I have always been fascinated with postcards. I remember going through my mother’s old photo albums and finding postcards with indecipherable writing on the back. Ever curious, I would scan the writing hoping for some insight into the sender; or the receiver. I found none. It could have been anyone – a generic line on the weather; thinking of you with love; see you soon.
Postcards are the perfect picture. It captures separate moments in time, freezes them, and marries them. From the artist or the photographer taking the picture on the front – frozen moment no.1 – to the few words you scribble for the sender – frozen moment 2. Postcards, in this age of technology, represents something more. To me, it is effort; it is sharing; it is love. All packed in a few lines that anyone can read – you hope they won’t.
I received a whole bunch of postcards this past year, from places I’ve never been to, of things I may have never noticed. Instead of a couple of lines on the weather, I would receive worlds painted with words. World that my writer was occupying at that moment: the way the sunlight hits the beige wall (“why is the wall beige?”); the smell of pine trees and how it transports them back to their childhood; the way a brush stroke on a Van Gogh painting would make them question their art (“it’s not even my favourite painting!”); a paragraph on why is it that they can’t remember what this plant is called (“I have seen it everywhere, but I can’t remember”); wondering what happened between murals of deities being almost nude and our obsession with clothes (“I am barely allowed to wear shorts!”). They all end the same way – “My [beer/fish & chips/food/lunch/tea] is coming. So, I’m going to sign off – “. I sit reading and re-reading these postcards, being transported to a specific point of time in my mind to a place I have never been.
A postcard, to me, is the ultimate love letter. It brims with the warmest kind of love. Not the deeply personal, intense feeling that a stranger’s eyes must never see; not the obligatory lines inquiring after your health scribbled in a hurry; but of a love that every stranger that touch the postcard could share. A love that needs no context – a love that is universal, but personal. A love like an onion, a personal message for each node in the chain that no one else can understand.
And for a sceptical romantic, the best expression of love is love that spreads joy among a horde of strangers, before it lands on her hands; and puts a smile on her face.
Minoli Wijetunga 