Airmail envelope sent to America. Note the awkward foreign attempt at Chinese characters.
In the cinderblock apartment building, down the dim corridor, through the hollow door on the left, find the post office. One room. Dusty light. Worn wooden table in the middle. Narrow counter below a small round window in the back.
Hand your package through the bodies crowding the window, where weight and destination are checked, cost determined, stamps sold. Then back out and approach the table. The stamps aren’t sticky, not even lickable. You need glue.
Anchored atop the table is a ceramic glue pot. Use one of the metal-handled brushes slumped inside. Paint your stamps, press them into place, return the brush. Take a moment to admire the pot.
It has sat there at least a decade, thick globs cascading from rim to table like the flow of rock in a cave. Whether an actual pot is entombed within those opaque folds, or whether the pot itself is made of glue, is irrelevant – long ago patrons ceased worrying over spillage. Indeed its organic, beeswax shape seems to have inspired one person after another, dozens upon hundreds, upon thousands, all engaging in the most minute of rebellions: glopping freely, almost religiously, adding their anonymous signatures to the communal construct.
Postal package receipt. French, the international postal language, was used alongside Chinese — little help to an American trained to speak Spanish.
