Chris Bell 2003

As well as leaving some copies nestling between the magazines and newspapers in my local Parnell cafés, I decided to do something a little different this year. I hope it's still considered to be in the spirit of things.

I'm going to distribute the 'Pilgermann' quote the Mighty Azog (a.k.a. Dave Awl) used last year:

When one is a child, when one is young, when one has not yet reached the age of recognition, one thinks that the world is strong, that the strength of God is endless and unchanging. But after the thing has happened - whatever that thing might be - that brings recognition, then one knows irrevocably how very fragile is the world, how very, very fragile; it is like one of those ideas that one has in dreams: so clear and so self-explaining are they that we make no special effort to remember. Then of course they vanish as we wake and there is nothing there but the awareness that something very clear has altogether vanished.

I've printed this eight times onto yellow/gold A4 and will be mailing them to random addresses from the Auckland (New Zealand) telephone book. Although this could be construed as junk mail by the recipients, I'm hoping the anonymous envelopes with their yellow paper cargo, as well as the power of the quotation itself, will spark some New Zealanders' natural curiosity ... But don't try this at home, as they say - I wouldn't want us to be dismissed as junk mailers.

It goes,
Chris