Rubber stamp

After a solid week of winter hibernation, I went into the city. I had a stack of letters and I needed to get moving on handing them out.

The city was running at a fast pace, the pavements crowded with people. The first thing I did was go to the rubber stamp shop because I needed to have a custom-made rubber stamp which would say 'true letters from fictional people'. This would allow me to put my information on the outside of each envelope and I was hoping, clear up any of the ambiguity about the letters.

The rubber-stamp shop was in an old shopping centre over Wynyard Station. It was a small shop with three people working behind the counter. The woman who served me asked me specifically what I would like on the stamp so I told her and she said, sure, we can do that. You probably want the words 'true letters from fictional people' to stand out? Is that correct?
Yep, exactly, I replied.

Behind the counter, a man was eating a sandwich. Another woman was tapping away on a computer. Despite the computer, the shop had a twee, of-another-era atmosphere. There were samples of the different types of rubber-stamps in a glass display. Most of them were quite plain but some were more elaborate. I asked the woman if it would be possible to mix fonts. American typewriter and Arial? Do you think that would look a bit too busy? I asked.
She shrugged and said, we can make a proof for you to have a look at.
Alright, I said, that would be perfect. Then: do you want me to pay you now? No, she replied, pay when you come back in.
Thanks very much, I said. And I left. The whole thing was going cost about 50 bucks.

I went up to the park. I couldn't think of anywhere else to go. There was some sort of protest happening by the fountain but I stood and watched the chess players. The chess players moved the giant plastic pieces across the board. After about five minutes I wandered off and headed across the park not following the path. The ground was still wet. The sun was bright now and has some warmth to it. I encountered a pair of blonde female traveller. At first, they seemed a bit freaked out by my offer to give them a letter but then they accepted it. I like this idea, said the more receptive of the two girls in an unidentifiable European accent. The next person I talk to was reading a book by Philip K Dick. He looked like an office worker. In fact, he looked like a character out of the Philip K Dick novel.
Are you a man of letters? I asked him.
Sure, he said. I gave him the shortened version of the sales pitch and then handed him a letter. He still seemed a bit dubious. Maybe he was reading too much Philip K Dick, a writer who dealt extensively with paranoia. What if, completely out of the blue, someone walked up and handed you a letter which kicked off some kind of paranoid or dramatic story?

The next person was a 30-year-old woman in a white blazer sitting cross-legged on a blanket with a laptop. Are you a writer, I asked? Yeah, she said, I am. I write romantic fiction, she said. I have about two novels on the go at the moment but I'm sort of stuck. I gave her the whole sales pitch and asked if she would except two letters. I understand what you're doing, she said. And yes, you can give me a few letter. They're not horror, are they? She asked, looking apologetic. No, I said. They just regular old fiction. I left her and walked on. I felt bad, or at least that I have missed an opportunity because I had cut the conversation short. This was in part due to the fact that I am invading people's privacy when I do this. And in the moment, it is difficult to gauge how much of an interaction people want with a stranger.

I continued through the park and I saw another guy, an older guy, with big yellow teeth, reclined on the grass and I walked over to him and asked him if he reads fiction. And he smiled up at me and goes, No, I don't. Fair enough, I said and moved on. I walked over to another guy sitting on a bench reading a book. I went up to him and said, do you like fiction? He shrugged and said, sure. I could tell he was Spanish and I could also tell he wasn't going to read the letter I was handing him even after I explained this was a commitment free experience. I would not be emailing him with an exciting offer that he would be a fool to refuse, nor would I be asking for his credit card number. It was simply a piece of paper that I was gonna give to him and he could read it and then leave it somewhere else.

I walked up along Oxford Street and then I went to the About Life food supermarket. I had an odd mix of different foods in a cardboard container. An international mess of savoury goodness. After that, I went to the bookstore on the corner of Campbell Street and Crown. I asked the guy behind the counter what happened to the letters I previously left. He said people had picked them up, taken them. I was pretty pleased. I told him I was still finessing the process. He said, leave some more if you like. So that's what I did. I pulled each letter slightly out of the envelope so you could see they were letters and left them around on the book displays. I shook the man's hand. I thanked him and then I left.

I walked up Oxford Street. I was looking for the place to leave one more letter but I couldn't decide. My phone rang. It was the rubber-stamp shop. The woman behind the counter was ringing up to check the spelling of my last name. I suspect that really, she was testing that my number was valid before they started making my stamp.

I left one more letter at the Paddington library, on top of a bookshelf. Then I went to the DVD section. I looked through the titles hoping to find something new. Something interesting.