Missing Packages

Letter from the Editor as published in the December 2023 issue

If you were to scroll through the text exchange between myself and my neighbour you would find an archive of lost packages that spans years.

Me: Any chance a delivery came to you by mistake?

Her: Haven’t seen anything.

Once, a box of two hundred books sat on her unused, snow laden front porch for three weeks before it was discovered. By that time I’d already had them reprinted and a fresh batch sent to me. Now we check with each other as soon as something says “Delivered” and isn’t sitting at our door.

Me: Found it. They left it at the end of the lane. In the rain.

Her: No! So annoying!

She’s had eBay orders that went to Mount Forest and Amazon orders that went to Hanover.

Her: I just found my package down the hill at the neighbour’s house.

Me: Good grief!

No one cares about the package delivery like the one waiting for it. When my coffee subscription didn’t arrive on time you might have thought my child had gone missing. We put so much faith in a system that is supposed to be flawless, only to be let down again and again.

I wonder sometimes if this is why we hoard our art. We cling to the thing we create because it is precious to us. To send it out into the world means we are trusting it to a system that may not care the way we care, and our feelings are far too fragile to handle damaged packaging, or, God forbid, abandoned deliveries.

We just want to be heard, to leave a mark. And as an artist, we are, in many ways, both the giver and the receiver. If we embolden ourselves enough to put our work into the world, the next logical step is to eagerly await the affirmation that must come our way.

“Your package has been delivered.”

When delivery is met with silence, what choice do we have but to stew? Did they really receive it? Did they even open it? Is it actually sitting at the end of the neighbour’s driveway to be mistakenly taken away with the recycling?

Because we never really let go, do we? And even if we do, it’s often with a broken feeling of ‘well, maybe it just wasn’t good enough,’ which is rarely, if ever, the case.

So here is my challenge to you, dear reader. As you flip through these pages, if there is a story or a poem or a piece of art that speaks to you, why not make a personal connection with its creator? Find them on socials, look up their website, seek out a way to say thank you. Without their bravery and vulnerability, Blank Spaces could not exist. The world is a better place when we don’t hoard our art. Don’t let the beauty that dresses these pages become another missing package. Your thank you is the fuel someone might need to keep creating, to keep trying, to keep believing that what they do matters. It’s a powerful thing to be seen and it’s a blessing to know your package has, in fact, been delivered and received.

Alanna Rusnak

     Editor in Chief, Blank Spaces