Postcards, Part 12

The tradition's origins are ambiguous, but nonetheless it's a tradition that I send people postcards. I carry blank postcards around with me in whatever book I happen to be reading; right now they're slipped into Peter Hessler's River Town (which the SOW Members' Reading Group is discussing), and also a copy of Suicide By Jaguar (a fun book of poetry that happened to fall into my possession a few years back). Then from time to time I simply sit down, and write a postcard, and take a picture of it, and address it to one of SOW's paid subscribers and drop it in the mail.

Then, some time later, I transcribe all the postcards I've written and send them out to all of SOW's paid subscribers. Themes repeat, but each postcard is its own piece of writing, its own thought. As I write them I imagine I'm corresponding with just one person, communing with them alone.

Anyway. Without further ado, here's the past few months' worth of postcards — part twelve of an ongoing series, which you can read in its entirety in the archives. Thanks as always to SOW's paid subscribers for making them all possible 💖

2026-08-13

Brodi says my handstand is improving. He says this after I fall out of a handstand — something I’ve been working on doing more gracefully, and which Panama keeps saying I’m not doing gracefully enough. When Brodi calls out to me I feel so, so proud, and I walk over and sit next to him and try to listen to and really hear his coaching. Minutes earlier he was coaching someone else on their foot-assisted muscle-up, and as he did this I listened too. He was being pushy, insistent, demanding — but with me, and my handstand progression, he was soft and sweet.

2026-08-14

I bought an old tape dispenser, knowing full well that it was missing at least one part. I called a distributor of replacement parts to confirm I was getting the right one, and waited for it to arrive. It was not the right one, and couldn’t be modified to work. I modeled a custom replacement part, which required paying for CAD for the first time in years. I bought a 3D printed version of my custom design. It arrived and worked well — but the clutch assembly on the dispenser is too tight, and it still works very poorly.