Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society

Dear Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society Members,

Mr. Seymour Reid, former Director of the Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society, now Assistant Director of same said Society, is a man of operational salaciousness. That is to say that, since our incorporation, he made the workings of our Society look infinitely sexier than they actually were.

Turns out Seymour Reid is a rat. That is the reason that the Board of the Society has hacksawed a leg from the chair of his appointment.

And now that we've identified him as rat, let us tell you what type of rat he is: He is pack rat. Yes, that horrid sort of rat who scrounges life's flotsam and jetsam, like a greedy squirrel guzzling more than his fair share of acorns. Reid's apartment teemed with canister upon canister of original prints of one-off films, coiled copies of luminary cinematic cartographic works of all genres: Drama, comedy (black and romantic and slapstick), chick flick, foreign, pornographic, and horror.

The list goes on, but if you're not getting the gist, well frankly there's something wrong with you. Maybe you should consider our continuing education course SRCCS095: Cartographic Cinema Studies for Beginners, Returning Students, and Complete Dolts.

Next round of classes start in mid-June.

But back to thick of the plot: When the Society's "alleged" "remote" "film shed"—the one that "only he" had "keys" to or knew the "location" of but couldn't map from "memory"—"allegedly" "burned" "to the ground", we members of the Society all sobbed together over our collective misfortune.

The insurance money came through though, and we cooed at all the zeroes that trailed the 7. Remember how we cooed? Oh we cooed. But no amount of cooing could ever quell the tremendous sense of loss we felt. Am I right?

Remember how, in the Twinesdale Library's Community Room, we all talked for what felt like weeks about how it didn't matter that we didn't have a single masterpiece remaining to fill what would have been, without all the talking, an evening silence and charting of coordinates? We shared our feelings, became One, which is so much more than Many.

It felt romantic, didn't it, to be missing something loved by so few? It did.

But the shed? There were never any films stored there. That shed may as well have been a leprechaun crowned king of the Bermuda Triangle, because it never existed.

This pack rat, our rat, (now) Assistant Director Mr. Seymour Reid, was at home every night, hosting private showings from our archives for a party of one.

He used an antique film projector to disperse the images and dialogue that express who were are over his filthy, off-white living room wall. He'd constructed his furniture out of some of the canisters and used others as artistically painted wall-hangings, and still others he used to warm tortillas on his stove. He was, almost literally, completely surrounded by things that are and should have always been ours.

Well, we've reclaimed them! They are in their rightful hands once more. Our hands. The Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society's hands. Now please set down those towers of life-saving canisters and smack your hands together in a little clap.

Haha. I'm giddy, giggly! Can you tell? But in all seriousness...

The rumors will continue to grow, and the Society’s official position is: Let them.

Let them be like a desert overrun with Jumping Cholla Cactus. Let them be like Romanian infants gone stir crazy in their cribs, who gets more aloof and angry as their flesh and bones bellow toward adolescence. Let them be like a bathtub full of snakes in a place where mice don't exist, so the snakes feast on each other until the strongest becomes the sum of their total.

But please, be civil when you see Mr. Seymour Reid at our meetings. And please continue to make your membership dues payable to him. The Society is his namesake, after all.

Sincerely,
The Board
Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society