The first quarter of 2025 was a busy time for Habitorium!
I’m delighted to welcome new work into my studio; it all started in December, with a promise to a friend. She hired me to write short stories with her mother, as a Christmas present. YAY for experiential gifts and habit-reinforcing engagements! We’ve already had our initial meeting by phone, and will see each other online in the coming week. I’m forecasting joyful encounters.
My Streetnotes co-editors and I are hard at work, organizing submissions for The Survey of Urban Habits. What was supposed to be a journal of several writings, has developed into an anthology of many. It’s very exciting, we are getting close to publishing! Stay tuned.
I’m sending paintings by mail again, it’s been a few years since I mailed my work. I wanted to score Year of the Snake stamps, and made a trip to the Post Office. While I was there, I dropped a small painting in the ‘STAMPED’ box.
I reckon it wasn’t separated out from all the envelopes in the drop box, and got stuck in a sorting machine. Nearly half of the paper, including all my written message, was missing when it was delivered with an apology from the USPS. What remains of the painting arrived in a plastic bag.
A week later, a larger, undamaged painting arrived in one of those bags to another address. The postal worker was preventing damage, not containing it. Prophylactic, not apologetic.
There are other paintings in the mail, too, sent to people who shared their address when responding to the latest release of the Survey of Bookish Habits. My thank you notes are two years overdue. One painting went to Cal, a librarian friend of mine. We see each other a couple times a week, when I go do research.
“I received a beautiful surprise today! The delivery person said it’s the most beautiful delivery they’ve ever made!” – Cal
It thrills me so no end, to hear feedback about postal engagements. When I started mailing paintings 12 years ago, part of my objective was to interrupt the habits of the infrastructure. I wanted to slow down the mail not by clogging the machines, but by engaging the human element of the institution. It works! I have about 15 more paintings to mail. Maybe I can gather more evidence of postal engagement in the coming month.