Post Card Playtime

One of the things I love about creative endeavors is that it allows us to do things just because we feel like doing it--no rules to it, no boss to tell us how to do it, no reason that we can give that will hold up to the inspection of the rest of the rational world.

This is why I fell in love with Etsy seller Annarubyking's Post Card Post Art Project. While the regular seller will take pains to assure that the card or print you are buying will arrive all bubble-wrapped, clean, crease-free, and ready for displaying in your living room, Anna tells you quite honestly that what you purchase will probably get to you a little bit damaged from its voyage--and that is part of what you are paying for. The girl is asking you to buy into her own little quirky trip. I was delighted by the idea!

So I bought Post Card No. 2 on 25 February. Anna told me she would send it off the next day. Yesterday, 1 March, there I was in my sewing room, making a fabric cuff while listening to the goddess Aretha Franklin belt out "Oh Happy Days" on my iPod, when my husband comes in and hands me a rectangle of paper--my postcard!
The front has mysterious specks of black all over the surface, and one of the stamps at the back is torn, but the post office delivered on this one. Look at all those stamps!
Meanwhile, I heard that Post Card No. 1, sent off many days before mine, had not yet made it to its European destination. I would like to imagine that right now it is inside a canvas bag being carried by a donkey which is in turn being led by a postman up and down isolated roads connecting remote villages in the foggy mountains of China.