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August 17, 2003

Old letters, rediscovered photos, and too damn many boxes...

The preparation for the move continues. I have four days left to pack, but I think I’m in pretty good shape. My books are all boxed, except for the few that I’m in the midst of reading, and I only have about one box worth of tchotchkes left to stow.

I went through a box full of old letters and cards this evening, tossing about half of them. Many of the letters were from people whose existences I had forgotten, frankly, including some European pen-pals with whom I corresponded back in the pre-internet days.

It’s odd to think that the concept of the pen-pal in its most traditional form was done away with by the internet, which makes global communication so simple. Sure, you can IM with anybody in the world now, but it’s just not the same as getting that odd envelope with its foreign stamps and inexplicable address. Even the paper on which my pen-pals wrote was an adventure, as it was utterly unlike the paper to which I was accustomed.

I found a few letters from a friend of mine from college, Amy Tyson. I’ve long since lost track of her, although I might try sending a letter to her family’s last known address in the hopes that they still live there and can pass the letter along. In a letter from March of 1998, she said the following:

Thank you for sharing your poem with me. It is amusing at first, but leaves a sad after-taste. I guess, that’s king of how you are though – patterned to be funny and entertaining, but your background music is a series of sighs and star-wishing.

I wish I could remember the poem in question. In a sense, I don’t think much has changed since then.

Before I get too maudlin, though, I have some very satisfying news to report. When I did “Simpatico” in October of 1999, I played a character in his mid-60s. To make me look more realistic as a man of that age, I was given a fat suit to wear under my costume. I also decided to be a dedicated actor and have my head shaved to resemble male pattern baldness. One night, during a fit of whimsy, I got down on my hands and knees and had pictures taken as every member of the show’s small cast sat atop me like a jockey, one by one—

Hey, the show was about horses. It was thematically apropos. You perv.

Anyhow, while I knew I had received the photographs, I could never find them. I can’t tell you how many times I flipped through my album of show photos, frustrated that photos I knew existed had apparently gone AWOL. I discovered them tonight in an unmarked envelope, buried within the pile of letters and cards I was sorting through. I’ll scan them on my girlfriend’s scanner and post them as soon as possible.

Posted by patrick at August 17, 2003 10:17 PM

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Posted by: Amy Tyson and Elizabeth Hayes at October 2, 2003 03:52 PM

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