2004-01-24 2:16 p.m. Got a postcard from my globe-trotting but useless brother in law. The image on the front of the postcard is a whale's tooth, scrimshawed with a picture of what looks like a thatched-roof hut. There's a girl reclining next to the hut, though reclining in space. There's no chair etched underneath her. She floats in the air, relaxed as anything. Should the whale tooth ever find its way home to the mammoth sea-going gums it originally sprouted from, the girl could no doubt float through the hut's front door and weather the storm of water flooding through the baleen. On the back, he wrote this to me: "The island I am on currently is distant from anything and isolated. There is no paper money here. They use teeth instead. Mostly from animals, decorated by artisans (see other side of postcard.) There's a system of social welfare here-- anyone short on cash can chose to remove one of their own teeth, a valuable asset. The island's chief is rich with teeth. They are imbedded over his home's doorway, in his furniture. He has a tooth necklace, belt, and the soles of his shoes clack against the ground with teeth. His father, he says, was so rich he had a 2nd set of teeth implanted behind his own." He didn't have room to add his own name at the bottom or to address the postcard to me. I guess the years at sea have left him without the need for certain social conventions. It's just as well. On land, he was good for nothing, a layabout who would hang around the waterfront to accost foreigners and ask them about their native lands. He attempted this even with the ones that didn't speak our language. A good many times he would be beaten for his efforts by lean arms made hard from pulling on ropes, from hoisting sails, from bludgeoning sea creatures and islanders. I do wish he had had room to put a date on the postcard. I'm never sure how long it takes them to come back to us, how many boats the cards see, changing hands when the ships meet in the middle of the watery nothingness. Every month the cards travel is a month my brother-in-law could have had his skull cracked by an errant coconut or a cannibal and I would never know. I would never know until years had passed which postcard was the last one I was going to get from him. |
1. today is nice 3. happy yesterdays 8. thanks for hosting 4. doing other things |
(Proof that I am the only one reading.) |