Sitting here thinking about Terry Pratchett's Going Postal, and how the initial fantasy conceit of that book was a perfect example of taking an obvious joke and running with it until it's something dark and serious That the abandoned Post Office is haunted by "dead letters"
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He grabs one random ancient letter off the stack and drops it off at the listed address on impulse And the next day is confronted by an elderly man and woman who are finally getting married after 50 years, because her confession of love was lost in the mail
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It's just one particularly dramatic example, but there's *so many letters* in the undelivered stacks How many of them could've changed a life if they'd arrived on time How great was the betrayal, to lie to all those people and take their words and throw them away
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How different a place might this shitty corrupt city be today if 50 years ago all those intended messages had gotten through
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Hearing the tiny scratchy voices of all the whispering ghosts, on matters great and small, noble and coarse, tender and cruel
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"I wish to cancel my subscription to..." "...pleased to inform you the position remains open..." "...so beautiful, I sent you a picture. Wish you were..." "...having considered your offer, am willing to drop..." "...whatever I said doesn't matter anymore, please come home..."
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The whispers of the unheard, their frustration, their rage, their grief, building up to a roar A tornado of swirling sheafs of paper with the same psychic energy as the ghost of someone murdered, charged with the same collective sense of loss, screaming "DELIVER US"
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It's one of those perfect moments that is both a ridiculous pun and something very painful and real Of course, when he wrote it, it wasn't THAT real
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Who'd have thought at this late date "snail mail" would be this relevant? (Even Going Postal is about the Post Office having been replaced by the fantasy telegraph, the clacks) Who'd imagine huge piles of scattered envelopes on the post office floor happening in America today
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I don't know what goes through Postmaster Louis DeJoy's mind when he goes to bed at night But I hope the sheer physical weight of those bags and bags of mail all over the country hangs on him until it makes it hard to breathe
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As Pratchett vividly describes, I hope some part of him understands the sacred trust the fraternity of couriers has held since time immemorial How obscene it is to break the sacred trust one carries when you take someone's words and promise them "I'll make sure they get this"
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And unlike the letters in the book we know what a huge percentage of the mail DeJoy has ordered "held" must say Because his order to hold that mail was a conscious decision to silence those voices, to kill those messages and stop them getting through Not negligence but murder
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If a letter undelivered is a little death, a tiny gasp of unfinished business, then a vote uncast is that twice over And the ghost of those dead letters is a ghost of a better world that could have been if that sacred trust had been upheld, if those voices had been heard
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In Pratchett's goofy po-mo universe every little subculture, every random profession and avocation and fandom gets its own religion, its own gods and its own afterlife Every postman hopes their soul arrives at its destination signed, sealed, delivered
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Louis DeJoy might want to check on whether his own soul has sufficient postage and insurance Because there's a high chance that when he passes on, karma loses him in the back of the truck, and writes him off as "Lost and Undeliverable"
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End of conversation
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