While I was out to lunch with my friend today, I received a voicemail from the Postal Service Law Enforcement department, saying someone had "made an inquiry" into one my letters and requested that I give her a call back to talk about it. After my friend left, I did, explaining that it had been an experiment in sharing transcendent language to see if anyone had any sense of wonder or appreciation of mystery left in them to respond. She told me that one of the prose poems I sent out had been Googled by its recipient. When the person found that it had come from a collection called The World Doesn't End, they "became concerned." I fail to find how that can be construed as threatening at all. I find it affirming, but apparently most of my impulses are way out of line. And it's not as if America's dominant religious paradigm hasn't been touting the same idea since the beginning of forever. Anyway, I apologized, though in hindsight wish I hadn't, wish I would've called her out on the absurdity of this incident. Instead, I told her I'd stop, and she said, "Well, I'm less concerned now knowing they'll stop."
I'm disappointed in the world, but also in myself for being naive enough to think that anyone embraced mystery at all anymore. Incidents like this make me realize how out of touch I am with everyone.
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