postcard of venice
last night, coming home from john-o's barbeque, i found a postcard. it was lying on the sidewalk in front of his apartment building. it was just getting dark but i saw it on the sidewalk, so i picked it up. a postcard of venice, one of those long postcards with a wide angle view. this was looking over the venetian lagoon, black gondolas gloomy in the foreground and in the background, the purple sky swathing itself around the white dome of a church. it was folded, as though it had been mailed in an envelope. or maybe not mailed at all. there was no stamp. the crease of the card was frayed. someone had unfolded it many times.
in the square set aside for the address was written only "to my love" it a wide clear handwriting. the person had used a nice pen, a fountain pen, not a cheap pic. (i noticed this because i only ever write with cheap bics, and this ink looked nothing like that.)
my sister taught me ages ago that you should always look down. she finds money that way. more often (and more money)than you'd think possible. walking to school as kids, we'd find other kids homework dropped along the way. later, as adults, sometimes she'd pull from her purse a letter or a document that she'd found blowing down the street or stuck to the side of a trashcan. once she showed me a letter she'd found that was hysterically funny, a break-up letter written by a woman detailing all the reasons she was dumping her boyfriend, reasons that made it perfectly clear he wouldn't care at all. (he hadn't called in two weeks. he'd neglected her birthday. he'd dropped her off first after the dinner party, taking her friend sue home second even though she lived further away.)
this postcard was sort of the opposite of that. this postcard breathed such romance that i could practically smell the heavy scent of venice. i think it was written by a guy to a woman, but it might easily have been a woman to a man. or hell, two gay people. i don't know about the trivialities of gender.
there was so much love resonating off this postcard love that my eyes filled with tears upon reading it. i don't know how to explain. i was perfectly fine, talking on my cell to my roommate about where i'd left the keys for her because she'd locked herself out again. i saw the postcard, folded, and bent down to pick it up. i didn't read it until i'd hung up from her and dropped my cell into my bag. reading it, i was so moved that the whole world looked different. and exactly then the streetlights came on which i took as a sign of something. i don't know what.
i can't quote it here because i put it back on the sidewalk. i wanted to take it because it was so beautiful but it was heartbreaking (for me, missing t.) and reading a stranger's words to his (her?) beloved seemed somehow wrong, like looking over someone's shoulder as they punch in their pin at the atm.
it was all the stuff you'd expect: longing, praise of the beloved's soul and beauty and beautiful soul, a description of a walk crossing bridges and through piazzas and a search, in the heart, to connect to the missed dear one.
why was it on the sidewalk? did the recipientlose it? or leave it behind like we do so many things we love?
perhaps it had never been sent, only carried by the writer who hoped to someday meet the lover of his dreams. then dropped when the burden of carry that hope became too heavy.
i keft it there, in case the person who dropped it came back to find it. i thought i'd memorized it, but what i remembered got messed up in my own thoughts. he spoke of finding a pidgeon feather as soft as her hair. or something like that. it sounded better in the card.
i came home pensive, was cranky to my roommate who had left the keys (the spare keys)in the lock for anyone to steal. i went in my room to ponder life and love. eventually fell asleep in my clothes and woke up wondering why i still had my sandals on.
i want to go to venice. at sunset. i want to write with ink so rich and dark that i can fall into the crevices of words. i want to live in that postcard world of sunsets and feathers drifting over st marks while the gondaliers sing, where someone i love speaks to me in soft tones that opens doors without needing a key.
in the square set aside for the address was written only "to my love" it a wide clear handwriting. the person had used a nice pen, a fountain pen, not a cheap pic. (i noticed this because i only ever write with cheap bics, and this ink looked nothing like that.)
my sister taught me ages ago that you should always look down. she finds money that way. more often (and more money)than you'd think possible. walking to school as kids, we'd find other kids homework dropped along the way. later, as adults, sometimes she'd pull from her purse a letter or a document that she'd found blowing down the street or stuck to the side of a trashcan. once she showed me a letter she'd found that was hysterically funny, a break-up letter written by a woman detailing all the reasons she was dumping her boyfriend, reasons that made it perfectly clear he wouldn't care at all. (he hadn't called in two weeks. he'd neglected her birthday. he'd dropped her off first after the dinner party, taking her friend sue home second even though she lived further away.)
