ATDTDA (38)Pink Tabs, cover [again]

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Some mo' crazy, crazy, crazy talk.

Ok, first off: Calcite & stamps. Concerning the appearance of the cover, 
how would you get that effect using calcite? There's some really nice 
examples at the Unicorn, and I've been looking at them quite a bit. I'll try it 
sometime to confirm it, but I'd guess you could get that "look" by drawing on 
the calcite with a marker.  Or "stamping" it. In any case, there are three type 
faces on the cover. 

The topmost layer is the sort of san-serif font that you're reading right now. 
Not identical, but it's modern style, the obvious product of an age seeking 
to be streamlined and efficient. The two fonts behind seem to mark earlier 
historical layers, ghosts of the past---Henry James, and Dickens, & Proust 
viewed from the present, the "Now". 

Notice how the stamp for "The Tibetan Chamber of Commerce" is only 
the topmost layer---no back reflections, no ghosts, only the "Now", like 
Shambhala.

Note as well that we are firmly in "Cinderella" territory with the stamp:

          A Cinderella stamp is any non-postage stamp. The oft-neglected 
          stepchild of the postage stamp, a Cinderella may look like a stamp, 
          but it won't carry the mail. The category includes locals, labels, 
          tax stamps, fiscals, poster stamps, charity seals, forgeries, 
          fantasies, phantoms, revenues, etc. Some are more elaborately 
          designed than the postage stamps they imitate. The hard-core 
          philatelist scorns any stamp that didn't carry the mail, but others 
          find these philatelic by-ways fascinating and rewarding. Philatelic 
          Exhibition Seals are a popular sideline among stamp collectors. 
          The heyday for Cinderellas in the U.S. was the 1920's and 1930's, 
          when many beautifully designed engraved examples were produced. 

http://alphabetilately.com/C.html

http://tinyurl.com/66onup

The stamp is the sort of slap you in the face insult of a stamp that 
Gengis Cohen was raving about in The Crying of Lot 49:

          "Normally this issue, and the others, are unwater-marked," 
          Cohen said, "and in view of other details the hatching, 
          number of perforations, way the paper has agedit's 
          obviously a counterfeit. Not just an error." 

          "Then it isn't worth anything." 

          Cohen smiled, blew his nose. "You'd be amazed how much you 
          can sell an honest forgery for. Some collectors specialize in them. 
          The question is, who did these? They're atrocious." He flipped the 
          stamp over and with the tip of the tweezers showed her. The 
          picture had a Pony Express rider galloping out of a western fort. 
          From shrubbery over on the right-hand side and possibly in the 
          direction the rider would be heading, protruded a single, 
          painstakingly engraved, black feather. "Why put in a deliberate 
          mistake?" he asked, ignoring---if he saw it---the look on her face. 
          "I've come up so far with eight in all. Each one has an error like 
          this, laboriously worked into the design, like a taunt. There's 
          even a transposition---U. S. Potsage, of all things." 

And having a "Tibetan Chamber of Commerce" stamp---well, let's 
just wait till we're back with Kit and Lord Overlunch to suss that one out.

http://www.tibetancc.org/

The stamp on the topmost layer of the cover is in the old style of stamps 
made within close memory of the Kirghiz Light. So it is not only a forgery, 
it is a forgery in the spirit of the W.A.S.T.E. postal syste. Of course, in 
Against the Day we are witnessing some of the first radios, [Tesla's 
Invention], Madame Eskimov's really loud record player and other new 
and previously un-experienced forms of distortion, entropy [or Eris] 
stealing into the circuitry.

Not to mention quite a few anarchist mail systems.

Ah, but why all this obsession over a potsage stamp?

Because, it's a clue---in this stew of genre fictions it's the mystery
that rises to the top.