Photocards and Return Receipt Ephemera

I returned home today to discover a postcard from Roy Arenella explaining that he had just discovered the fabled qbdp: the mailartworks, which documents his and my mailart. (I’m just getting started, so I don’t have enough participants yet.) Roy sent this new card now that he’s “seen the Lighght,” and I saw the lighght on his postcard as well: I finally figured out the code in his faux cancellation marks: Each includes the date plus an indication of the sequential number of the card for the year (in this case the 204th card). I’ll now have to update my other blog entries with this new information.

Roy Arenella’s new card:

He describes the postcard as “this [old] card with a new hello” (with the bracketed word being his). The picture side of the card includes a black and white concrete poem entitled “Optimist’s Ring” that consists of the words “BEGIN AGAIN BEGIN AGAIN” in a circle. The Arenellan cancellation stamp includes the date (25 May 04) a notation indicating this is his 204th postcard of the year (204 p/c), and a lighghtbulb to indicate that he has seen the light. Two tiny stamps (a miniature 13-cent stamp decorated with an Indian head penny dated 1877 and a 10-cent stamp of an “American clock”) complete the tableau.

Roy Arenella's "Begin Again"
In return I decorated an invitation-sized envelope with a handcarved stamplage visual poem (“mn mn”) and a handcarved return address eraser stamping, three small publications (G. Huth’s “Pebbleslight”; The Subtle Journal of Raw Coinage # 98: Psychedelinquent; and endwar’s “An interior definition for Geof Huth), and the following note added to the bottom of a discarded attempt at a steel-penned asemic visual poem:

Ah—you figured out about qbdp online, and on my birthday as well! I’ll document this mailing to you (filled with tiny pubs), but won’t number it as an official qbdp mailart. But your card goes online tonight. Also, I finally figured out the code in your cancellations! So dense of me!

un violon d’ingres