Yesterday on the subway I opened the final page of James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk, and found a stack of postcards I purchased in Berlin, which I had every intention to send before leaving Paris for New York. Over the last few years, finding time to send these kinds of updates and notes has gone hand in hand with the gravity of my connection to that particular person. I am notoriously hard to catch on text, but I will make time to send you a note.
In anticipation of this on a personal level, I aligned it with my social as well. Postcards from here (insert pin) followed photographs of my individual travels, and the ones I took with my children. Despite where we were, or maybe how I felt, the postcard allowed me to reorient myself within that social community. It intentionally became a bridge for that relationship that has been integral to my success. In those postcards, my absence on that perennial island was no longer, and what was happening behind the scenes was—to an extent—visible.
Of all the flows I keep (and don’t), the one I’m most troubled by is my inability to stick to an internet-work schedule that allows me to be reliable weekly (I have similar feelings about my inability to show up to in-person friend and family gatherings because of my schedule). At 34, I am hoping to change that. And if I have learned anything, it is that hope is where to start.
So I’m going back in time to move forward. Sending you a postcard from there, and here, as a way to reorient myself in this practice of connecting with you. And in the meantime, I’ll finally send the ones I have tucked in the book off as well.
Postcard from there: The Mae House Garden
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