mail art monday

before i show you my latest piece of mail art i wanted to share with you a beautiful excerpt from a book i just read. the book is called "the six rules of maybe" by deb caletti. it was my "light" poolside read but ended up being quite good! the narrator is a seventeen year-old who is very observant of other people's lives and feels a need to help them. she lives across from a retired mail carrier who finds great joy in checking the mail, even when it's flyers and bills (i'm like that too in the sense that i'm happy to get anything - i'd rather have bills over nothing if i had to choose!)

when the girl's neighbour starts showing signs of alzheimers, she begins to create a surprise for him - hundreds of origami cranes made from mail-out flyers. she also creates a whole load of mail for him. postcards and letters from "friends" around the world. she sneaks over to his house one night, and fills the mailbox so full she has to start creating piles of mail on the ground. finally, she ties all of the cranes to the tree in his front yard. this is his response:
'the cries came from the front yard. i didn't even have time to open my eyes and look before mom yelled from downstairs. "scarlet? scarlet, come down! what did you do?"
mom pointed to what i already knew was there - the tree, full and bright and glorious in the morning light, shimmery with color and surprise, the mail pile as big as an enormous snowfall - and to what i didn't know was there, clive weaver, bent in half laughing. laughing so, so hard.
i put my hand to my mouth. "surprise, clive weaver!" i shouted. "surprise for you! my heart felt so big and wide.
"it's christmas, scarlet," he said. "it's goddamn christmas!"
and that was the best possible outcome i thought. because if it was christmas when you didn't expect it, it was possible, just maybe possible, that it might be christmas any day at all.'

beautiful huh? okay, i know that was a longer than normal intro to my images - but here is a piece of mail art i made* for my mother that includes a belated mother's day gift/hawaii souvenir.* i won't tell you what the gift is in case she reads this though...

*i'm really into covering my envelopes with packing tape. it allows me to create collages, and also protects it completely from the roughness of the postal service.

*i'm also sending out my hawaiian postcards tomorrow - i know that sounds like cheating but i bought them on the last day and didn't know where to get postage!