H. Hsu Word Salad

Postcrossing friends

Although I have an exploding to-do list and already fantasize about having clones to take on all my work and hobbies, I’ve adopted yet another past time: www.postcrossing.com

I am the sole dinosaur with a 2 trunk-full stationary collection and a paper planner whilst my compatriots use text messages and iphones.  I remember my childhood penpals with great affection.  N, the cute Burmese boy across the street in 4th grade. He and I exchanged regular mail throughout college, and those missives brought unexpected smiles with into the pile of bills and junk mails for a decade of life.  They now stand as a record of much more innocent days, and all the bad hairstyles and hard won lessons of adolescence to adulthood.  These days the only regular recipients of snail mail are those who write back, primarily my Taiwan-was a Russian in a past life-cousin John.

Postcrossing organizes random people across the world to send real snailmail to others.  For some reason it seems heavily populated by Fins in particular.  They seem to love paper mail and fish dishes…maybe I should move there.  The strangers have helped me gain perspective on what is my dismal little rat race.  “Silicon Valley sounds so glamourous” they say. “California must be so amazing”, “Your picture looks so beautiful”.  Ah. Nothing like the kindness of strangers.

An Italian student cracked me up by asking about local famous foods here. Hmm. That would be…Krispy Kreme donuts, I think.  I had to respond that quite honestly my favorite foods here are either Chinese or Italian! (But we do have some famous oysters and crab over at that city by the bay.)  Thus I have found an entire worldwide community of people, from the 12 year old in Spain who hand painted a frog postcard, to the Romanian M.D., who love collecting cards, receiving actual mail, and writing about foods.

I received my first postcrossing poem from Finland recently (She did include it in its orginal language, alas I am too lame to recreate the 35 different little accent marks):

Everyone who has held an ocean-smoothed stone,

knows that constant caressing

has a wonder-making power.

By: Finnish poet Tommy Tabermann

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