Something about the Postcards
She
opened the bright green envelope. It had her name scrawled in
enormous child-like writing, clearly it was meant for her. Oh. It
was from Ed. OK, she was expecting Ed to leave her something; but
how was it possible that a forty year old man could write like an
eight year old girl? The man was a complete enigma. “I'm kind of
a judge-y person, huh,” she thought as she opened the envelope.
It
was full of postcards. She had mentioned to Ed, who collected
postcards, that she really really liked a particular postcard of
Paris, would like to have it and any others that were duplicates for
him from a portfolio a coworker had brought back from holiday. She
thought back, “it would be great to have that one and maybe one or
two more so I could frame them, make a little grouping on the wall”
that's what she had said. Her fatal flaw had been taking the
absolutely beautiful Prague postcard when it was offered. That had
opened the floodgate to this, here, now. There were several of
Paris, there were. But there was also a thick wooden postcard from
Luckenback, TX. and five or six others that she wanted to just throw
away. “I hope,” the note read “that this inspires you to start
collecting yourself.”
She
continued thumbing through them. Then she saw it and
stopped. It was faded. She pictured the small bodega and the
spinner rack too damn close to the window. It was an aerial shot,
like they do, of Los Angeles lake and palm trees front and center.
Oasis in the desert.
The
broadband was down.
She
was booking the rental car on the computer at work. She had somehow
volunteered herself to drive her mother to Eagle Pass to teach a
workshop. She wasn't really sure how. Partly it was some sort of
driving bravado. Partly she needed a road trip. Partly she had
talked her mother into a side trip to Marfa. And, maybe, she had
been feeling warmly toward her mother at that particular moment. For
a hot minute it looked like the Marfa thing was going to go away.
They wanted her to teach another workshop in San Antonio. They might
have to substitute a wineries tour. “Marfa is not an
interchangeable piece of this puzzle” she had wanted to wail,
“Marfa is the entire reason for this adventure.” She missed
Marfa.
There
were places she liked. Places where she felt good. Places where the
very energy of the place seemed to reach out and join with her.
Marfa was one of those places. It had been too long.
Los
Angeles was not one of those places. She looked at the postcard
again. It was kind of a beautiful place if you looked at it just
right. Part of the reason that she couldn't look at it just right
was that she was from a big city. All the things that she hated
about the city she was from seemed amplified out of all proportion in
Los Angeles. When she looked at the postcard rather than an oasis
she saw a mirage. Still, that one had a draw on her.
The
Los Angeles downtown skyline at night.
The
small lake in the foreground is Echo Park,
just
north of downtown.
She
looked through them again picking out three more. One reminded her
of Haruki Murakami, although she was pretty sure it was actually
China; it was a pagoda roofed ghost town with a huge field of yellow
wild flowers filling most of the picture – World Heritage
Patrimonio Mundial it stated on the back. The second was the
original Paris scene that started it all: the Eiffel Tower in an
aerial panoramic view – La Tour Eiffel et le Champ de Mars it
stated, along with her first initial written in black marker so that
Ed could remember that this was the one she wanted. The letter
jarred her. It somehow marred the blank card, and it seemed like
completely different handwriting than the envelope. The third took
her a little longer to choose. Really, she picked it out quickly,
but then looked for something better. It was dark and somewhat
brooding which appealed to her but it was also slightly out of focus.
A white banner across the top proclaimed this Lord Howe Island.
Turning it over revealed this to be a UNESCO World Heritage site in
Australia. “Why oh why is the broadband down? I had no idea that
there were was a Heathclif meets Lost island in Australia.” She
liked the idea of an Australian post card in the bunch, but she
didn't really like that image for Australia. So she had inspected
the other Australian cards but she kept coming back to Howe Island,
maybe when she was able to look it up there would be some amazing
connection but for now it was Heart of Darkness,
Lost,
Antarctica or wherever from Frankenstein.
These
would go with her on her trip. All trips for her were trips of
adventure, mostly internal, and with her mother along and Eagle Pass
having very little to recommend it, she expected to need more.
