note: I might edit this as more information becomes available. It’s just a silly idea for now. I claim to be a concept artist. Some of my concepts fail. Check back soon. August 2021.
As a part-time undergraduate of a self-professed ivy league and prestigious “Ecole” so to speak; and an English literature specialist therein and a member of a fraternity whose members include 5 or 6 United States Presidents; I am officially organizing a letter club. I reside a student of St. Michael’s College, University Of Toronto where I’m still an undergraduate to this day. (this letter club is unendorsed and unaffiliated with the University Of Toronto. In fact, there are no secret societies on campus. We might include members from all walks of life, unaffiliated with the University. I’m just mentioning that I’m getting educated part-time. This is not an endorsement).
I’d like to also mention that I was the first founding member and president of the Toronto Poetry Club on meetup.com, which grew to a few thousand members. I am now unaffiliated with the meetup; I believe it grew too fast and accepted anybody who was interested. I wanted a small, close-knit community of regulars. The meetup as far as I know is still going to this day.
I was also briefly a newsroom journalist at the daily of the University; and was elected to their Board of Directors one year, until a bout of Paranoid Schizophrenia ended my journalism aspirations. It would take me months, years to recover and I subsequently refused to publish, except online. I remain unrepresented and poorish. But that’s another story for another time.
Anyway, in this “club” I’d like to keep our membership a secret and recruit only a few able and willing people to write letters. So far, I’m the only known member. It might be that way for some time. I’m the face of the iteration. Heck, I might die the only member ever outed. And that’s okay with me; And maybe nobody’ll join. We’ll see.
I would have liked to add: we’ll invite you if we’re interested, and if you ask to join then no; but asking to join, until we have several more members, is currently allowed. So use the contact tab and ask me politely if you’re interested in penning letters and joining what I’m calling a secret society, really.
I might publish some of our letters eponymously, and sign the letter: “Diggers” meaning all of us, for one of our mottos might be: “from nothing to something;” or “from one thing, many others” or as I often like to say “from nothing to nothing with nothing”. Who really signed the letter? Does the entire club take responsibility for the content of the letters? Such trifles are currently under development and I’m thinking about how to tackle these sorts of issues. Come on aboard and let’s talk through these problems together, you and I.
For more information about nothing, see the Greeks perspective on it, here:
https://neoskosmos.com/en/128576/the-greeks-and-nothing-a-philosophical-perspective/
I was also inspired by Shakespeare’s usage of Grave Diggers. Curiously, they were poor and witty, and mocked the speech of lawyers and their superiors. Perhaps my ironic letters, by a poor person, who embraces slang and inappropriateness, signed “Diggers” are a nod to Shakespeare’s Grave Diggers.
I’m not gonna lie; as a Paranoid Schizophrenic, I wish that we could telepathically communicate. As far as I can tell, I’m the only member who hears voices and auditory hallucinations. I joke that I’m a “letterhead”; and that the letters write themselves; for, I hear voices in my head talking to me. From whence do the letters come? Is it from my own imagination? Is it from nothing or from something else? I’ll leave that to you. It gets ethical and philosophical. “From nothing to nothing with nothing”.
I hope that you enjoy our letters, if we ever publicly release them. You’ll know if you receive one. Or if I post one on this blog. But other than that, kindly leave us alone.
You can use the contact tab to ask me any questions about the letter club. Or if you have any ideas about who should receive a letter, and what it’s contents might look like – I dislike doing all the homework. Send me materials. No promises. And I won’t credit you. But i’ll take a look.
Steve Mini from the 6ix.
One final joke, in Minecraft, the popular video game, Steve “Mini” famously digs all the time. I play video games all day and eschew my education and wealth. I’ll graduate some day, promise mum! I take just one course per year. You need 20 courses to graduate. That’s 20+ years. I’m at about 15/20 so far. Go figure. I suppose That “Steve Mini, Digger” is really a video game reference as much as it is a cultural and Shakespearean one.
If I could spend all my time in heaven, I’d want to play massively multiplayer online video games and smoke weed, just like I do here on earth. Is earth heaven, then? Am I living the dream, and getting educated to boot? Have I already arrived at my destination: heaven on earth? Very mini-esque. I’ll leave such musings for the letters, and you.
As I often quip, because of my paranoid schizophrenia:
Logically insane, and ineffectually so.
Steve Mini from the 6ix.
PS: I wouldn’t mind if some of our letters to include pop culture references, misspellings or misuses, slang, typos, errors, and other common mistakes associated with the “lower class”. We don’t respect the rules or etiquette, so why should you? As you can probably tell, I’m not worried about typos -and I’m an English literature undergrad, for chris’sakes.
PSS: We might move to open letters, and publish online. This would be convenient for all of us, as we wouldn’t need to care who received the letter or who read it. And we could grow an audience.