For no real reason, I collect fortune cookie fortunes. Not in an avid, enthusiastic way, but if I happen to read one that I like or that happens to feel good at that moment, I tuck it away into one of a thousand places, never to be seen again.*
I also have a fascination with found things: found poetry, found art, found film, found music, found photographs, and of course, found miscellany. I’m fascinated by what gets discarded, how it is discovered, and how such things read when placed in a new context. (Hard to think of Drew Barrymore as being especially poetic or incisive, yet “Gravity” is both.)
Found objects and art have a strange power and mystery to them, whether lost by accident or discarded under the assumption that the object’s life has reached an end. But especially curious to me are items that are lost (or “lost”) on purpose, anonymous words and ideas launched into the universe to an unspecified recipient, like a note tied to the end of a balloon. Fortune cookie writers (someone has to pen those things) and bathroom-stall philosophers don’t have a particular audience in mind: they write to everyone and no one.
Much like we do here on the internet.
Thus enter Found Wisdom, a new site I’ve created to collect the many wise words discovered hiding inside cookies, taped to bakery shop windows, and scrawled on cinderblock walls. I also expect to include accidental messages created by happenstance and unsolicited advice given by drive-by passersby. (Who hasn’t been on the receiving end of guidance delivered by no one in particular for no apparent reason?)
I’d love to include similar communications from the unknown found by others, so if you would like to contribute, send me an email at kelliemwalsh at gmail . com. Any snapshot or brief story (approximately 100 words) of a stumbled-upon message that is useful, insightful, encouraging, or profound is welcome.
*One found the night before a cross-country flight lives in my wallet.
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