Bali - Post cards

Hubby took the picture below of me one night while we were having dinner in a small restaurant in Ubud. We had just finished ordering and were waiting for our drinks when I took out a few post cards, the stamps I'd stood in line for 45 minutes to buy earlier that day and my faithful pen I always carry in my traveling bag for filling out custom forms and writting postcards.

As I sat there scribbling, Hubby suddenly whipped out his camera and started snapping away. Usually, it annoys him when I go into what he calls my "mariposeando" mode -when I tend to shut down and drift away into my own little bubble world and he feels ignored- and I do tend to go into this particular mode when I start on my post cards, but this time he caught that magic instant for me on .jpeg and I'm glad he did.

There is something so soothing I find in sending post cards. It's as if they become the link between my two realities, the one I am living in that instant, in that foreign place far far away and that doesnt even seem all that "real" to me and the reality I'll be slipping back into when I return home.

Does it seem stupid that I can spend long interminable (for Hubby) minutes browsing at rows and rows of postcards in souvenir shops until I find the ones that seem exactly "right" to me? The right image, the right caption (or no text at all), the right quality of carton towrite on the back, and of course the right memory that that particular card will bring up when I receive it in my mail box weeks afterwards.

I love the stamps too, you know. It's corny, but I find stamps are a beautiful thing and I always buy an extra one to stick in my traveling journal with the date and the place of where I got it. I find stamps are miniature pieces of art and maps and kodak instants and calendars and proof of having been somewhere all rolled up into one little 4x4cm piece of unpretentious raggedly trimmed paper. The stamp of the post canceling the stamp makes it even better, more precious.... proof that we really were there.

As for what I actually write on those post cards... it seems funny to admit it, but I never put too much thought into it. Sometimes it will be something trivial like the weather we're having or the things we did on that particular day, sometime it will be more about a feeling or a thought that happened to come upon me while I was "mariposeando". I seldom write really "profound thoughts" (or so they may seem to me) - that's what my traveling journal is for. You see, the post card itself is the captured instant, the frozen memory I will cherish and look back to in the years afterwards... the words sometime only serve as added decoration.

Sometimes I get Hubby to add a line or two at the bottom of the card as well, he likes to write silly things like "Mullets are tha bomb!" (Chile) or "Caution! Stay the f*** away from the
Durian!" (Bali) but that will invariably makes us giggle when we receive the card later. I like it when he does this. He captures those wacky moments of a trip that can't be properly translated on paper, or blog post or picture.

As I insert postcards into mailboxes or drop them off at post offices I always wonder if they'll make it home before us or if they'll take their time and arrive months afterwards, bringing back a tinggy feeling of adventure into the ordinary same-old that invariably sets in a few weeks after coming home from a trip. I know that the time it takes for a postcard to arrive to its destination is usually a sign of the efficiency of that country's postal service (and you'd be surprised which countries are more "efficient" than others!), but that doesn't matter to me really.

Either way, be it early or late, the presence of a post card in our mailbox always brings a smile to my face and a sence of bewilderment of how far away we've traveled.

Fned.
Sent from my iPhone