Ground Rules

This is my fourth year participating in the Month of Letters Postcards challenge, so the basic premise - send something in the mail every day in February with mail service - I've pretty much got down. There is inevitably one hiccup, but overall I always manage to send out as much mail as I planned. How, then, to make this year different?

Part of me chafes at the notion of having to constantly expand/improve (is this just a terribly American thing? We never seem to allow things to just be. Maybe I'm just cranky over having recently submitted my annual performance goals at work). But I also love a challenge and (annoyingly) thrive under structure. Last year I had some fancy notions of doing more, but they were just vague ideas so of course I didn't pay any attention until it was close to the end and too late to make them happen. With the idea of public accountability in mind, here are my 2016 Month of Postcards goals:

• Send at least 1 postcard every day there is mail (easy).
• Each day must have a new recipient. When I first started, this wasn't realistic, but it's totally doable at this point. I confess that by the end of the month I sometimes am feeling lazy, and it can be easier to dash something quick off to someone who already received a postcard (and thus might not mind a half-assed piece of correspondence) than to come up with something interesting for a new person. Also - last year I got mail back during the month, and wanted to keep engaging with those folks. Under this rule I can still send mail to previous recipients, I just have to do it in addition to sending a postcard to a new person.
• 5 for reals letters. This is my challenge goal - last year I wanted to include letters but the month escaped me. I may not hit the targeted 5, but having this looming over my head should help me carve out space to write.
• Birthday and other event cards and thank yous don't count. Dang. 
• Use only the postcards on hand. This should be a no-brainer, considering that I've got enough postcards in my house to send every day of the year (at least), but I have a really hard time getting out of certain stores without at least a couple tucked into my bag. I keep expecting Tilly to stage an intervention. 

Maybe this will help, maybe I'll come back in March and laugh at my foolishness.

To kick off the month, here is the February 1 postcard - the only one I bought in Barcelona last month that wasn't mailed from Spain (and subsequently lost en route):

This is a sketch by Josep Maria Subirachs, an example of the style he and his team used for the Passion façade of the Sagrada Familia. which is the one thing everyone absolutely must-see in Barcelona. It's breathtaking, and amazingly still under construction. There wasn't a ton of difference between my last visit and this one, but it's the one tourist destination that I would visit each time I came to the city.

bonus photo of the interior of the Sagrada Familia

Until next time...

Stop Holding My Breath

So much for the end of year - again. You'd think that I'd have lots to post about, since I'm a fan of sending holiday cards, but this year was, in the words of my grandmother, a "clutter-f".

I sent far fewer cards this year, in part because I took a trip in the middle of the month. I spent 5 days in Barcelona, a city I'd visited before, to watch the Grand Prix Final of figure skating. Yes, I traveled to Europe for less than a week to sit in an ice rink. That's what I do. I did get some exploring done, however, and I was so proud of myself for writing and mailing postcards while I was there. I made sure that the stamps I got were for international mailing, and consulted my travel book (and the maintenance guy at my hostel) to find a proper post box. I was already envisioning the post I would write once they were received.

Well, it's been 6 weeks, and I'm ready to admit defeat. No one has received any postcards from me from Spain, despite my best efforts. I was holding on to the outside hope that mail from Europe is just sloooooow, but I'm pretty sure the postcards from Beijing only took about 2 weeks. Sigh.

Here are the postcards that people would have received, had any arrived in the US:

This is the pier at the end of La Rambla, a bustling tourist destination. In 2011, I stayed in this area (mistake!), and spent way too much time in the mall on water in the modern photo, because they had free wifi and very few other places did. I was relieved to find that wifi is now plentiful in Barcelona. The smaller tower in the back is the start of a cable car up to the Parc de Montjuïc.

Posing the postcard on my Barcelona travel guide is a nice touch, no?

Another sight that I visited in 2011 but not on this trip - Antoni Gaudí's beautiful Parc Güell. If only all urban public spaces were so gorgeously designed!

Dance History

I've been in a correspondence rut lately, focusing more on reading than writing. Maybe it's the change of seasons, or being back home after such an adventure, but I just haven't had much to say. But it's Thursday, so why not take a trip in ye olde time machine for a spell...

August 1993:

Photo by Barbara Morgan

As always, [sic]....

"Hey woman,

Sorry it's taken me so long to write you - I've beem thinkin about ^you quite a - but I hope ^your dancin dancin. You sound like you have a crazy schedule - I'll send you my address when I get it. I'll be staying in a graduate housing type of deal. I haven't danced in a long time I'm getting pretty nervous. I don't remember how to do this school thing. I want to make this good. I want to learn my brains out. 

