“NEITHER RAIN, NOR SNOW, NOR THE GLOOM OF NIGHT”
My mailbox was very Liberal today. It wasn’t always that way. Today, instead of a photo of a veteran (god, they always looked too young to be WW2 vets, maybe Korean, maybe Vietnam? – Good lord had it been that long?) The man upstairs who screamed in terror that night, a sound so horrible I was sure someone had been killed
And they had
A few years ago
In a desert hellscape
The man was younger than me!
Regardless, there were no vets today. Only two bearded men kissing on a back cover emblazoned with the word EQUALITY. Cramed in alongside was an appeal for Planned Parenthood – I imagined my Conservative mailman shoving them in together, being appalled…
But
I don’t know my mailman
Or if he is Conservative
Or even a “he”
Are we all just about posturing nowadays? Shoving a slogan in a face here, jabbing an opinion on a flagpole in the gut there. Trying to prove to ourselves that we still stand for something worth standing for at all.
Tomorrow, the post will offer up the materials of a 65-year old obsessed with military history. Friday, the post will sing Ziggy Stardust and pretend its bounty isn’t being delivered to someone who was years from being born when that majesty descended. This weekend, the post will wear a pink tiara, sip Mimosas and lazily flip through a Bed, Bath & Beyond catalog, pretending the world isn’t ablaze.
Maybe next week, the postman’s post will be filled with order from Sephora containing eyeliner and blush he only dare put on in the comfort of his apartment bedroom before he sits down to read political theory and listen to Tchaikovsky.
What a beautiful, absurd world!