The First Postcard

I must admit I’ve been cheating. When I wrote the first post, I already knew what I know now. Well. Here goes. A week ago, I received this postcard in the mail. The photo is, as you can see, quite dated, and the gold letters in the top right corner are Russian. When I found it, I almost forgot to flip it over and read it - startled by the image. Postcards are usually spectacular, bright-coloured, an almost pornographical display of landscape, but this particular one is something quite different. It has a fragile beauty of distance; somewhere unfamiliar, almost unspecific, yet faded, personal, like a dream image. I wonder whether that someone who sent it knows about my fetish for dated, unfamiliar kitsch.

Eventually, I flipped the postcard over to read who had sent me such a strange image. Perhaps one of my many travelling friends, perhaps someone bored on a summer holiday finding old cards in op-shops. But as I read the sparse sentences in the palm of the russian forest, I became even more confused. The card told of two rocks, two rocks the writer had been telling me about on some occasion, and of two people climbing them. Two people I know climbing faraway hills in Russia? I was intrigued, expecting at least a signature of recognition at the end of the card. My name and address was on it, so this someone must have asked me once of my address in Norway.

The postcard ended with a general "See you soon. Love, Ira." Ira. Ira? I don't think I've ever even met anyone named Ira. An Ira telling me about rock formations in Russia? Was my goldfish memory outdoing itself, or did I live parallel lives, one in which I am now, and one populated with Iras and Russian rocks? I spent days sitting on the balcony, reading with the postcard as a bookmark, so I could look at it every now and then. See you soon. Love, Ira.