Bounty from the post office

My incoming mail is received by my sister Ellen Suzy Lolarga in Pasig because postal service in Baguio is erratic. Outgoing from the centrally located post office on downtown Session Road is reliable. But door-to-door delivery is a la tsansa. So my correspondents and I have agreed to send mail to our family's Pasig address. Suzy waits awhile for the mail to make a slight pile before sending them by courier service to Baguio. I know--it sounds like another of my impractical projects. Ray Dean Salvosa, former president of the University of the Cordilleras, once said I was one of the few he knew who still used the post office for messages. He asked why I don't use email. Well, kind sir, I do use email, mostly for business correspondence. But ever since I was a child, I was enamored with slow mail. So imagine my delight when an envelop from Virginia's Poet Laureate, Luisa A. Igloria, spilled this much paper richness--two poems by her ("Man Shoveling Snow on a Unicycle Dressed as Darth Vader While Playing Flaming Bagpipes" and "Yes, Or No"), a bookmark showing a reproduction of a Japanese painting ("Evening Snow in Kamubara"), four blank postcards, including literary ones feaaturing lines from Charles Baudelaire and Voltaire. Also in Suzy's parcel are letters from poet Marj Evasco in her refined script, artist Arlene Esperida with a quick sketch of a tiger, tiger burning bright and Ogot Sumulong and his collage. A good Friday, indeed!

Good morning even to old mail! Or here's to postcards one more time

Sometimes serendipity happens while scrolling down Google+ or whatever social media outlet one uses in the 21st century.

Now to blend these "finds" with something old century but not too old. In the material world, there are postcards, real ones that can be held, can be seen or read, can be heard (the sender's voice down to the last chuckle), can be smelled, can be tasted, that is, if you eat paper.

Arlene Esperida, administrator of the Artists Trading Cards-Philippines in Facebook is sometimes frustrated that she sends out her little works of art to joiners of the group but very little actual exchange through use of the post office happens. Thus, it isn't mutually beneficial.

Take heart, Arlene, as I carry out our call on this front, on this space.

All the effort required is to make cutouts (if you aren't into drawing or painting) and pasting them on some kind of hardboard paper, sturdy enough to withstand travel, say, from the province of Isabela to where she is in Japan. Or vice versa. Repeatedly, we've told those so inclined to do an exchange, that it's a good way to communicate and at the same time, democratize art. Or you can just use any available postcard and do things with it--all it takes is a sprinkle of imagination. And of time. And of space carved out jealously.

Being an inveterate believer in the strength of postal mail, I've sent out and received some memorable cards from two chaps in my life. I've smudged their names and addresses to protect what's left of their privacy (tee hee there), but you can get the drift of what the potential of the ATC can be.

By the way, for those interested in a more visual definition of an ATC, visit Pinterest.com and be delighted with the hundreds of thousands of possibilities in this still beautiful world.

Photos of postcards by Babeth Lolarga

Once more for ATCs

This example of an artists trading card (ATC) can stand more tweaking, but it's too late for that. The card is on its way to, or has probably reached, Japan where my ATC friend-pen pal Arlene Esperida lives and works. The old stamps aren't fit for anyone's valid stamp collection because of some missing teeth and tears so I added them for more color. Thank you, Rolly Fernandez, for bequeathing these to further my ATC and scrap-booking goals.If anyone wants to exchange ATCs with Arlene and/or me, send me your postal address.

Arlene Esperida and her ATC movement

Arlene Esperida is a Japan-based artist who I met at the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) conference in Manila in '03, if my memory is having a good day. Somewhere in our house in Baguio is a painting of hers, mainly in orange, with biomorphic forms.

Since then, we rediscovered one another when I still had a Facebook account. Then we embarked on this small project of helping democratize art through artist trading cards or ATCs. I started one with the Baguio Aquarelle Society in '09 or thereabouts (excuse the occasional lapse in factual or episodic memory; rest assured the associative or long memory is intact). For a time I was using these cards as my business cards, although more pragmatic friends would say, how come I have to make these one-of-a-kind cards, usually practice paintings in small sizes before I enlarge them, into business cards? In short, impractical, probably they're gauging the effort in terms of use of paint, images, etc.