this postcard was sort of the opposite of that. this postcard breathed such romance that i could practically smell the heavy scent of venice. i think it was written by a guy to a woman, but it might easily have been a woman to a man. or hell, two gay people. i don't know about the trivialities of gender.
there was so much love resonating off this postcard love that my eyes filled with tears upon reading it. i don't know how to explain. i was perfectly fine, talking on my cell to my roommate about where i'd left the keys for her because she'd locked herself out again. i saw the postcard, folded, and bent down to pick it up. i didn't read it until i'd hung up from her and dropped my cell into my bag. reading it, i was so moved that the whole world looked different. and exactly then the streetlights came on which i took as a sign of something. i don't know what.
i can't quote it here because i put it back on the sidewalk. i wanted to take it because it was so beautiful but it was heartbreaking (for me, missing t.) and reading a stranger's words to his (her?) beloved seemed somehow wrong, like looking over someone's shoulder as they punch in their pin at the atm.
it was all the stuff you'd expect: longing, praise of the beloved's soul and beauty and beautiful soul, a description of a walk crossing bridges and through piazzas and a search, in the heart, to connect to the missed dear one.
why was it on the sidewalk? did the recipientlose it? or leave it behind like we do so many things we love?
perhaps it had never been sent, only carried by the writer who hoped to someday meet the lover of his dreams. then dropped when the burden of carry that hope became too heavy.
i keft it there, in case the person who dropped it came back to find it. i thought i'd memorized it, but what i remembered got messed up in my own thoughts. he spoke of finding a pidgeon feather as soft as her hair. or something like that. it sounded better in the card.
i came home pensive, was cranky to my roommate who had left the keys (the spare keys)in the lock for anyone to steal. i went in my room to ponder life and love. eventually fell asleep in my clothes and woke up wondering why i still had my sandals on.
i want to go to venice. at sunset. i want to write with ink so rich and dark that i can fall into the crevices of words. i want to live in that postcard world of sunsets and feathers drifting over st marks while the gondaliers sing, where someone i love speaks to me in soft tones that opens doors without needing a key.
posted by Cupcakegrrl at Monday, July 18, 2005
4 Comments:
i like the thought of being mysterious. better still, i like the thought of being your muse.
if i were your muse, i'd challenge you to write a poem that would be just for me. not about me, for me. but i'd tell you to cull your words carefully, for i would be a demanding critic of such a work. (the loving hand waters the plant but also trims its branches.)
as for the aspect of writing that is longing- and i am not sure there is another aspect- you have put it succinctly and beautifully. you reminded me of song of solomon: "by night on my bed i sought him whom my soul loveth: i sought him, but I found him not.
I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: i sought him, but i found him not."
on a lighter note:
i read this when i first woke up. when i got to "vp of dior made me remember my neruda"- i thought you were referring to a chronic medical condition. "neruda...is that like lumbago?" then i remembered the poet, of whom i have only a cursory knowledge. but i will rectify that, if you and vp/d admire him.
view "il postino" -- very nice film with Neruda as central figure.
But don't let me interrupt.
nah, mass -we're just blathering on like people who read too much poetry and wish life more like an epic costume drama, or at least a bbc dramatization of a victorian classic. at least, that's me.
what can you do, after all, in the throes of a suburban upper-middle class upbringing, if not lock yourself in our rooms, read, and think too much? maybe those hours yearning for worlds beyond things like prom, football games and trips to the mall end up altering the molecular structure of the brain, so that the person finds themselves, sometimes, reverting to that idealism and longing for a transcendant existance, a purpose sublime.
you know what i am talking about, i suspect.
(sitting up straight and speaking matter of factly-) by now we've learned that what we see is what we get. that's all there is.
and yet...and yet...
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