There are no letters in the mailbox And there are no grapes upon the vine And there are no chocolates in your boxes anymore And there are no diamonds in the mine
Some days, who can stare at swathes of sky, leafage and bad-complected whale-gray streets, tailpipes and smokestacks orating sepia exhaust, or the smaller enthusiasms of pistil and mailbox key, and not weep for the world's darks on lights, lights on darks, how its half-tones stay unchanged in their changings, or how turning wheels and wind-trash and revolving doors weave us into wakefulness or dump us into distraction?
Throwing a knuckleball for a strike is like throwing a butterfly with hiccups across the street into your neighbor's mailbox.
To his amazement, he could already hear Henry snoring in the backseat. That guy could fall asleep on a car trip to the mailbox.
I find that getting something on the screen as soon as possible really helps focus the problem for me. It helps me decide what to work on next. Because if you're just looking at that big to-do list it's like, eh, I don't know which one I should do—does it matter which one I do? But if there's something you can actually look at, even if it's just the debug output of your mailbox parser, it's like, OK, there!
Rejoice with the day lily for it is born for a day to live by the mailbox and glorify the roadside
I won't forget the hood. I won't forget the days of catching a bullet on the way to the mailbox or bricks with death threats that somehow made their way through the window.
When you see a handwritten envelope addressed to you in your packet of mail when you get your mail out of the mailbox - when you see a personal letter waiting for you - it's exciting. It touches you. You say "Oh, somebody really thought of me and didn't just slap a mailing label across an envelope. Somebody wrote something to me. "
One of the strongest of contemporary conventions is that of comparing to Thoreau every writer who has been as far out of the house as the mailbox.
When I was a kid, the high point of the day was to go to the mailbox and see if any mail came for me, and I'm still stuck in that mode.