Well, visual artists and writers make heroic choices every day, that's all I can say. Meanwhile, Arlene and I have corresponded by postal mail; so have Gladys Lyn "Nini" Teves Lapuz and I in the same fashion off and on for many years now.

Meanwhile, I've rid myself of the collecting bug but not yet in terms of ATCs. They're defined by this site http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Artist-Trading-Cards as having begun "in the tradition of business cards, but with a personal, artistic twist. Most ATCs are created on paper, but they may also be any other medium that can be worked in a suitable size. ATCs are traditionally the size of baseball cards and other trading cards. They're a fun way to exchange your own one-of-a-kind artistic flair with other artists you meet. You can also use them as business cards."

I am sharing part of my loot (a couple that my former classmate Potchie Lazaro swapped with my works ended up with Jessica Zafra--I knew she'd like his kapre and tikbalang). I encourage art students, or anyone interested in reviving "snail mail", to put more fun into something handmade. We all spend much too much time in front of our laptops and Netbooks (unwittingly, we expose ourselves to these machines' radiation, too). So here's to ATCs and how they've revived art in small sizes, penmanship, trips to the post office, among other heroic everyday choices.

The actual sizes of these ATCs are sometimes even smaller than the images below. Thank you, Arlene, Jenny Cariño, Norman Chow, Toottee Chanco-Pacis, Nini Lapuz, Sinag de Leon and other fellow swappers and pen pals.

 

Near But Remote

"This is my letter to the world, /That never wrote to me..."--Emily Dickinson

"Erika Scheurer in her essay : Near, but Remote: Emily Dickinson's Epistolary Voice tells us that while Dickinson did not value writing over speech, she did value dialogic writing and speech over monologic writing and speech. A letter is also a more durable document than a spoken statement.'"-- from http://www.squidoo.com/poetry-analysis-emily-dickinsons-this-is-my-letter-to-the-world-analysis

An artist's interpretation of the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson in the World Wide Web

Do you get that google.com message "I feel lucky" when you're entering a name, phrase or word in the search engine? 

Well, I've been getting that feeling a lot this week since I received two letters (my gosh! two! that's plenty!) this week from friends Arlene Esperida in Tokyo, Japan, and Mira Araos-Mariano from Florida, USA. 

Some weeks back Giselle Goloy sent a postcard from Australia taken from her stash of mementos from her last visit to Romania "where Dracula was born--or at least his inspiration (Vlad Tepes)." Giselle's card shows a photo of the Holy Trinity Fresco where the Holy Spirit is pictured as a woman. As the expression goes, "O, di ba?"

Mira's envelope was heavy from some photos she inserted  showing her and new husband Dino at their Grand Canyon trip ("Our many trips together have really made us closer"). 

The other picture shows them at the Cirque de Soleil's show "O" which included a sculpture exhibit of Richard McDonald. The young couple likes visiting museums. Now that is happy news to this blogger, who's their tita, and Mira's parents, Jerry and Melen.

Arlene's letters are always a treat--from the heavily textured envelope, stamps selected, drawings, rubber stamp markings, doodles to what she puts inside, e.g., pages of balita and enclosures (artist's trading cards, a subject I will blog about later).

My 10-year-old niece Bianca Susi and I were on-and-off pen pals when I was studying and living in Baguio. When she first received a letter from me, she asked her mom Pinky what those little rectangular "stickers" on the upper right-hand corner of the envelope were for. Pinky, a stamp collector, explained their purpose.

By the way, I was at the Makati Post Office yesterday morning to mail, oh, seven or eight letters that I had written the night before, and I saw this big tarp announcing that Christmas parcels and cards must be mailed by this month if they are to get to the addressees by December. So bring out your pen and start writing!

I love the convenience and ease of email and the availability of the Internet, especially when I'm composing an article. But my personal love lies in handwriting letters on cards and stationery that I've selected myself. I have a full box of stationery sheets in Pasig and another in Baguio that I inherited from my Singapore-based daughter Ida. Before she left, Ida said I should leave some pads and cards for her niece Kai who's only all of one year and seven months today. Never too early to make her scribble.

Arlene's last missive inspired me to tell my creative writing students at our next meeting to refresh their skills in something old-fashioned, letter writing using stamps, a very worthy activity  for keeping in touch from wherever they are in the summer of 2013.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga