Let’s pretend that while in Lisbon last month, I scribbled on the back of a few postcards and sent them off to myself, as memory prompts for when I got back home and my time in that hilly city began to fade into busy days here. . .
And then we can pretend that I scooped a handful of these postcards out of the mailbox the other day, after a morning sorting out over the phone how to access our home-insurance account online; making bread and a big batch of soup; doing a few loads of laundry; then out for a walk, listening to a podcast and stopping to do a few errands on the way.
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you won’t be surprised if I make myself a pot of tea before I sit down to look at these cards . . . Why don’t you make yourself one and join me?
As I rifle through them, mug on the table nearby, I’m intrigued to see that somehow each features the colour “Red.” I flip the first one over, the card pictured just above, and I see I’ve scribbled a note to my back-home self: “After our morning workshop in Jardim do Principe Real, I’m enjoying a small beer with my sandwich and listening to a singer-guitarist. A warm day, but it’s cool under the trees. An artisan market draws crowds on the sidewalk surrounding the park, and just beyond the cafe tables here, a small girl balances her way along the huge roots of a big old tree. Wish you were (back) here?”
Looking closely at the card now, I see what I hadn’t noticed while in Lisbon — that little girl’s posture, the colour of her hair, her independent spirit manifest in the way she’s claiming the tree roots as playground, all remind me of our oldest granddaughter about ten years ago. I close my eyes to sit with this connection for a moment, then open them to reach for my mug, sipping the hot tea carefully. And I pick up the next card.
Ah, yes, I remember now. I snapped that kiosk as I walked back to my hotel after my lunch. I’d intended to try sketching it later — either coming back to draw on site or using the photo as subject back home. It will have to be the latter now, won’t it?! What I notice most about the photo today is the sunlit portion of that red t-shirt on the left, which then draws my eye to the relaxed posture of the wearer. He’s either a customer waiting for his order, or, I think more likely, an employee on a short break. . .
What else about this photo? I really like the contrast between the sunlit red and the red in shadows, not quite sure why, yet, but something about illumination, about chiaroscuro.
I was only in Lisbon for a week, but this corner was one I passed often and I lunched twice under those trees, listening to Brazilian jazz, enjoying the dappled shade. I sketched in the park with fellow workshop participants under the guidance of our instructors; bought a concertina sketchbook from these Portuguese bookbinders at the market another day; discovered an old fountain trough for horses at the other edge of the park; and learned that there is a very nice public washroom just across the road and down a set of stairs. . .
As for the red in this third postcard . . .
Those red numerals refer to the 25th of April, which is the day (in 1974) that the people of Portugal achieved freedom from an authoritarian government. This year’s celebration marked the 50th anniversary of that Carnation Revolution. . . and the plaza pictured above was set up days earlier with that stage for live music performances. I walked past it numerous times, usually slowing to enjoy the tunes for a minute.
Let’s pretend I’ve addressed this postcard to my husband, and on the back of it, I’ve scribbled, “Can’t believe it’s 50 years since this inspiring event. The world could use this kind of action now, more than ever! Also, tickled that we’re celebrating our 50th this year, along with Portugal 😉 . . . Maybe we should come to Lisbon for our 60th!
And later that week, I snapped a few photos of those red carnations flowering in windows all over the city. Sent a postcard of this one, my favourite for the way it layers architecture and books together, and those oh-so-meaningful red blooms.
Then my last morning in Lisbon, sitting in the cafe at Santa Appolonia train station, I grabbed one last postcard and dug down in my bag to find a pen.
I turn that postcard over now, back home in Vancouver, to read what I’d written on its back:
“Yikes, the alarm on my new iPhone didn’t go off this morning. Guess I haven’t figured out how to set it properly. Luckily I woke in time for my 6:30 taxi. Beautiful sunrise lighting up the Tagus as I arrived at Santa Appolonia station with an hour to spare. Got a croissant breakfast sandwich and a cappuccino, found a corner table, and people-watched. This couple caught my eye — her sequin-sparkly lace skirt and bold red sweater; his carefully groomed hair, beard, moustache more salt than pepper, distinguished in his own way. They held themselves apart from the crowd, somehow. Reminded me of the old couple with string-tied bundles singing on that train through Provence 30-odd years ago . . . “
Sigh.
You know I didn’t really send those postcards to myself. Or rather, I didn’t send actual postcards, didn’t write my hasty observations on their back nor stick Portuguese stamps on them and find a letterbox to mail them from. Didn’t scoop them out of the mailbox here and sit down with the cup of tea to read them.
But I see now that I did something like that every time I framed an image and clicked my iphone in its direction. And here at home sifting through those images, if I allow myself time I can almost read what I might have written. Too many images to decipher and interpret each one, but something about that red would not be ignored.
As well, this week I sent off postcards and other snail mail to grandkids — which got me imagining a bunch of images and words sent to me, by me, from Lisbon. Hope you enjoyed reading those imagined words over my shoulder. I’ve also been polishing and updating the sketch journal I worked on there and will have a few more pages to share with you soon.
Comments always welcome. I’m keen to know whether any of you still send postcards when you travel. If so, to whom? Do they ever get to the addressee before you’re back home? Have any got lost on the way? In my experience, it’s increasingly difficult to find stamps, and recently, on several trips, I’ve just abandoned the search.
Have you ever sent a card to yourself? I have one pinned above my desk, sent to me from that workshop in Sicily two summers ago, a card I’d sketched in the spacious courtyard surrounded by old stone farm buildings, shaded by a huge umbrella from the June afternoon sun. The workshop hosts gathered our cards and arranged to send them to us — such a sweet reminder when they arrived, weeks later. Perhaps I’ll include that next post, along with the message I wrote to myself.
Meanwhile,
xo,
f (who was in Lisbon and has been back in Vancouver for over a month now — Time and Space, up to their old tricks! 😉
I have used a wonderful app called TouchNote for some time. You can turn any of your own photos into a postcard, write a message and even designate another photo to be used as the stamp, and send it to anyone you like without having to chase down a stamp wherever you are in the world. It’s especially handy when traveling.
I send cards to my grands and to friends – a great way to share special photos and memories.
Author
Thanks, Elizabeth, I’ll have to check that out. (Although I’ll still be nostalgic for those international stamps and the scribbled handwriting ;-))
No postcards these days . We used to send a batch when we travelled & I always loved to receive them from family & friends . That colourful patch on the doormat brightened my day & I miss that little tradition. Your Lisbon photos are a lovely reminder of a week I spent there a few years ago with my sisters . One occasion stands out in my mind . We were sitting outside at a small cafe enjoying morning coffee when a line of about twenty people appeared dressed in shabby clothes carrying battered little suitcases . They gathered around the cafe tables gradually getting closer & gazing at us appealingly. One by one they handed us their baggage then clasped our hands & smiled . It all took place very slowly & silently before they drifted off elsewhere . They were of course illustrating the pain of refugees & eliciting our sympathy, & it worked . I never discovered who they were , local actors ? A charity group ? Demonstrators? But it was very moving & has stayed with me .
Author
It was a sweet tradition, wasn’t it? Thinking of loved ones while travelling — and then knowing you’d been thought of in far-off places. . .
Your travel memory of Lisbon — magical, haunting, really. . . and obviously a very “sticky” piece of activism. . .
I read this lovely post just now sitting in the dining room of Poggio Tobruk, in the countryside near Pienza, finishing my cappuccino. We have been having such lovely travels in This region of Italy, first near Grosseto on the tandem tour, and wandering through this area the past few days. On to Sienna tomorrow.
I haven’t sent postcards for years…. Maybe I should think about that in our last few days. The granddaughters would love that, or at least the oldest , nearly five.
Author
You’re there — wonderful! Glad to know all’s going well.
Let me know if you do manage to send off a postcard or two — I’ll be curious to know how much trouble you have finding stamps. Of course, you could also do what Eleonore does (see her comment in this post).
What a lovely idea, to send postcards to yourself to bring back details of your time away. The red theme is poetic, all the more so for its timing at the anniversary of the Carnation Revolution. You could suggest to the Lisbon tourist office that they mount an exhibition of your work next year!
I no longer send postcards, but my husband is a confirmed sender of them. As you say, finding stamps is now hard. We failed utterly to negotiate the main post office in Cognac a couple of years ago – all self-serve machines which seemed geared either towards complex French life bureaucracy, or sending parcels. We then resorted to tabacs, and trawled the streets for ages until we finally found one with actual stamps.
What has replaced postcards for one of my friends, unfortunately, is a deluge of WhatsApp photos from the luxury cruises she and her husband go on. Never mind that I would sooner eat my feet than go on a cruise, and even more so a “luxury” one, it’s getting very flaunting. What social media does to people…
Author
I’m impressed that your husband perseveres with postcards. I’m sure they’re appreciated by the lucky recipients, especially these days as they become increasingly rare!
Those touches of red! How evocative! Isn’t it amazing how the spirit of travel stays with us even when we have returned? I love the memories feature of my iPhone. Every day, a photo pops up and I often wonder where I was on this day different year. Then I remember and think what a fortunate and interesting life I have had. I believe that memories of travel will sustain us in those days when further travel may be more difficult. Your observations of Portugal cause me to remember the young woman I was in 1974, newly married and visiting my first European country at its first days of freedom. I thought that it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. Darling daughter has a photo of a very young me wearing a red dress in a fado in Lisbon during that trip. Your imaginary postcard took me down a whole trip down memory lane.
Author
That is a nice feature of our smart phones, isn’t it, the “memories of this day back when” — startling, sometimes.
Lovely that your daughter treasures a photo of a young you off on an adventure — a life outside of Mother.
I buy art postcards at galleries and museums but I don’t send them…I give a few away but most of them I keep and sometimes frame or stick in the corner of a mirror etc etc. You have given me the idea to write on the back of them, at the time of buying, a sort of journal. Hm. Or maybe not. I like the fluidity of unrecorded memories. Soomething to think about.
I find a lot of red in my photos too. (And lately I have added a bit to my wardrobe. I have been influenced. But, I would never wear oh, say banana yellow or icy blue. So I guess you have to be open to whatever it is. Open in mind and wallet lol) I propose an alternative re the fellow leaning on the kiosk. He is the idle friend of the person working inside who likes to while away his days ‘visiting’ his more productive peers. He waits until the poor employed soul is so busy they’re about to collapse and finally says ‘well, I guess I’ll go then…’
It is fully late spring here now. We haven’t had a rainy spring like this for a very long time. The lilacs! The whole city seems to smell of them. Peonies, my favourite, not far behind.
Author
I do that with art postcards as well — and I take your point about “the fluidity of unrecorded memories” — but I also like having prompts recorded to trigger those years later. . . (also, the written or sketched or photo-d record come in handy when I’m reminding the Person I’ve Lived with Forever of something we’ve done together that he denies ever happened 😉
Thank you for the expanded insight into the Man in the Red T-shirt’s character and actions. It plays . . . 😉
We have more space here between lilacs and peonies, but peonies are opening rapidly across the city even in the continual rain. . .
I don’t send postcards anymore and not sure if I miss it. I do, however, take loads of photos with my phone and am very grateful for this, being able to quickly snap something that grabs your fancy. And just before I sat down to read this I had made a cup of tea, which I am enjoying with your images.
Author
I’m not sure I miss it either — at least, I might miss it being easier, but at some point decided not to miss it given the expense and hassle now involved in mailing.
Also, like you, grateful for being able to take so many photos. . . .but when it comes to sorting them all, Yikes!
Much like yours, my photos are my “postcards” these days. These lovely images make me want to visit Lisbon and Portugal more than ever!
Author
I’m sure you’d love it, Sue!
As I sat having my tea this morning reading your postcards my thought was that in capturing these moments you make the ordinary beautiful, places and people. It allows one to see this beauty not only in far away places but in our own spaces. I remember sending postcards years ago, and 21 one years ago I wrote a letter to myself after completing my teacher training at Kripalu. All of us students did this. This was when you spent weeks living there. not like today when every neighborhood studio offers teacher training. And so I found this letter and read it. Trying to recapture the hope and promise it held. A little bittersweet perhaps but happy I did.
Author
Thanks for this comment, Darby — I do think that’s much of what travel does for me, defamiliarizes so that the ordinary does become special, beautiful, and I feel that shift back home (although sometimes with a bit of effort).
What an experience that must be, reading a letter you wrote to yourself at such a different stage of life. Making me think I should write one to my 90-year-old self. . .
Love the red thread! I miss sending and receiving postcards, although it’s true that most arrived well after (if at all!)
The memories come flooding back so vividly once you start browsing through photos and sketches. I’ve never sent a postcard to myself but I do often record things in my travel diary which I now realise are actually ‘notes to self’
Author
Exactly so, Genevieve. When we write in our journals, we really are writing to our future selves as we generally don’t expect others to be reading those pages.
I love writing postcards. Whenever I travel, I carry a list of adresses with me. I mostly begin on the very first day of my travels, so that the postcards have a chance to reach their destiny before I return home. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It also happens that I dont’t manage to write all my cards while I’m away. So I take them home und send them from here, where the mail is fairtly fast and safe. Of course, the German stamps give me away…
Author
I have a couple of postcards from you on the board above my desk, a reminder of connection that I get from this blog, the rewards that come from the work it requires. One isn’t postmarked (must have arrived in an envelope), but one (from Milan) has an Italian stamp (picturing the Piazza della Republica in Rome) and was postmarked in Bari.
While in the process of boarding a cruise ship I passed through a gift shop filled with cards, stationery and other delightful things and was tempted to purchase two postcards made from wood. I hope they make it through the British and Canadian postal systems because I hunted down stamps and a red, British postbox to send them to grandchildren.
Author
Those sound very special, and I’m crossing my fingers they make it safely to your grandchildren and are appropriately treasured by them (I’m picturing them hung on a travel-inspiring board in the grandkids’ rooms 😉
Interesting that you ask if anyone still sends postcards. I started sending them to my grandson when he was first learning to read and write. The last few years I have found it difficult to find the stamps and a post office or mailbox while overseas. It’s much easier to send postcards domestically. So…I gave up sending them when one time in Italy I paid for a card and stamps at a shop where the owner claimed he would see to it if I paid him a special fee. Well, that turned out to be a scam! However, my grandson sent me a postcard from his trip to Turkey and wrote that he was continuing our tradition even though I hadn’t sent him one on my last trip! Called out by my now teenage grandson. Now I go out of my way to pick out postcards and hunt down a post office when overseas. As difficult as it, it still matters to my grandchildren…apparently.
Author
How great that your teenaged grandson has picked up the tradition, and that it matters to him. You’ve done well, Grandmother!