A Week of Arenella and a Set of Cards (qbdp # 10)

Still Point, Garlock Road, Caroga Lake, New York

This has been a busy week of mailart, most of which is detailed below. For more on Roy Arenella, see the blog essay, "Who is Roy Arenella and What is He Doing in My Mailbox?"

Received 15 Jun 2004

First from Arenella: A brown envelope rubberstamped on its front with a rabbit (hare?) inside of which is stamped a tortoise. Inside is a note from Roy about a recent blog note from me about him and perplexity and a copy of a found poem created from an altered headline, "Ample Perplexity Amid Plenty of Choices."

Roy Arenella's "Ample Perplexity Amid Plenty of Choices"
Second from Arenella: A yellow envelope with a rubberstamping of a window that includes three additional stampings: a rocketship in the upper pane, and a B and a P in the lower one. Inside is an inscrutable response to my obituary of Bern Porter. First, a sheet reproducing two pages from James Schevill's Bern Porter: A Personal Biography, which reproduces Porter's collage "Profile of Henry Miller In Bird Cape with California Mountain." Next is a full-page reproduction of the same collage, with a new date and a new signature of Bern Porter's in red ink. This page is rubberstamped "COPY," and is "copy # 6 of 7." This was mailing "239 X" (X?) for Roy, dated 11 June 2004.

Received 16 Jun 2004

From Arenella: A photocard of "A Visualist" (dated 19 Jan 2003 and the 244th mailing of Roy's mailart year), the reverse with a pseudo-cancellation that includes a rubberstamping of the same Visualist and a note about the coincidental appearances of his and my work on the same page of Lost and Found Times.

Received 18 Jun 2004

From Arenella: A thin grey envelope opening on the side, rubberstamped with a printer's fist pointing at the note, "This is something not artwork."

Inside: a piece of reused white card, trifolded.

Text:

Bedside Table Post-It Reads:

Full Moon with Michaux [followed by a Post-It reading the same]

Means What? This Morning


"The Mere Ambition to Make a Poem is Enough to Kill It" Henri Michaux


This in My Own Experience is True / Poems, Truer Found than Made.

Roy Arenella, "Bedside Table Post-It Reads"
Evaluation: All of this provides us with a startling review of the methods of the mind: Not wishing to lose his ideas, Roy writes himself a note while in bed at night (maybe even many every night), yet in the morning not all of his notes remain meaningful even to him.

Back Text: Handwritten reference to a blog essay of mine ("My preferred method for writing is thinking.") followed by a note ("This is one of the ways I write how I write.").

Outgoing Mail

A small fidgetglyph entitled "moonn" and wrawn completely in black onto six 140-pound cards. I chose this fidgetglyph because I had already prepared these six cards many months ago, and because the glyph represents the moon, clouds, water, fish, and reflections of East Caroga Lake, which I'm sitting beside as I type. The cards went to the following people:

1/6 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/6 Bob Grumman

3/6 Roy Arenella

4/6 Matt Shindell

5/6 Guy r. Beining

6/6 qbdp

Geof Huth's "moonn" (qbdp # 10)
un violon d'ingres