The Myth of Wile E

The Secret Life of Junk Mail

The next few days brought the usual parade of Emily Post-it notes and junk mail.

Also, the mogul wrote to remind me (again) of his plan to "develop" the valley, as if the land was some exposed roll of film that just needed to be soaked in a mix of chemicals until strip malls and industrial parks appeared all over it.

In a way I don't mind receiving letters from the mogul, because he's extravagant enough to only use one side of each page, and I'm always in need of writing paper. Junk mail, on the other hand, was usually covered on both sides, which struck me as inconsiderate.

Junk mail usually went straight from the mailbox into the kindling pile, unopened. When I'm trying to light the wood stove, junk mail is very helpful. But between you and me, I do feel a slight tinge of guilt upon cremating the mail, given its journey. To think that once upon a time it began as a tree which was just doing its tree thing, not bothering anyone, until it was unceremoniously chopped down and milled and pulped and pounded into paper sheets and bleached.

Then it got all boxed up, and wondered what it would become next: Would it hit the big time, and become a Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection? Or even the next Gettysburg Address or Emancipation Proclamation? Or at least an important personal document such as a birth or marriage certificate?

Would it hit the medium time, becoming something enjoyable but temporary, like a magazine?

Would it become the flyer that reunites a lost dog with his heartbroken family? Or the notepaper on which a couple composes their wedding vows?

How anxious the paper must have felt as it went through the printer, waiting to be tattooed with its destiny. Probably it did not know its fate right away, as it came out of the printer like a patient after surgery, still bandaged and nervous, but hopeful. Then, still warm, it was grabbed by moistened fingertips and hastily folded and stuffed into a bulk rate envelope. While folded, perhaps the paper finally got a look at itself. And you can image its growing despair as it read the telltale words: "Dear Resident," "exciting offer!" "$29.95 + tax."

"Oh no," the letter would lament to itself.

And then the letter arrives in my mailbox and waits. Waits with the faintest hope that its words might move me to get my ducts checked for mold, to get my carpets steam-cleaned and my chimney swept, to bundle my phone/dish/Internet service for one low-low rate. Unbeknownst to the junk mail, it waits in my kindling pile, until the day it is finally cremated, unopened.

It isn't fair, when you think about it. At least if I'd recycled it, it would have been reincarnated as new paper and had another shot at literary life. Let's hope it attained paper nirvana, or whatever plane it is that paper aspires to. I mean, it never did anything wrong. It didn't choose to be junk mail. Anyone could see it was blameless in that whole matter. It was a perfectly good piece of paper.