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You’ve lost that local feeling
The post office is a hallowed place. Ever since an art project at university about the art of letter writing, when Will Elsdale wrote to me about handwritten letters being imbued with a sense of having passed from hand to hand, I’ve been compelled to give things away. What has been cradled in my palms now reaches yours — and that’s especially true of books. The post office has always been my ally in spreading little pieces of myself. I imagine a world in which every post office has the words of Phyllis Theroux emblazoned over the door:
To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart.
One 2016 USPS experience was more heart-stopping than heart-moving. $100 and an hour (an hour!) to send three parcels… so you can avoid a similar experience, remember: it’s always cheaper to bundle things together. At that time I was witnessing the erosion of the value of money, because — as a Brit in the US— Brexit’s impact on the exchange rate from sterling to dollars had sliced 20% off the value of my income practically overnight. The things I posted weren’t really unique — the same books could have been bought and delivered within the UK for a fraction of the cost of postage. Nonetheless, my friend said about the books I sent, that she loved ‘the knowledge that they came from under my gaze’, and so the extra cost resulted in additional…