I'm leaving here the 16th and probably be in Mass around the 25th. I'm going to try to get an E-MAIL account so we can communicate - Take care

Love ya - T"

This was the summer before my final year in college, from a friend who had graduated some years before but had come back to my school to teach and generally be awesome the previous year. She was on her way to Smith College to get her MFA in Dance. I can so relate to those nerves about school and that thirst for learning, although I'm pretty sure that "a long time" back then meant something like 6 weeks. Nowadays I sometimes go months between classes - and trust me, even when it's been weeks, it might as well be 6 months. Aging bodies are cruel!

As with many school friends, we drifted apart after a few years. She did come visit me in Seattle after her graduate program, and through the magic of social media I know she's still choreographing and dancing (yay!).

The most telling part of this postcard is the final sentence - this was back when email was accessible primarily through schools (and was still being called Electronic Mail or "e-mail"!), and everyone was so excited about this new, instant way to communicate with people. "Instant" being relative, of course - at my college, at least, few people had their own computers or access to a modem on their own, so we'd find excuses all day long to drop by the mail room or the library to use one of the 3 or 4 terminals. But the (electronic) writing was on the wall. It's no coincidence that my archive of postcards dries up about two years after this.
 
You can see the tape marks on this postcard - it was clearly well loved. The photo is from legendary modern dance pioneer Martha Graham's work Celebration, taken in 1937. I love the simplicity of the action in this picture, as well as the costumes and those gorgeously pointed (but not over-stretched) feet.

Beijing (revisited)

I've been across the world and back since my last post. My sweetie and I spent a madcap week in Beijing, China, taking in as much history (and delicious food) as we could manage in 7 days. I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to come back to this blog, but it's probably a combination of not wanting to admit the trip is really in the past, and being a bit frustrated with myself for not getting my travel blog off the ground.

My first view of China after a long flight

I took several postcards with me, as always, as a backup. Ideally, I prefer to get postcards from the place that I'm visiting, but sometimes I am too busy experiencing a place to search out postcards. I did manage to find some decent postcard packets early on (although I found better individual postcards on our last day that will have to go out later). We spent our days walking walking walking and returned to our rented room utterly spent, and I was focused on trying to write down what we'd done and seen in my journal, soak up some internet to let friends and family know we hadn't dropped off the edge of the world, and then we would spend time with our amazing hosts in the evenings. This made it surprisingly hard to carve out a few minutes to write postcards - my facebook posts were basically what I would say anyway, so what was the point? Exactly the mindset I'm trying to combat, great.

Exploring the hutong alleyways

 
I did manage to write two postcards (to people who are not on facebook) midweek, which led to the next challenge: getting them stamped and in the mail before we left the country. I asked our host about mailing postcards, and he said it was really expensive and not really worth it. I didn't care about that, since it was only two, but he didn't offer up information about how or where to go. So I carried these two postcards with me the rest of the week on the off chance we saw a post office - although admittedly our daily adventures were so vast, and Beijing is so huge and a little overwhelming, that I wasn't really looking that hard.

Our favorite street food vendors, making pork belly sandwiches

 On Sunday, our final day, I was kicking myself for having missed out AGAIN on mailing postcards from the road. I thought about leaving some money with our host and asking him to mail them, but he'd really gone above and beyond for us already - and that would be kind of cheating, wouldn't it? We headed out for our final day of exploring, taking a bus to the 798 Art District and wandering through graffiti-lined alleyways, art galleries, and boutiques (finding gifts for home and better postcards), willing our trip to extend just a little longer. When we got off the bus back in our neighborhood, I spotted something that had the words "post" and "bank" in the title and it was open. On a SUNDAY. I yelled out "Post Office!!!", alarming my girlfriend who had no idea I was even looking for one, and made a beeline for it.

Art + tourism in the 798 District

Inside, there was a handful of customers and a few postal workers, none of whom seemed in a hurry to wait on us. I should point out that we were staying well out of the main part of the city, and most locals we encountered spoke little-to-no english. But this was a pretty simple transaction, after all. It cost ¥4.50 to mail each postcard, which seemed spendy (but worth it) in the moment, but it's actually less than 75 cents in USD, less than it costs to send an international postcard here.

Obligatory Great Wall photo.

The rest of the day I was high on having finally succeeded in mailing a postcard from the road. Thank goodness for communist work schedules.

Hastily taken cell phone photos of the postcards mailed:

Both of these show parts of the Forbidden City, which is probably 10 times larger than we anticipated. Missing: the thousands of people visiting at the same time we were there. The day we visited the Forbidden City was probably my least favorite - the walled former palace itself is undeniably impressive, but the air quality was quite bad that day and we just didn't set ourselves up well for the crowds or the level of walking that this site requires. It felt like a slog rather than an adventure. By the time we got through the Forbidden City we were far too wiped out to see Jingshan Park just across the exit, which would have been a good way to balance out the tourist saturation of the preceding hours. I'm glad we went, but I would structure that whole day differently based on what I know now.

