Sakura_Students

Profile Update #2 (Winter 2012)

Let’s get one thing straight.
I’m real.
As easy as it is to forget that fact when you’ve sent a few hundred postcards to random strangers around the world, let us both, from the very beginning, have no illusions about it.

And next, let us ask ourselves,
“Why am I actually doing this?”
Is it really just for the satisfaction of a new stamp, or collecting all 50 American states, or getting as many variations of cat postcards as possible, as if you don’t already have enough?
Maybe it is, and maybe it’s a valid reason to keep going on as you are going on.
But in doing so, have you forgotten that I am real?

Worse yet, have you forgotten your own reality? Skimmed it over with every new letter you pen, never touching on anything personal, making polite comments about the weather where you are and describing the obvious. I hope to God that’s not what has becomes of us. But, perhaps it is inevitable, like a romance that has lost all its luster, an unfortunate couple sitting in a restaurant after 6 years of marriage, searching for something new to say to one another, or worse yet, given up on searching and content to say nothing at all. Oh please God, spare me from that hell.

Do you get what I’m saying?
Does it register to you that behind this profile post is a person, with a family, a job, an apartment with a very small bathroom and a very large kitchen sink? She lives in Japan, where everyone is almost a foot shorter than her, therefore explaining why the mirror in the bathroom was installed so low, causing her to stoop down a bit every time she blowdries her hair or fixes her makeup. She wonders if this is the reason that her Canadian body has lost a centimeter in height this past year? Or is the culprit actually the 7 hours a day she spends hunched over her laptop at her desk? Either way, she wishes she had more time to join that Yoga class on Tuesday nights, lengthen her spine and her soul, but life is busy, and some things are sacrificed for other things.

I digress.
The point is that you and I are both real. We have that much in common.
No matter how many notes we scrawl or stamps we lick, we mustn’t forget that. When we find a postcard sandwiched between our water bill and a flyer for takeout pizza, it should awaken a voice in our heart that says “Life is more than debt and junk mail.” We mustn’t lose sight of that truth. The truth that we exist separately, but in unison. We should remember how precious it is for you and I to meet, even just this once, and we should write like we mean it.

Sincerely,
Martine