My workspace at home faces West and about this time every year, the afternoon sun creeps high enough in the sky to be a glaring nuisance. But in some weird way, this very lighting takes me back to four years ago at this exact same time when I would spend late afternoons crafting long and lovely soul-revealing letters to send out into the ether to B and waiting patiently to receive one in return.

The events seem so very far away from now but these same feelings of flirtation and anticipation are so oddly present in my current daily routine: updating project plans, booking French honeymoon hotels, and chatting with B about returning a pair of Cole Haan shoes. And during it all I feel giddy and flirty and most important, so very in love.

In the not-so-very-long-ago past, I used to spend a lot of time and energy writing postcards on my vacations. Perhaps you received one, not so very long ago. And these postcards were rarely an itinerary of places to visit, but instead a few words, a phrase, a sentence to mark the smallest observation-- almost always a reflection of the feeling or mood invoked by this sometimes new or sometimes familiar place.

So flipping through a stolen copy of last month's GQ, I noticed that someone working advertising for Banana Republic must have received one of these postcards, not so very long ago, because their new print campaign possesses the same whimsical tone, and the same invoked feelings and moods, that my postcards used to carry. A few of my favorites...

Photo: Polished but quirky-looking blond seated at a table for four at an upscale restaurant, across from a suited but only partially visible man.
Phrase: "She always secretly liked his brother Edward."

Photo: Partial back of woman putting laundry in the washer, partial back of man seated on the floor, suitcase spilled open on the floor between them.
Phrase: "As usual, the postcards he wrote were still in their luggage."

Photo: Partial front of man standing in the street in the foreground, blurred image of woman standing on the sidewalk in the background.
Phrase: "Even years later, he would let Claire think she saw him first."

Lately my life has been way over-stimulated-- the way all of the new sights and sounds and smells and feelings upon visiting a new place make you feel. Each day slides into the next, bringing new sensations and mysteries, and plenty of new pictures and phrases ring inside of my head. Again, a few of my favorites to bring you up to date...

Photo: Woman seated in a dark mahogany-colored and nearly empty restaurant lifts her glass of French dessert wine as a partially-visible man kisses her fingers.
Phrase: "He was secretly happy that his last-minute Valentine's Day reservation provided them such romantic solitude."

Photo: Man and woman pressed together in the overly-crowded Magnolia bakery reaching for the same pink-frosted cupcake.
Phrase: "She wanted each day in the new year ahead to taste this heavenly sweet."

Photo: Blur of woman dancing around the living room with her new yellow Dyson.
Phrase: "Birthdays could be about Jell-O AND cleaning supplies-- both made her squeal with delight."

Photo: Back of woman in a white coat and pink scarf walking through, and looking up at, one of the Christo/Jeanne-Claude Gates.
Phrase: "His whisking her off to Manhattan for her birthday was as surprising as a February walk through a saffron-colored Central Park."

Photo: Back of woman, mimosa in hand, and man whispering in front of shelves of China place settings.
Phrase: "Falling in love with a Tiffany's Palladium place setting was just one example of what her father called her 'champagne tastes'."

Photo: Man washing a new anthracite blue Volkswagon Golf in the bitter cold of February while a woman stands smiling in the background.
Phrase: "She couldn't figure out what took her so long to come around to reason, especially when watching him dote on his new baby."

Photo: Man, woman, father, and mother sitting around a kitchen table with half-eaten slices of sample wedding cake abandoned on plates in front of them.
Phrase: "It was the first time she could ever remember throwing away leftover cake."

Photo: A woman with her arms wrapped lazily around a partially visible man's neck as he carries her around an aquamarine swimming pool.
Phrase: "If this is was the payback for cooking him dinner most nights, she was about to buy a few new cookbooks."

Photo: The back of two side-by-side chase lounges overlooking the pristine white sandy beaches and green-blue water of the Mayan Riviera.
Phrase: "Her mind raced with ways to miss their flight back to DC."

It's been quite a month here. I hope yours has been equally as surprising and sunny.