Mail Received - Erni Bär

[xx Jones]

The postman rang my doorbell while I was in the shower. I clambered out of the bath and got dressed quickly and the postman apologized because the mail did not fit into the mailbox. God knows what he thought about the piece of mail art, which I was to receive from Erni Bär. I had been awaiting this with trepidation as he had announced it a few days earlier including some ominous remarks.

The packaging features lots of colourful Erni Bär Fanclub stamps, the Haptic Werewolf and two stickers with Erni as cartoon character. One of them is Erni the Art Hammer! I like cartoon superheroes! Cool! On the back side of the parcel is another self portrait as collage, in a more loose style as opposed to the strictly geometric other work that I have seen. I did now know he did collages in that pretty fuzzy way. So in any case I finally opened the package and ...

As you can probably tell by now I am totally copying Erni's style of blog presentation. Erni is such a master of suspense both in his blogging and obviously also in his mail art, as there was another tightly wrapped and sealed package. 

I carefully cut it open and there we go: a genuine Erni Bär called "Rahmenprogramm", with symmetric images of sky and earth and stars (- as above so below? -) and some cryptic messages, which

I am still trying to decode: SLAP JON - is that a reference to Jones, or not? RAPMAS ? TIE US? Well first postal ties are definitely established. However, I thought that Buddhism is all about removing attachments, so I presume it means detached attachment, which makes sense to me.

I then could not think of a funny or interesting performance to do, sorry, so I sat down exhausted from the exictement and had a good cup of tea. Let's have fun at the earthly realm while the door to Heaven is open! Thank you Erni!!

PS: Please dear reader, don't be offended if I do not post in this length about all mail received. I can see that mail art takes serious dedication, and sometimes documenting takes as long or longer as creating it.

[Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat)]

Great Haptic Werewolf goodies...and great blog, xxJones!

Das ist gut!...ya?

[xx Jones]

Ich sehe das so: Wenn du wirklich die Leere praktizierst, dann können alle möglichen anderen ihre eigenen Bilder auf dich projizieren. Es gibt auch Leute, die haben da so eine astrologische Disposition, etwas mit Neptun. Ist natürlich eine Versuchung bzw. Herausforderung für das Ego.

Erni, ich habe gerade was in den Postkasten geworfen, aber danach ist mir eingefallen, dass ich vielleicht nicht genug Marken draufgeklebt habe. Na, mal sehen, ob das ankommt. Falls du Nachporto zahlen musst, sorry schon jetzt.

[Cayte Catastrophe]

Great post! I love your disclaimer!