Postcards from Past Lives: Grade 7

Dear Lilalia,

Ugh! Seventh grade! Can there be anything worse than being in Mr. Tournier’s 7th grade class? Mr. Beer Breath Tournier. The class where all the delinquents (children with behavioural problems) or “retards” (children with learning disabilities) are in.

The school thinks you cannot read or write, just because you cannot read out loud with fluidity or spell correctly. It is strange that they think this, since you spend all of your free time reading. You are a member three libraries, for Pete’s sake.

Don’t despair. You are not a “retard”. You just are dyslexic. They don’t know about dyslexia in your school yet.

It will take another ten years before another teacher tells you about your dyslexia. So, scrape through high school. Go off to dance. Wait a few years before you return to your studies.

Just so you know, better days are ahead.

Love,

the older lilalia

Postcard From Past Lives: Deutsch Post

Dear Deutsche Post,

Oh ye of little faith! Just because I lavish a bit of praise on the Deutsche Bahn (German train company), doesn’t mean that my affections and appreciation of your services have waned. In the 26 years since I moved to Germany, you still can deliver a letter anywhere in Germany in a-day’s-time or two at the latest. Not only do you do your normal duties thoroughly, but you also have little German elves working in the backrooms individually handling the following situations:

Wrong or Incomplete Addressed

Taking letters addressed to me with the wrong house number, or “near the electrician shop” written in place of the street name, or my name/ city/Germany written on the envelope, and asking your elves to write my proper address per hand for the postwoman to deliver with only one-day’s delay.

Broken Package Shelter

A package arrives per sea freight with the carton split at all seams and the package contents no longer contained. Your elves gather up the contents, send them to a broken package shelter in Frankfurt, where they are stored in the interim. They write to me with the news of this unfortunate manhandling (which obviously is not their own, but some bully Scotsman in the Orkney Islands post office who didn’t give a hoot) and then send me the remains in a new carton with apologies for any inconvenience. At. No. Extra. Cost.

Ramped Vandalism

A vacuum-packed plastic envelope arrives with the burnt remains of a letter I wrote to my mother and sent off to Grenada the week before. My return address, written at the top left-hand corner of the letter, is the only recognisable part of the charred remains. Someone had set off fireworks in the post box during New Year’s Eve celebration, and your elves wanted me to know that the letter wouldn’t arrive.

So, please stop sulking and feeling neglected. You are my stalwart friend and I love you to bits and always will.

Your faithful friend,

Ye who believes in elves

Postcards from Past Lives: Dean of Admissions

Dear Dean of Admissions,

I did wonder during those first few semesters why you, the dean of admissions, accepted me into your university electrical engineering program. What made you blindly overlooked my lack of academic qualifications? Perhaps you thought I was old enough to qualify for a mature student status. What made you believe me capable of learning theories of quantum physics and thermodynamics?

This remained a mystery until years later, when I met you at a party of a gay friend of mine. You introduced yourself and confessed the fact that you accepted me into the program solely because I had been the first ballet dancer who had ever applied to your program. The ballet buff and the closet queen in you, jetéd over the hurdle of professional propriety and let me into the program.

To this day, I don’t quite know whether that was such a wise decision you made. I never did fit in to the baseball cap-toting, beer-guzzling mob of that time, but I did, strangely enough, find my place.

I learnt a lot in those years and for this I am eternally grateful to you. Maybe you did propel me into strange world of engineering on a whim, but it also profoundly widened my horizon.

in deep gratitude,

the ex-ballet dancer

Postcard From Past Lives: Sailor Girl

Dear Dave,

The night shifts were the most nerve racking. We agreed on wearing lifelines while out on deck. Something you forgot to do over and over again.

During the day, when you would wander forward to fix a frozen cleat or adjust a line that was caught, I’d wait anxiously at the helm for you to trip and lose your balance. I lived under the illusion that I could somehow execute a man-over-board manoeuvre quickly enough to find you in that mass of ocean. Even though it was possible to count the seconds before some object drifted away out of sight amongst the waves.

Nights, when it was your watch, I slept softly. Waiting for the thunder of your feet on deck as you rushed off in some emergency. Thump. Thump. Thump. Then silence as you went about fixing the problem. Silence, during which I held my breath. Silence, during which I imagined an erratic wave throwing you overboard. Silence, praying down my panic.

And then, after an eternity… thump, thump, thump, your tuneless whistle underneath your breath, back on the helm again. I’d fall asleep until the next emergency.

I never feared going on a voyage, for you would be there. In all those years of sailing of along coastal lines, across oceans, and through endless storms, the only thing I feared was you not being there to guide me any more.

There have been times in the last nine years since your death, when I will myself to breath again, when I pray down my panic. I don’t want to live softly any more, waiting for the next emergency. I want to hear the thunder of your feet again on the deck.

Love and affection,

Your Sailor Girl

Postcards from Past Lives: Unclaimed Love

Dear Philippe

There were moments,
Our minds sparked,
Our hands touched,
Our limbs danced,
Our eyes lingered,
Oh, the lingering…

Yet, we did not listen.
Our shyness deterred us
From claiming what was
Ours. A kiss. It was there.
Hidden in our hesitation.

Years later, on this
Cold and rainy autumn day,
I long again for the lingering.

Love and affection,

From The One Who Was Too Shy

Postcards from Past Lives: Ballet Dancer

Dear Ballet Dancer,

There really are just two states of existence, “in the ballet studio” and “outside the ballet studio”. There are those fleeting “moments on stage”, but they are almost not worth mentioning. Filling the dark spaces between in and out of the studio, are numbing doubts and insecurities. Not knowing whether you are good enough, even though you are one of the best. Not being able to surrender yourself in the movement for fear of losing you inhibitions, and thus, the required restraint.

I would wish you more joy and less loneliness. Take care. It takes a leap of faith to find your way to a more happy life. Start now. Don’t delay.

Love and affection,

From One Further Down The Way

Postcards from Past Lives

I’ve decided upon a new series of collages to create. They are titled, at the moment, “Postcards from Past Lives”. The themes of the collages depict past professions, interests, passions, and incidents in my life. I’m sending these postcards to the person I was at the time depicted by the collage or someone who knew me back then.

The reason I am interested in making this series is because there are times when I feel that I have lived numerous lives in just this one. These postcards are a way of connecting the dots between these past lives.

P.S. Thanks, Pam, for triggering the idea.