I will never take the mail for granted again ...
And where the f%*& are the spotted cereal bowls?
I moved into a new condo last week and one of the big exhales has been the fact that a mailman delivers mail into a metal box reliably for which I have a key, and I retrieve said mail in the evening. Why is getting mail in such a way most people find rote such a thrill for me? Because I have been in mail terror for the last three years while living in South Central LA. Let me expound. It is not a myth that the services in the hood are shittier and spottier then other parts of Los Angeles (like White parts of Los Angeles). For a long time in Covid, when the mail was under fiscal siege with Trump and people were getting mail less, we were getting no mail at all. When Covid ended and there was less of an excuse not to get mail, we still didn’t get mail. Sometimes I wondered if it was our block. I would say to my 24 year old neighbor Mikey who had grown up there, “Do we just not get mail?” He would shrug and light a Swisher Sweets. “Welcome to the hood!” he would say with a smile. I was not having it. The US Mail is a right for all citizens. This mail discrimination for the Black and Brown areas of LA was appalling, but apparently unending.
I signed up for Informed Delivery hoping some kind of evidence would help me get my mail. On line appeared scanned images that still never got delivered. The images started to rack up. I finally got fed up (after making all I could paperless) and headed down to my local post office to inquire. Here is what would transpire:
I would attempt to compress a bell that signals the workers behind the door assistance was needed, but someone had jammed the bell so hard, it was broken (and was never fixed up to the day I moved.) When someone did come to the door after you knocked just enough to be heard but not enough to piss them off, you would let them know Informed Delivery indicated four days of mail was missing, and one item was a package. They would then take down the tracking number of the package with a pen on some coffee-stained legal pad. No scanner, no technology. Just me saying fourteen numbers to a postal worker writing them down…slowly. The door would then close and I would wait, only for them to come back and say, “We have a temp on that route and they just left with your mail.”
I would then find the mail the next morning soaked in the grass where they tossed it before the sprinklers went off.
In my time living in South LA, where I did find mail solace was in the mailbox that was two blocks down on the corner. Mail I placed in there, adjacent to a very busy liquor store at 10 AM, miraculously got places. I was elated. I would take my little walk with my letter and mail it and have faith it would get to where it belonged. Then they removed the mailbox. I walked there one day and it was just gone. All that remained was a little square of clean-ish cement in its wake. Not long after, I discovered that corner was an epicenter of the LA Riots. I returned again and stood in the absence of the mailbox at Normandie and Vermont, feeling the pain of racism swirling around me and cried. (You can read my essay on my entanglement with the history of the Riots in modern day here.)
So these are some of the reasons I am now elated I just simply get the mail in my new place. And send letters in a mail slot down the hall. But I have stopped writing letters to men, for the time being. And I share that in the LA Times this week in my essay for L.A. Affairs.
If You Are Looking to do some writing:
I get it. Acceptance is the key. Breathe into acceptance. This is the new age of continual personal development and forgiveness. I am not so sure, though, this is the best state of mind for the most entertaining and edgy writing. As writers, it may not serve us to put ourselves into such a state of acceptance that we don’t allow the full range of feelings and polarity that lives inside our own minds be exploited for the page. This translates from our experiences in real life. I can on one hand be extremely annoyed at a friend’s behavior and on the other hand love her for who she is. I get to write about the depths of that connudrum. If I was just accepting, well, there would be no story. Or a very boring one. Even children’s books I used to read to my kids had raccoons having tempertantrums and feeling unloved (and it didn’t say so, but spitting hate for the mama raccoon). We teach children to feel their feelings, but when we become adults we are taught in self-development that acceptance is the solution. I don’t know about you but some of my best writing moments have been about complete melt-downs I have had, or the lengths I may go to argue a point that I already know is mute.
I gain a lot of wisdom about myself as a writer when I find myself out there judging others. I get to look at myself as an opinionated twit and write to the audience who also feels like a jerk, versus me writing about accepting of all people, plants and things (which I will never do because I still can’t feel love for the mosquito.)
What I wish someone would create:
We can find our phones. We can find our way on Waze, but what about all the stuff we can never ever find? Haven’t you had that experience where you lost something and literally never found it again. We just realized over breakfast yesterday we were short cereal bowls and that our four spotted bowls were gone from the recent move. How they disappeared was beyond me, but they are gone. So it would be nice if there was some kind of geo tracker heat thermal device that found our lost stuff. I guess this is a selfish desire. I just loved those cereal bowls.
Technology Tip:
I was surprised when a friend who was a successful CIO told me how much he loves technology that is free. He was always looking for free versions and said many platforms offered free options. I thought about it and it’s true, but you have to put up with the niggly limitations that seem to rub in your face “you cheap ass, buy the paid version.” You can use Canva for free but you can only make a design once. Once you save it, and download it, you can’t alter it. You have to start again. Hoot Suite is free for making social posts, but you can’t do any video without a paid subscription. You can use LastPass for free up to a certain number of passwords. What blows my mind though, is I have yet to find a damn site that will let me merge PDFs for free. Like this is the thing charged for???
Shameless Plug:
Starting on February 26th, I will be starting a bi-monthly teaching series based on my book No Longer Denying Sexual Abuse: Making The Choices That Can Change Your Life. This series called Abused No More will teach from the 21 chapters of my book, which are a blueprint to walk through the emergence from abuse denial into a kick ass joyful and happy life. The first class will feature Author Rachel Coyle Brooks and the topic will be Remembering. The site to sign up is nolongerdenyingsexualabuse.com/remembering. Please bookmark it and it will go live on Feb 10th.