Postcards, Letters, and Memories

Rebecca Rose laments that we may be entering a post-postcard world. I collect postcards and used to send them to friends when I traveled. Like a treasure hunt, I enjoy finding designs I like, postcards depicting my favorite works of art (like Ben Okri below), or places and moments I want to remember.

I also love letters. When I was young, writing to loved ones was more common, and I enjoyed choosing stationery that complement the message. Letters required effort, while postcards offered a simpler way to share a thought. Now even postcards seem too troublesome, replaced by texts and AI-generated images and videos.

Cards and letters can become obligatory or add to someone’s clutter. But occasionally, a thoughtfully chosen postcard or letter becomes a lasting memento, something we return to years later.

Excerpts from FT’s interview with poet and Novelist Ben Okri:

I have a collection of tarot cards. It was never intentional…Over the years I seemed to find myself in places where unusual tarot cards were being sold. For example, in Viareggio in northern Tuscany there is a magic shop that is never open. Inside, a black cat sits at the window staring at you. On the last day of my last holiday there, the shop was open. The moment I went in, I felt out of sorts. I noticed broomsticks and bottles with magnified eyeballs. Just as I was about to flee, I saw a black magic tarot pack on the cashier’s table. A severe‑looking woman stared at me so intently that I bought the pack. I have been collecting tarot packs ever since.

[This reminds me of my favorite Ghibli anime Whisper of the Heart. Being open to this kind of serendipity makes life more memorable.]

An indulgence I would never forgo is walking my own path. Even at this stage of my writing life, I still encounter people who try to prescribe what I should write and what direction I should travel in as a writer. I travel my own path. It’s all I can do…

Some of my best ideas have come from long walks. It is the most therapeutic and inspiring activity. The best walking is without a purpose, walking as musing, as meditation. Walking is magic. It took us a long time to achieve the feat of standing on two legs. Dancers say that when we walk, we are merely preventing ourselves from falling. When we walk, we defy our fall. To walk is to switch on the part of us that muses, dreams, thinks freely and is open to extraordinary ideas. When people tell me they’re having trouble with their work, I tell them to go for a long walk…

I’ve recently rediscovered my postcard collection from museums across the world. Wherever I travel I visit the local museums and buy postcards of favourite works of art. They are an aide mémoire and a constant education. One of my favourites is Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square. I once stood in open-eye meditation of the original for more than 30 minutes.

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My favourite building is the National Gallery. It houses one of the most extraordinary collections of art in the world. I learnt to write at the same time as I learnt to look at paintings. For many years the National Gallery was something of a second home to me. I got to know the collection so well that I could tell where every painting was. Sometimes when I could not sleep at night, instead of counting sheep, I would mentally tour the collection.   

I don’t have a wellbeing guru. I believe in simplicity of living. My guru is a good walk, a good book, a few good friends, family, meditation, modest exercise, something to be working on, nature, laughter, plenty of water to drink, good breathing, silence.

The thing I couldn’t do without is meditation. And by meditation I mean turning inward, or upward, paying attention to the breath, stilling the mind. Meditation is getting in touch with the reality beneath reality, getting in touch with the source, opening oneself to the light. There are many kinds of meditation. Some do walking meditation, some do breath meditation, some do it with their eyes open, and some with their eyes shut. It introduces a quality of calm into one’s life and restores things to their true perspective. It is a natural part of being. We all meditate but don’t know that we do. When we sit by a window and look out, hardly aware of our thoughts, that is meditation. Moments before we sleep, with our minds like a barque on a gentle sea – that is meditation. It brings us back to ourselves, sends the ego on holiday, and restores to us an inner fullness we last experienced perhaps as children.

P.S. Chine McDonald on retro revival.

Excerpts:

For many, nostalgia provides comfort. It takes us back to “the good old days” we associate with the freedom and happiness of our younger years. In what feels like an increasingly fractured and turbulent world, we long for what we perceive as simpler times. 

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It is not simply that people are fascinated with old things, but that in an age of infinite digital abundance, one where the future feels deeply uncertain, people long for things they can engage with physically and which remind them of a lost golden age.

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What is particularly fascinating is that the analogue economy — driven by demand for printed books, retro music and cameras — is being bolstered by Gen Z. Younger generations seem to be nostalgic for a world they never experienced; a term psychologists call anemoia.

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What we are experiencing today is a very 21st-century kind of nostalgia. The longing is not really for floppy disks or Duran Duran. Rather, it is for something harder to name: a slower relationship with time, with each other and with ourselves.