Self-Help Still Life

Years ago, my mom was going through some vacation ephemera and unearthed the above postcard. While children growing up in Manhattan had museums, I was refining my tastes on the roadside travel souvenirs found at nearly every Stuckey's located on our family vacation route. 

After re-discovering said postcard, my mother thought it appropriate to place it on the dresser in my childhood bedroom—the room where I stayed on my trips back to visit. It was an inside joke, but not about anything in particular. We laughed. The truth is always funny.

It remained there forever until recently finding it's way to a new location atop a small box where I had carefully placed unfired bullets from a gun I found in the house.

It co-existed with the bullets for no apparent reason until recently, when I decided the postcard should be in front of my monitor.

Still a sucker for souvenirs, the coffee cup was from a visit to MoMA's gift shop.

The book to the left is somehow related to all this.