I had decided that instead of throwing away the old envelopes which I had received, I would paste new stamps over the old stamps and new address labels over the old addresses and reuse the envelopes. When I picked up one large manila envelope and prepared to paste some new stamps on it., I noticed that the envelope was one I had received from my good friend, Kim (a woman a few years younger than I whom I first met in Portsmouth, Ohio in 1977).
When I was ready to paste new stamps on the envelope, I began looking at the stamps which Kim had originally put on the envelope. There were five large stamps which were peculiar in a number of ways. First, they weren't in the upper right corner of the envelope, but were across the top of the envelope. Second, they were all upside down. And third, they were all markedly crooked, and not arranged in perpendicular order.
Obviously Kim had arranged the stamps that way for a reason, as if she had been trying to convey a message. The arrangement actually seemed rather artistic and the crookedness of the stamps gave them a sense of flow, while their being upside down attracted the eye to them.
The stamps were most interesting, however, because they all had pictures of beautiful paintings on them. At least two appeared to be by Renoir and one by Pablo Picasso. One of the Renoir paintings showed the head of a woman wearing a black hat or bonnet. The background was a darkish red and the entire painting was rather dark. However, the face of the woman herself was brightly highlighted and gave the painting an overall cheerful feeling.
The second painting by Renoir seemed to be of five tall people walking on a beach. In a way the five people seemed to mirror the five stamps. It was a pleasant scene.
The painting by Picasso was very abstract and mostly blue in hue. It appeared to consist of many intertwining lines which formed the image of a woman. Some other faces of women also appeared to be on the side and bottom of the painting. It was an appealing painting.
After looking over the stamps, I actually hated to put new stamps over them. Finally, I decided I could paste the new stamps next to the old stamps; perhaps the final result would resemble a collage.
I began pasting near the Picasso stamp. I thought I could cover up some parts of the Picasso stamp with my new stamp; I even noticed Kim had already covered a small part of the Picasso stamp with a neighboring stamp. I didn't want to cover the faces of the women which were at the bottom and top of the Picasso stamp.
My ex-wife Louise was sitting across from me and I was helping her by putting stamps on some old envelopes for her. I also had a law book in front of me and for some reason was pasting some stamps in the law book.
Louise began talking about a piece of real property which she was trying to buy in Germany as an investment. Apparently she had already sent a check to Germany for the property, but now she was concerned the seller was trying to renege on the deal. I asked her if she had had a written contract and she indicated she hadn't. When I asked her if she had received a written offer of the sale, she told me she had. I concluded that the written offer and the check constituted a valid contract and I thought she should be able to sue the seller if he didn't deliver the property to her. I said, "Sue him."
I figured she ought to be able to make $25,000 if she sued. That ought to appease her.
While we had talked, I had pasted some stamps in the law book, but realized that I had put them on the page dealing with jurisdictions in Germany and that Louise might need to use that page. So I pulled the stamps back out; unfortunately some of the writing of the page also came off.
While pasting stamps, I had to pull some back off, thereby tearing some of them slightly. I tried to repair the damage.
I recalled having recently heard of a man who had sent a letter containing a bomb to his girlfriend, but the bomb had exploded at the post office and the man had afterwards been arrested and convicted in federal court. I wondered how any evidence against the man had been found if the letter had exploded and destroyed itself.
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