Before we go any further, I must confess my odd fascination with mail carriers.
It’s easy to take the product of their work for granted: The mail just shows up in your box six times per week and you don’t have to think about how it got there.
I’ve always thought about how it got there. I’ve always found comfort in the fact that, whatever else might be going on in life, the mail is always on the way. There’s something wonderful and reassuring about the regularity of it. The ritual of anticipating and receiving it.
Too, I’ve always imagined that the work of mail-carrying must turn its practitioners into low-level Zen masters, walking the same route and wearing the same outfit day after day as the world changes around them. With boots (or sensible walking shoes, as the case may be) on the ground, looking at the same things day after day, they must notice things that occasional, drive-by visitors don’t. They must see changes in neighborhoods, in houses, in volume and type of parcels being delivered to particular properties, in return addresses. If they’re paying attention, they must know a lot about us. They must know a lot about life and all its cycles.
Or maybe they’re just sticking stuff in boxes from 9 to 5, paying little mind to anything, lacking all skills of observation and reflection. I like to imagine not.
With the rise of email and online billing, the content of postal mail has changed. Now it’s mostly advertising. I understand that this might diminish some people’s appreciation for the profession, even if it has done little to diminish my own. Little surprise, then, that I have to go back to the early 1900s – when mail played a much more central role in communication – to find someone holding letters and the people who carry them in the proper esteem. At the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum, there’s an inscription of “The Letter” by Dr. Charles W. Eliot, a former president of Harvard University:
Messenger of Sympathy and Love
Servant of Parted Friends
Consoler of the Lonely
Bond of the Scattered Family
Enlarger of the Common LifeCarrier of News and Knowledge
Instrument of Trade and Industry
Promoter of Mutual Acquaintance
Of Peace and of Goodwill Among Men and Nations
Now that’s more like it.
I call this my metaphysical mailperson song.
Everyone talks about how ‘God’ or ‘The Universe’ is their ‘Source’; my ‘Source’ is my mail carrier. He brings me all my checks. All praise to the Mail carrier! Amen
Very touching!
Mailpiece be with you.
1) Have you read Post Office by Bukowski? An in depth look (albeit a drunken one) at the very profession mentioned above, but more so the folks inside doing the separating than the carriers.
2) I recently read a book wherein the character was concerned about writing a postcard, consumed by the thought of what the postal worker would think, as the words are right out there in the open, and all the things a postal worker can learn about his neighborhood by reading post cards.
3)The song itself reminds me a little of Dylan, which, coming from me, is a compliment.
1) I haven’t. I imagine its depiction of the postal service would be not nearly rosy enough to suit me.
2) What book was this? Sounds like something I should have written.
3) A little like Dylan!? I’ll take it.