Postcards received by Yr Protagonist, authenticity undetermined
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Dear
I am writing to you here from the land of amethyst and Boxing Day. I crossed a long bridge to get here yesterday and feared for just a second that I would die (or that I was dead and that this is what was left for me: span and light and emptiness). Everything here is different except that I still miss you, my glow-in-the-dark dear. Love and ever-after,
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Dear
WILL WINTER EVER END STOP I AM WRITING THIS AS IF IT WERE A TELEGRAM BECAUSE I KNOW HOW MUCH YOU LOVE THE IDEA OF THE TELEGRAM STOP AND BECAUSE NOBODY STILL SENDS OR ACTUALLY RECEIVES THEM STOP PERHAPS THIS IS AN IMPERSONATION STOP BUT DOES IT EVEN MATTER STOP THERE IS THE SUN HERE AND IT IS WEAK AND MILKY WHEN I SEE IT THROUGH THE CLOUDS STOP I THINK OF COURSE OF YOU AND ALL THAT IS STILL AND STILL BURIED UNDER SNOW STOP TAKE CARE OF EVERYTHING STOP I DON'T MEAN THAT IN A SINISTER WAY AT ALL, NO MATTER HOW IT SOUNDS STOP STOP STOP
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Dear
I am writing underneath a statue of the Largest Viking in the World in Gimli, Manitoba. The wind is cold and water stretches out in front of me for ever and for ever. It is something beautiful and something almost too good to be meant for me. I hope you get to see it someday, but no time soon. Wait for thaw and think of me,
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Dear
Sometimes I get the feeling that this is all there is and then I think of you. I hope you too think of me, especially when the night is long and flat and obelisky.
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Dear
Increasingly I find myself craving food that is aflame. I write to you from Nova Scotia. There is nothing here, really. I have been reading a copy of The Shipping News that someone left behind on a bench. What luck! There are forces in the world that operate behind the scenes and this might be a kind of evidence of this. Make sure your brother has everything he needs, and more.
Moreover,
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Dear
You'd be surprised that there is a desert here in Manitoba. Concurrently there is the World's Largest Camel here too. It is made out of fiberglass, metal, and concrete. Everything is made of something: even air. I know you know your chemistry. You'd love it here. It is so quiet except for the tourists who don't know how to shut up. Perhaps I'll teach them something.
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Dear
I am here with a giant can of cream and wheat (not to be confused with Cream of Wheat, which you'll remember from so many frigid mornings). There is a plaque. It reads: "1888 - 1988; Dedicated to the pioneers of Markerville and District who prepared the way. 'They did so much with so little.' The best that was in me forever shall live. The sun over darkness prevails." -- Stephan G. Stephansson. That means a lot. There is a way, and it is prepared but only at a price. I think the writer was Icelandic. There are a lot of those folks up here. They know darkness, too. As do you,
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Dear
This will be the last note from me for a little while. I am so tired and there is so much to see. This card is nondescript, I know. Nothing big or momentous here except that when I saw a vein of copper exposed when the highway I was on went through a hill that had been blown apart to allow for a milder grade and I thought of you and your rock tumbler, and all those poisoned goldish—they just kept dying, one after another. Do you remember? How many were there? a dozen? Anyhow, know that there is something across the bridge, that there is refuge to be found. I believe in you,
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Dear
They found the bones of a young mastodon here near Milford, Nova Scotia, and erected a 1400 kilogram (you do the math to English measures) statue in memory of it and of extinction. No one knows what the ears looked like (they were all cartilage) and so they had to fudge it. I wonder what it would be like to be the last of one's kind, roaming the earth and all that decimated habitat that had changed everywhere around you. There is a big tyrannosaurus rex in Alberta, someone told me, made of papier-mache. Maybe I will find my way there next. Love and everything,
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