The Year in Postage

There are two things constant with mail-art, you’re required to worship Ray Johnson, and you’re expected to comment on postage prices. The first I’m not so great and heeding, but the second I find myself doing more and more. Ten years ago, I complained about postage prices. Fifteen years ago, I complained about postage prices. Now, I’m complaining about postage prices! Just last week, when I left the post office, I looked at my total and winced. It was too much. I need to get rid of the things I make and since no one wants them, I have to mail them to unsuspecting victims. The higher postage goes the more crap I have in my house. 

 

No one talks about the rather genius decision for the “forever stamp.” I think it’s genius, I guess. Whoever came up with the Allen Toussaint stamp this year, thank you. He’s a hero of mine and I’ve bought this stamp over and over again. Anyway, having one consistent value while preparing envelopes makes it easier on senders, even if that isn’t as visually pleasing as having a whole envelope full of random stamps. It takes the math out of sending mail. It might have killed the overall usage of the one cent, five cent, and ten sent stamps, but move quicker through putting things together. As much as I love anything that takes math out of the equation, I love more than that they moved to stickers. Come on, what a no-brainer. I have no romantic associate with licking stamps. If they have flavored them, I might be more interested in licking them, but they never added grape, or bubble gum to the mix.

A quick google shows that in 2014 a stamp was $0.49. That seems low, very low. I’m sure it was very high, super high, to the people of 2014. Of course, I was making and sending mail art during that time, so I was for sure complaining about the prices. Stuff like, “If these prices get any higher, I’m going to significantly limit what I mail!” I’m sure I said it with anger, thunderous anger.

Just a little comparison. In the EU, a stamp costs between 1 euro and 1.9 euro. (I’m not looking for the euro symbol on my keyboard) Domestic EU rates change from country to country, and from which country you’re sending it to. Currently, a $0.78 cent domestic stamp in the US, would be .67 euro. In other words, US stamps are cheaper than those in Europe, if you’re sending them in-country. In Japan, it costs 110 to send a domestic letter, or 0.70 cents. It is a bit cheaper there, but not by much. In other words, we shouldn’t complain as much as we do. I mean we’re going to complain, but we should do it proportionately. This is too much math.

The US price of international shipping of packages is ridiculous. Cheeto Hitler did a number on those rates months ago as we inch closer to dismantling the postal system altogether. I’m sure Amazon will be running it before he drools into oblivion. When you buy a presidency, you have to get something in return, that’s just business. Unfortunately, sending anything internationally that isn’t completely flat, completely paper, is off limits. When I first started sending things, it was a luxury to mail something of strange proportions out of the country, but it wasn’t completely off limits.

So…how much am I helping to keep the USPS afloat? A quick search of my finances, and it seems like a lot, especially for a hobby. While I occasionally send them to friends and sometimes sell things online, the overwhelming amount I spend is on postage. It’s on stamps and metered mail envelopes filled with my shenanigans. 

 

I mostly go to one post office in Lexington N.C., and before I go and see my mom on Wednesdays. In a pinch I’ll go to the post office in downtown Winston-Salem, on in Mocksville if I’m teaching over there. I go to the Lexington branch because it’s convenient and people tend to know me. This is important because it’s harder for them to get a few extra pennies out of you, something that can easily be done if you’re not paying attention. Unfortunately, the lady I liked the most, has retired. She had a sense of humor and would ask about the stickers and stamps on the front of envelopes. The newer folks have little personality. The lady in charge seems to be not only working there, but existing in the world. Another lady cheated me out of a couple of dollars this past summer and wouldn’t fess up to it. If she hadn’t brought up the issue with her boss, the dead inside lady, I would have never ratted her out. It was fine. I like the younger guy with the braids; he has a bounce.

I spent roughly $1434.24 on postage in 2025.

Maybe I should complain more.

That’s 1838.76 stamps.

That’s about $119.52 every month. That’s about $29.88 every week.

I could probably buy a used Kia for that sort of money. If I were inclined and assumed that this would be the typical amount every year, for about ten years, I could buy a decent used Kia.

Although I’ve made jokes that I’m looking for a mid-life crisis, this one might be it. No getting into motorcycles or extreme mountain climbing, just postage. Just a consistent movement of paper around the world to mark that one day I will die. While sending off mail might be dangerous in some places, (part of the appeal of such a crisis) where I normally go, things are pretty quiet. I’ve heard some arguments in that building, but nothing that I would consider life threatening. The lady that’s dead inside is well…dead inside, but the guy with the braids is always cool.

 

 

 

 

Tim zerknittert alte Post / Tim Collapsing Old Mail

Being where I live, I don’t meet a lot of mail-artists. I’ve met a few in such places like Thomasville North Carolina (Richard C.) and the Temple of Apollo in Greece (Katerina N.). Things seem to happen socially in the mail-art world, but they always happen over there. The kids like to gather in NYC or Chicago, places that are hard for me to get to. I’ll get to one of these meetups at some time, but I haven’t yet. I text pretty frequently with a couple mail-artists, which feels slightly more personal than sending weird things to them, but not by much. In some ways, I feel like I send from a far-off planet, an outpost. Not exactly a land connected to a larger artistic community.

One meet-up randomly happened at a Stereolab show at the legendary Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill North Carolina. I was a little sick that day, hanging out at Weaver Street Café listening to Lætitia Sadier talk on the phone. She was a few tables over from me and talking loudly. It sounded like the tour wasn’t going well. Thankfully she was speaking in English. After finishing my coffee, I went down Franklin Street to the club. I made it through the opener and then most of Stereolab before I decided to move towards the back. I felt like I might need to leave quickly.

