postcards

I was sitting with Michael in the bedroom of his small L.A. apartment, 9 months after the 1994 earthquake rendered destruction all around. It was a late night/early morning and the construction workers who spoke Spanish and flipped boxes of macaroni and cheese were due to wake us up in just a few hours. My trip was coming to an end.

The postcards I had purchased in San Francisco were spread out before me. White matte postcards with tiny pictures of Coit Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, and those quaint Victorian houses with the round windows. My experiences over the course of that week led me to write descriptive pieces of poetry, rather than the usual checklist of events. I closed my eyes, captured one moment, then affixed the stamp and sent it on its way.

Ever since then, I have seen postcards as the ideal medium. Small enough not to intimidate, magical enough to inspire, powerful enough to capture the new perspectives coupled with geographical upheaval.

They hang from clothespins in my apartment. I stay up late after exhausting days in foreign places in order to create them for others. They mean more to me than you can imagine.