I started collecting stamps about five months into the pandemic.A sense of urgency came over me when we all learned that Louis DeJoy was literally dismantling the United States Postal Service.
I think it was the combination of the destruction of things that remind me of the normalcy of life and my mind wandering and feeling a need for an anchor. All an anchor means is a means to stay in one place while the water around you moves.
There was lots of movement everywhere. At the very least we wore our masks and socially distanced. We all sheltered in place at first, and then we started hearing about people with nasty behavior. There was the collective trauma and burden of unpunished murders, and the subsequent learning that we've actually lived in a racist society for quite some time, and the fact that it must change. Let's not forget our terrible management of our natural environment and its effects. At one point, I was affected by a pandemic, social upheaval, and the smoke from massive uncontrolled fires far away.
Of course I yearned for the stability and predictability of the world before. I missed its innocence, but waiting for the past to return meant to deny the significance of the present moment. If we paid attention, we learned we couldn't go back to the way things were because they were flawed. We needed to fix them.
Stamps offered way points. Like stars in the night sky, stamps are an innocent, impartial, and delightful souvenirs of the human experience. They are pinpricks of light in the darkness, tiny records of time and space. I loved how they reminded me of the shared human experience of sending a letter, which was driven by our desire to send messages to each other. And how people organized and standardized and built something for everyone. The grandeur of stamps and stars are contained in the smallest of sizes as visible to our eyes.
