Letters in Wet Pigment

To you, fingertips still stained,

The pigment is not dry yet; press a finger on it and the print will stay.

This letter comes from Mexico City in autumn 1920, in a warm ocher envelope of visible fibers, its title written in coarse black brush strokes. Fragments of turquoise and rust, in a cubist manner, build up a woman by a lake. There is a paper tab like a cobalt pigment swatch, a delicately carved serpent line, a small workshop stamp, and under your thumb the real grain of pigment.

In one poem a painter-monk praises the world before his eyes: "The beauty and the wonder and the power, / The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades, / Changes, surprises—and God made it all!" — Robert Browning, "Fra Lippo Lippi" (1855)

Letters are the same: first color, then shape, last of all the name. Welcome. Before the pigment dries, paint on whatever you want to say.

Written while the color is wet

Storm Post Office

Autumn 1920 · Mexico City