Assuming the writer's timeline is accurate, the message must have been written at some time between 8:10 pm and 11:30 pm, when it was found. The condition of the notecard (several footprints, ground-in dirt and gravel marks, and evident water damage during a time frame when the skies were clear) indicates it was immediately discarded by the writer and left as litter on Polk Street.

Unsavory physical condition is a critical authentication element for collectors of the discarded, often incoherent messages that litter America's cities. I have no intention of trying to be some sort of garbological Lomax of forgotten urban literature. For one thing, there's no challenge in this hobby, since lack of proper spacing and punctuation can make even the most coherent message seem like pointless gobbledegook. For another, Sam Pratt's The Finger is the true Gold Standard for discarded memoirs, found proems and rejected book pitches; and it would be fruitless for me to compete with that collection.

But it would require a pretty incurious mind not to find some fascination in the unintentional samizdat of the sidewalk. My own limited experience has netted a fine collection of effluvia, including a crayoned PSA from "Stan" about secret ingredients in Gray's hot dogs, a mildly titillating note from "Mil" to "Girl" extending thanks for an introduction to "Carlos" (an apparent love machine: Mil notes that Carlos "made me so hot all night I felt like a little kitten, he knows just how to touch me"), and the hand-drawn, densely written, but surprisingly upbeat handbill crammed with blueprints for prospective inventions by "Ken," a tiny, ancient man who used to write out his newsletter at a McDonalds off Waverly Place and hand them out at the World Trade Center. Through a habit of nomadism, I have lost most of this collection - a loss I sincerely regret. Some were given away on street corners, some found in gutters, but all shared a genuinely obsessive quality that distinguishes them from such classics of semi-professional urban detritus as the graffiti of COST and REVS, Pam Butler's Good Girl Project, or pasted handbills of Andre the Giant.

In fact, the notecard from our friend with the meaningless donut epiphany is a rather weak specimen of the genre. There's something too precious about the author's Proustian attempt to marry a pastry with a dream state; the offhand observation about being overcharged for the pastry smacks of cuteness. The shoehorning of "nightmares-dreams" into a hopelessly mundane observation seems to me a preening attempt to sound nutty. Despite an admirable precision in observation (there is indeed a Bob's Donuts on Polk Street between Sacramento and Clay), it's not surprising that the author quickly discarded this uninspired vignette.

For a more intriguing sample, I turn your attention to "Justine"'s letter to "Eric," written on an 8 1/2" X 11" looseleaf page with ripped hole punches, dated 11/20 (year unknown) and found on January 12 of this year at the corner of Lombard and Fillmore Streets in San Francisco.

What is instantly striking about Justine's letter is its attractive handwriting, evident even in this tiny reproduction. While probably not a product of a Catholic school, Justine has a breezy, pleasant-on-the-eye penmanship style, which might intrigue handwriting expert Bart Baggett.

Matching the quality of the lettering is a seeming equanimity in the message. "Things are going ok for me," Justine writes at one point. "...like everything else it gets to be a pain in the ass now, and again." But if we look a little more deeply into the message we see some disquieting patterns. She uses the words "ok" or "good" four times in the course of four short paragraphs (one of them a postscript), and with subtle modulation that suggests things may not be as "ok" as they seem at first glance. In the first appearance, things are "going ok." At the end of the same paragraph, "It is ok here, it is not so bad." Then later, "It is ok here sometimes, but like everything else it gets to be a pain (etc)." Sometimes!

This gradual souring of the ok's is set in relief by some hints that Justine is not completely free to change her situation. "You sounded like you have a cold," she tells Eric, "I sure wish I was able to take care of you, but I can not so take care of yourself." Then: "I'm just doing what I need to Be doing to stay out of trouble. It is ok here, it is not so bad." What we have, in effect is the reverse of the Bob's Donut card. Where the Bob's Donut author attempts to sound kooky and disturbed while writing up a banal experience, Justine writes with a solidly banal style that hints at bottomless unhappiness. For there is strong evidence that Justine may in fact be a member of a cult.

Whoever Justine is living communally with, they certainly seem to attend a great many "groups." Here's how Justine describes her daily life: "We have groups all day long from 10am-9pm every day." Note that that is not "every weekday," nor "every day except Sunday," but "every day." Does Justine get out? She does. "We go to outside meetings 3 times a week," she tells Eric. And later: "We have House gathering then dinner and after that we have 2/1 1/2 groups for the end up of the night."

And in ending the body of her letter (the PS describes more Groups), she notes: "Well its a group so I have to end, and I will write later. It is womens group today so, more later." That use of "its a" in the sense of "there is" or "we have" is an odd tic from a writer who otherwise seems to be a native English speaker. We are reminded of the speaking style of Vladek, the Holocaust survivor in Art Spiegelman's Maus ("On our appels it was one old guy there, always he was complaining").

But the real depth of found-letter insanity is plumbed in the last surviving message from my collection. This one is written in thick black marker on the back of an 8 1/2" X 11" flyer listing the schedule of Wednesday Night Forums at ABC No Rio on 156 Rivington Street, Manhattan (Forums include discussions of Anarchism, Transgender Power and Squatting). Addressed to "Liz" and signed "KOK," this note was found in 1993, taped to a lamppost outside 65 Saint Marks Place in New York. The text bears repeating in full:

Liz,

A couple of times at Polonia's, while you ate you amanated with your facial contortions. The looks of "Dixon" the Negro who worked with me for Powerhouse in 1978. And who I still see in the park. Dix pluralizes cocks, and you have the Dixon Mason line factor. Does it corroborate my suspicion. That you seduced Blacks to Fuck you in the ass?

KOK

We'll leave aside the question of whether KOK's suspicions have any merit, since Liz's romantic activities are her own business. What is interesting here is the incredible pathology by which KOK reaches his conclusions. On the surface of it, we may assume that KOK has a crush, or at least a sexual fixation, on Liz. But his attraction is mingled with his racist revulsion in a fairly compex way. In Liz's facial contortions, he actually sees the looks of Dixon. Not just a furtive glance at his rival, or a wink that suggests Liz may have been involved in some romantic liaison KOK doesn't like. No, KOK actually sees the face of the man he seems to loathe in the face of the woman who attracts him.

This attraction/revulsion may be behind KOK's headlong misuse of language - the misspellings, the random punctuation, and most of all the hypnotically rhythmic inversion in the phrase "Dixon Mason line factor," which merits being read aloud.

And that may not be the only inversion going on here.