A Fortune Box of Cookie Fortunes

This mailing from Dan Waber is one I should have written about much sooner. I received it, I believe, in early August, but its shape kept it out of the pile of mailart I had to write about.

In a small carved wooden box (made in Vietnam), Dan included two cinnamon fortune cookies he had made--they were delicious, and I ate them right away--into which he had inserted the two fortunes you see in the photo below. The more complicated one uses tmesis to break apart the term "fortune cookie" to find the other possible meanings hidden within it. The simpler fortune, however, is a bit enigmatic. My guess is that it is a reference to the great Canadian poet bpNichol, whose visual poems were often focused on the linear stability of the capital H.


Dan Waber, "for tune, cook i, e" and "H" (Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres