. I scratch the name off my soap. I scratch the name off my toothbrush. I scratch the name off of the pills I take to stop my head from hurting. As if there is a child in the house, I draw a little picture of a throbbing head on the label-free bottle, that I don't mistake the pills for something else. I put duct-tape over the names on the coffee cans, and around my toothpaste tubes. But eventually I sit, somewhat satisfied with a visual atmosphere that is apparently under my control again. Reflecting that my own living space is only the tiniest fraction of the bought world, I look out the window to gain some perspective. You know, to keep myself from getting too much of a feeling of accomplishment. I immediately see four billboards, and close the blinds.

Yes, my apartment is now my own, but rather than reflecting my personality, it seems to have an overall feeling of LACK. I decide this is a temporary side effect relative to the visual flood to which I've become accustomed, and that I will become acclimated. I sit on the couch and the lack translates to a sort of visual silence that makes the usual silence unbearable. I need music, but when I kneel to operate my stereo I am faced with another brand name. A big one. I don't panic at first, but stand to get an overall sense of the room, assess the situation, obviously I've missed some things. When I realize the current state of the room, I want to punch a wall. My attempts thus far seem feeble. I have done away with countless insignificant trademarks only to create, with the sudden simplicity, a sort of shrine to the big names that dominate the room. The corporations whose names are welded on to my television and my stereo, and my speakers, and my computer, comprise a larger portion of what I have come to loathe today than anything I've managed to scratch or peel off. The television is a particularly difficult decision. I am tempted to do away with it altogether, but I so little trust any one source of news that only by the constant sampling of at least three media do I feel comfortable forming any kind of opinion. I try to pry off the few remaining signs of commerce with my bare hands, but the damage I do to my hands only amplifies my frustration. I need a chisel or something, but I don’t have tools of any kind. I decide to go find some.

I return home within the hour, terribly frustrated. I have found that unless I want to drive forty miles to a non-corporate-run hardware store, my options are limited to the three local superstores, any one of which would leave me reeling with an inordinate number of in-store ad campaigns ingrained in my memory, not to mention a plastic bag that bears a logo probably matching one on my purchase. I hate this damn world. In any case, I refuse to bring more commercialism into my home, even in an attempt to remove the old. But I will remove the last brand names. I try to pry one off with a fork, which promptly bends. I try to break one off with a key, which is too small and only hurts my fingers. Nothing in my home is quite durable enough. I go outside for a rock.

I am in the woods behind my building, kicking aside leaves and looking for an appropriately sized stone. In my attempts to unearth one, I get down on all fours and stick my fingers in the dirt. I am an animal, I realize. My attempts to protest the ways of humanity have driven me to the earth. This is the nature of things - the commercial machine cannot evolve into something better, it can only be overthrown by starting from scratch. Overwhelmed by the task, I take off my clothes, lie on the leaves, breathe fresh air and try to separate myself from everything. My head is clear, it seems. I look at the blue sky to start something new, without civilization’s dubious help.

I never want to go inside or touch a street again, it is beautiful outdoors. The sky is really the only perfect thing. Why did I ever look away? I look at the clouds, their shapes, forms unalterable by man. They are what I want them to be, but all I see in them are airplanes, automobiles, casinos, television, explosions and other terrible man-made things. I start over, not seeking representation, but seeing the clouds as clouds, and their shapes as natural forms to be admired. After a while, one shape catches my fancy and I can't look away - it has touched something in me that I can't quite grasp, some blurry mental image I feel has always been a part of who I am. With pleasure I forget, for a moment at least, every memory I've had since I was capable of remembering, to focus on what this shape reminds me of, this proof that I can be moved and feel meaning with only the sky to inspire it. When the blurred image in my mind begins to focus, I am nearly sick. I have seen this shape on sneakers since before I could recognize the faces of my parents. I never had a chance.

Dino Machina

"Why sir, I compliment you on your terrible machine!"
"Why thank you, is it not in make and manner quite obscene?"
"Indeed, a greater waste of metal, space and gasoline
Mankind in all its ages yet has never close to seen!"