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Pandora's PO Box
Jan. 30th, 2009 12:44 amTwo things you need to know about Erin Chase. One, she was the woman who used to rent my apartment out prior to my moving in and two, for some unfathomable reason I still receive her mail. The latter goes on despite my best efforts to clear up the issue of my residency with the post office. However, against my most explicit wishes, I continue to find my mailbox stuffed with Scandinavian lingere and fishing supply catalogues, a monthly magazine titled simply "!" (that is either about firearms or modern art or some combination of both), several small packages - each wrapped in what is obviously peeled wallpaper, curiously stained envelopes postmarked back to the early 20th century and what appears to be (at a strictly cursory glance I assure you) postcards from parallel universes.
Their presence is enough to intimidate my usually insistent bills into quiet submission and they openly mock the hastily stuffed sheets of coupons that accompany them.
I assume also that the almost daily arrival of dry flower petals, mason jars filled with still wet onyx beads, origami tigers folded out of extinct paper currencies, decapitated Barbie doll heads painted in Mauri tribal tattoos, chipped seashells that cascade out of the box occasionally to pour at my boots... are all intended for the benefit of the mysterious Erin Chase. Offerings, perhaps, from an old lover. Maybe a friend who managed to get her key and has been playing a joke on her not knowing she has long moved. Or maybe they do know she's gone and someone's just fucking with me with random stabs of anonymous weird. Not knowing what else to do with these... messages(?)... I promptly remove them from my box and stack them neatly by the side of my apartment. By the next morning, without fail, they are gone. where and by whom? I don't know and haven't, as of yet, sought an answer.
Recently though I discovered a single key waiting for me on a matress of uncollected bank statements. Rusted, flecked with dry red paint, small - definitely door sized. I was ready to place it where the other objects had been abandoned for their mysterious collection. But then I had a thought.
What if these little gifts weren't for Erin... but rather from her?
A stupid thought, agreed. But there it was in my head, locked on my notions and filling my imagination with all manner of fantastic possibilities.
Was this a game perhaps, a riddle or scavenger hunt and what I was receiving was actually a series of subtle clues whose arrangement I had neglected to take notice of? Was this an elaborately coded message from her, delivered for some reason to convey a meaning whose significance eludes me? Maybe this was her way of flirting... ah, but please, forgive the narcisitic ego of a poor romantic.
Never the less while I have returned all the postcards from New Alexandria and the molded flower patterened boxes, while I have politely put aside the savage doll heads and abandoned the fragile petals to the wind... I still hold custody of the key. There it sits at the bottom of my small wooden stash box, guarded by a fat green glass pipe and a collection of spent daydreams. Some nights I pull it out before bed, turn it over in my fingers and try to imagine where the door was that I wasn't opening.
The latest postcard addressed to Erin Chase, dated on the back October 21st, 1908
Their presence is enough to intimidate my usually insistent bills into quiet submission and they openly mock the hastily stuffed sheets of coupons that accompany them.
I assume also that the almost daily arrival of dry flower petals, mason jars filled with still wet onyx beads, origami tigers folded out of extinct paper currencies, decapitated Barbie doll heads painted in Mauri tribal tattoos, chipped seashells that cascade out of the box occasionally to pour at my boots... are all intended for the benefit of the mysterious Erin Chase. Offerings, perhaps, from an old lover. Maybe a friend who managed to get her key and has been playing a joke on her not knowing she has long moved. Or maybe they do know she's gone and someone's just fucking with me with random stabs of anonymous weird. Not knowing what else to do with these... messages(?)... I promptly remove them from my box and stack them neatly by the side of my apartment. By the next morning, without fail, they are gone. where and by whom? I don't know and haven't, as of yet, sought an answer.
Recently though I discovered a single key waiting for me on a matress of uncollected bank statements. Rusted, flecked with dry red paint, small - definitely door sized. I was ready to place it where the other objects had been abandoned for their mysterious collection. But then I had a thought.
What if these little gifts weren't for Erin... but rather from her?
A stupid thought, agreed. But there it was in my head, locked on my notions and filling my imagination with all manner of fantastic possibilities.
Was this a game perhaps, a riddle or scavenger hunt and what I was receiving was actually a series of subtle clues whose arrangement I had neglected to take notice of? Was this an elaborately coded message from her, delivered for some reason to convey a meaning whose significance eludes me? Maybe this was her way of flirting... ah, but please, forgive the narcisitic ego of a poor romantic.
Never the less while I have returned all the postcards from New Alexandria and the molded flower patterened boxes, while I have politely put aside the savage doll heads and abandoned the fragile petals to the wind... I still hold custody of the key. There it sits at the bottom of my small wooden stash box, guarded by a fat green glass pipe and a collection of spent daydreams. Some nights I pull it out before bed, turn it over in my fingers and try to imagine where the door was that I wasn't opening.
The latest postcard addressed to Erin Chase, dated on the back October 21st, 1908