Post from China can take a few weeks, as it all gets inspected before leaving the country. I was surprised less than 3 weeks after we returned to get this in my mailbox:

I was so focused on getting my postcards mailed that I didn't notice my girlfriend in the background, madly scribbling away. I knew she'd sent something too but was not expecting one to show up at our door. Nice! It reminds me that I've been wanting to try mailing myself a postcard a day from the road as a way to remember my trip. Considering how hard it is for me to get any postcards sent from the road, however, this may be beyond my capabilities.

Bon Voyage!

I'm off on a big adventure this afternoon, which means I'm up reeeeeeeally early packing and cleaning. I've got a bunch of postcards to take with me, although my track record of sending mail while I'm still abroad isn't great.

Last month was so busy I didn't send many postcards. I did get a nice response from one of the recipients, who put this up on Facebook with the following message:

"I got mail and I love it when I do! Thanks so much. I miss you.
Thanks for sending me hugs..."

A lot of the people I send postcards to don't say anything about it - which isn't necessary anyway, but who knows if it's something they enjoy or just toss. One friend demurred, saying she's got too many postcards already (not all from me!). The point of writing certainly isn't to annoy or antagonize anyone, so I'd rather know if anyone doesn't want them (although who doesn't like mail???), but it sure is better to know when a postcard has brightened someone's day.

I sent some of the promotional materials from my show last month to my mom:

The performances didn't have traditional posters or programs. These are the two sides of tickets we handed out to attendees of the night market in the City of Redmond, giving them passage to a staged meditation labyrinth in a nearby heron rookery.

This is the postcard for the shows, featuring images related to the second one. The photo was from a previous event, and isn't someone in our cast, but I got to be a clock.


My other postcard from the last few weeks went to My Awesome Sister:

I didn't take notes about this postcard, except it came from my grandmother's collection and is from Turkey.

Back to packing! Ta....

Showtime!

I've been largely MIA this month, due to a heavy rehearsal schedule for two shows. Tonight is the first of those shows, so here are some performance-related postcards:

This was my first post-college professional dance gig, a 20ish minute piece with live music that was part of an amazing dance festival in Vancouver, BC. We left Seattle early in the morning and I slept funny in the car, causing my back to go out. My memories of the performance aren't great - it was a matter of being able to do the work at all, not how well I could do it - but the group I was performing with was great fun and we managed to get up to all sorts of mischief. There's a BnB in Vancouver that probably still has my name on a 'banned' list.

There weren't any printed programs for the shows, so I grabbed a few of these postcards. I recall sending one to a college girlfriend and she later asked which one in the photo was me. Er...

Promo picture for the whole festival, not our group!

A year later, I had formed a dance collective with some of the dancers from the previous show. Our first production was in October 1997. On our opening night, another dancer gave everyone postcards for good luck (a nice performance tradition that I think has faded away).

Gold Crown Gas Queen, 1957

"You've done it! You 4'8", 91 pound dynamo. You are SO money, you don't even know how money you are. But beware, as the only reason that man put you on that stand was so he could look up your cape!

Have a super run + see ya in MAUI! Merde...."

Rest assured, I am neither 4'8" nor 91 pounds, but that's a reference to one of the dance pieces, in which I portrayed a gymnast preparing for the Olympics. I even had a cape! Not as nice as this one, though. Nice 1990s pop cultural reference to the film Swingers, too.

Now to get ready for tonight....

Four for Me, One for You

Time to show off some great postcards I've gotten this summer! Scanning has gotten more complicated in my house, so I've been pretty bad about keeping up. To be fair, the scanning process was kind of ridiculous already, but now space and electrical outlets are at a premium, so I need to set aside some quality time to scan them in batches.

This one I got way back in the spring, but it is so fabulous that I had to post it. It's a Peep, of course - but it's really a postcard of a Peep that was squished and scanned. By David Byrne of all people. Which kinda makes sense if you look at it - so simple, yet a little creepy.

A great postcard to Tilly and me from friends we got to see in July. It's an advertisement for liquor, but it's a cute image.

A handpainted postcard! Gah, I had a set of blank postcards for creating one's own and I think it went away with the Great Purge in the spring because I hadn't done anything with it yet. I totally loved getting this.

This one showed up just last week. Kind of a dark card for a relentlessly sunny summer, but I like it.




I did manage to get one postcard of my own out the door this week:

Titouan Lamazon - Heiata, égérie de la perle de Tahiti

Is this a black and white image with a slash of color down the middle? Or a color painting that didn't get finished at the edges?



I also got a packet of MOMA postcards given to me by a friend, so it looks like I'm going to have to block some time out for another scanning party pretty soon.