Amazing what mail art will do

I've been wading through a thick inbox. Not just email, but real mail, and other things that fit into the category of things that people make to put out into the world that touch me. I am so tired from running around today and trying to do homework after that, but am so impressed by what everyone has been doing. My dad scanned mail art from Joseph and sent it to me, which was exactly what I needed to see/read. I got my second e version of Ching-In's and my collaborative. 1,000 Artist Journal Pages is going to have a show in California soon, and 500 Handmade Books is available, too.

And then after all the sweating and back stress and subway transfers and searching for buses in the haze of construction and police units and making nice w/Fulbright staff, I fell into a bus seat with the A/C blasting and opened my packages. MAGIC! I am so unaccustomed to having people send me the kind of things that I send them, so it was hard at first to take it all in. Renata sent a lovely monoprint and letter from Portugal (with fantastic stamps). Clover sent a book by Murakami, a book that I had made a long time ago and given to her that she turned into a beautiful letter/artists' book, a DVD of her thesis performance, and a little bit of nature. I'm not really able to articulate properly how excited I was by the feeling this evening of all these artists who are working SO HARD all the time, always trying to be better at what they do, learning more, sharing with others, collaborating, being honest about what they need, and putting themselves out there.

Really putting themselves out there. It makes me so happy to know that I am connected to all those people all across the world, and that there are more that I will never know, and more that I will meet soon, and more that I will meet in the faraway future, and more whose work I will fall in love with over and over again. And of course I will fall in love with them, and love them the way I love the ones who are in my life right now.

And in new ways. Makes me excited to kick off the subscription series this month. And, hello - I will get to see my first friend from NY in Korea very soon!!! Kiwon comes w/a Yale orchestra next week for a Seoul concert and Asian tour. YAY.