While I made my way through the crowd, someone stopped me. I had no idea who they were, but they knew my name. At first, I thought this was my assassin sent to kill me. Maybe from the future, maybe from our time. After a few quick words, I learned it was Tim Collapse…from mail. He recognized me because of all the silly stuff I send with my face on it. If he had done the same, I might not have worried about a potentially assassination attempt. Although I was happy to meet him, it wasn’t the place to have a proper hang. Nothing worse than yelling in a loud club followed by screaming, “What!” over and over. It was a quick meeting and then I made my way to the back of the club. Over the next couple of years, I continued to send mail to Tim, even picking up his phone number along the way.

Out of the blue he sent me a card asking if I wanted some of his mail. Yes! A little while later he followed up with some texts. “It {the collection} does contain a few Richard Canard pieces.” / “It’s around 4-5 medium sized priority boxes.” / Do you ever get to Reconsidered Goods in Greensboro? That might be a good meet-up spot, so you haven’t got to drive so far.” Reconsidered Goods it was. We organized a date to meet, and I drove directly there from class. 

Tim. 

 

Tim and I talked a little bit before loading the six or seven boxes into the back of my car. Although he mentioned that it was a lot of mail, I began thinking about what I had stacked at home. When he said this, a slight tinge of anxiety ran through me. I have more stuff, more paper, and more weirdo garbage than I would ever be able to work with, and now I’m taking on more.

Tim talked about his kids and showed me pictures of his daughter’s drawings. We went over stuff about music (Einstürzende Neubauten being one, thus the title of this piece) and a few mail-artists that we’ve both sent to for years, one of which has been a problem in the network for decades. He told me about his job and the weird and surprising sprawl of Mebane North Carolina. Of everything he said to me, he said, “I only keep the materials I’m working on…except for glue and what not. I’ll buy stuff, make something, and give the remaining materials away.” It was the most impressive thing I’d ever heard before. How is that possible? How can you not hoard tons of 19^th century paper?

 

The two of us wandered around the creative reuse store looking for materials. I found the usual paper for broadsides and some mailing supplies, while he focused on the ephemera section. While I was digging through things alongside him, I had a strange flashback when the UNCW radio station liquified all of their records, CD’s, and tapes. There, digging day after day until they tossed what was left, I’d dig through box after box with another weirdo. Since then, the accumulation of records and of paper have almost exclusively been a solitary one. Never dug through boxes of someone’s school photos (lots of pictures of Matt) or discarded bits of paper before with someone else. Unfortunately, I was on the clock. I had to get back to my house at my usual time, or the mess would have accumulated. I bid farewell to Tim and went back towards Winston-Salem.

When Miles was firmly engaged with his episodes, I started to bring in the boxes, first looking through them before taking them upstairs. The quick look was impressive, lots of zines and lots of meticulously organized pieces of paper. All of the Mike Dyar works were in one large envelope. All of the Ryosuke Cohen braincells were beside one another. I was impressed by the organization. Someone with such organizational skills could be disciplined enough to only keep the materials they were going to use. Once everything was upstairs awaiting further thumbing through, that feeling of anxiety started back up. What am I going to do with all of this new stuff?

Since writing the above, a couple days have passed. I finished up the last thing for this year. The desk is clean. The desk was clean. It took a few hours to sort through everything that Tim gave me. I made piles that I was going to donate, piles that I was going to keep, and piles that I was going to cut up. The latter part is going to take forever. I’ve already started. An hour of cutting barely collapsed the pile. To start, I’m going to make my usual brand of collages and then move out collaboratively. Might just send big piles of what I cut up for others to reassemble and then send around.

Thanks, Tim, for your generosity.

The Story of Trash Bin Zine Rescued from the trash bin, bin

Rescued From the Murky Garbage Depths

 

I’m constantly searching for paper. Each week I move from place to place looking for any little nugget, especially free nuggets. The treasure trove of paper is the free bin at a local bookstore. I’ve written about this place over and over, too much. Outside of the free paper, I like interacting with the weridos. You have the old ladies looking for Jesus oriented books, the resellers collecting ancient textbooks they’ll never sell, the two-second lookers, and the wingnuts. Some people sit there all day looking for copies of Lee Iacocca’s autobiography that they stick into a piece of tattered luggage.

From afar, I’m definitely in the wingnut category. If you’re watching, I’m the guy hoping to find hand written notes, molded pieces of paper, antiquated medical images, and Russian children’s books. Clearly, the wingnut category. A few folks have even asked what I was doing. One even asked if I had permission to rip out the empty pages in the front of books. “No,” I said.

All of this gets recycled into a new thing. I take the books home and then cut them up. The weirdest images get scanned and then folded into broadsides or zines months, or years later. Like most collage artists, I have thousands of these sorts of images laying around my upstairs room. The blank pages are used for empty space in collages, I use a lot of these in various states of decay. You would be amazed by the differences between one white sheet of paper from 1896 and one from 1946. When it gets golden spots, it gets beautiful, when it yellows…magnifique. This sort of thing you can’t really buy. Time is the creator.

While digging this week, I found a familiar cover. No, it wasn’t Palin’s autobiography that people give away in droves, but something I made. This has never happened before. What I found was a zine I made earlier in the year. Most of the copies I made were mailed off to people across the United States, maybe 50. Another 50 I dropped in random little libraries around the area, namely the creative reuse shop near my house. Those folks might get what I’m doing. The zine had done some moving around before it got to the free bin. Someone had to pick up a copy, have it with them for a little while, and then put it in the free bin. It traveled! This is about the greatest compliment I could get for my work. I expect most of what I make ends up in piles or in the trash, but this one had to be dealt with. Someone had to pick it up and look at it…it had a function. It lived.

Ironically, the zine was a collection of found images. Most of the images in the zine were found in the exact free bins where I rescued this copy. So much searching was reduced to a handful of scanned images, made into a small zine I printed at work, and then brought home.