Go Signs

A few days ago, my sister and I were on Long Island at longtime family friend (my mother’s best friend) Gloria’s for dinner. Her daughter, Linda, described how she took a particular course of action because she’d had three signs. You know, SIGNS. Like the universe telling you this is what you should be doing.

So let me tell you about my Signs.

#1
Several years ago, I became enthralled with the notion of transparent art. Something on transparent pages that would say different things depending on what you could or couldn’t see. I couldn’t figure it out. It’s very complicated because, of course, you can see through the pages.

#2
I read Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. A young man commits suicide in the bookstore and leaves his suicide note in clues in a series of books. He cuts out the words in one book, leaving windows. When placed up against the pages of a companion book, the windows expose the words which become his suicide note.

#3
My Bricolage group challenge for last month was “Postcard.” Do anything with postcards: make one, collage one, send one, whatever. That’s how our art challenges work. I look at the postcards I’d sent my mother over the years – which I now have after her death – and they seem to me messages from not only place, but time.

#4
The next email I receive is from the New York Public Library about their 2018 series, NYPL LIVE. Billy Collins, the poet, is a speaker when I’ll be in Manhattan. I buy a ticket.

#5
Suddenly, Billy Collins’ poem, “Forgetfulness,” rises to my consciousness yet again. I’ve mentioned it a few times here because it’s so age-appropriate for us, but now you need to see these first verses:

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

And they seem to me to be messages from another time, from other places – postcards to ourselves in the present.

#6
So I take the poem and cut it up. I buy some clear, plastic envelopes and cut them into postcard sizes. I glue the words down to send these messages from the past, from someone who’s gone and retired far away. This is the first postcard I’d send:

And then this:

And then this:

And after eight postcards – all with messages like this – you would have this:

#7
Isn’t that exciting! All the Signs led me to this art project and it worked, so of course I have to show it to Billy Collins. I get to the library very early; I am the first in line. I get a good seat.

Billy Collins is a relaxed, humorous, self-deprecating sort of conversationalist. I thoroughly enjoy myself. Afterwards, I am right in front on his signing line, and I show him my creation. He looks at me, thanks me, is glad to inspire, and then he looks at the 75 people waiting in line and has to usher me away.

I leave happily. The universe told me this was the project for me – all the Signs said so – and they were right. In a world where things go wrong, sometimes they just line up and go right.