Secret letters

If you’ve been reading this blog or if you’ve read my novella Airmail, you’ll know that I’m fascinated by the concept of letter-writing. I love the intimacy of writing something by hand, penning your thoughts or feelings or ideas and releasing them for someone else to read. At times, that someone may even be a total stranger. I love the distances that letters cross, traversing cities, nations, distant roads, even oceans in a matter of days.

Email and instant messaging may have changed the nature of the way we write to each other, but we still write.

And to my mind, one of the most beautiful iterations of letter-writing in recent years has been the growth of the Post Secret community.

Post Secret is simple. People anonymously mail a secret on the back (or front) of a handmade postcard. For the writer, they get their secret off their chest. For the rest of the community, they learn that they are not alone. Time and again, Post Secret teaches us that my secret is, after all, yours as well.

Some of the letters and the stories within stories in Airmail are my own secrets, packaged up in fiction. Some of the secrets belong to my friends. Still others are made up. Most likely, you will never know which is which (although now I've got you guessing).

Mr B has been travelling a lot for work lately, and I really miss him when he's away. So here is a video of Valentine’s Day themed Post Secrets, for your reading and viewing pleasure.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzq3srbYEUY&w=640&h=480]

What's in your bushfire bag?

My mum grew up in Leura, a beautiful little town in the Blue Mountains where Sydneysiders like to go antiquing. (There is also a place that sells Devonshire Teas and the scones are baked inside little terra cotta flower pots. You need to go there.)

The Blue Mountains are beautiful, but they are also dangerous, particularly during bushfire season. Mum can still remember the fires of '57, when her own school burnt down. She and the other kids were sent running, there was no orderly evacuation like we'd have today. Mum remembers racing across a wooden bridge when a smaller child dropped his school-case and turned back to get it. Mum yelled "leave it!" as the bridge itself began to burn.'

For most of my childhood, we also lived in bushfire-prone areas and, every summer, Mum had a "bushfire bag" packed and ready to go for if we ever needed to evacuate in a hurry. Around October each year, with the smoke of the first planned burn-offs in the air, we'd pack the bag. It contained a change of clothes for each of us, some basic first aid, and the family photo albums. We all knew our evacuation plans, and who was responsible for the care of which pet.

The Burning House project is inspired by a similar concept. It asks people from all over the world to list what they'd take with them in the event of a fire.

Take a look at some of the lists here: www.theburninghouse.com. Their lists are not exactly as practical as my mum's, but they are fascinating.

It gives you something to think about, doesn't it.How about you? What would you pack in your bushfire bag? And why?

Poetry bombs

This guerilla artist in Miami has been sneaking into thrift stores and sewing tiny lines of poetry into the clothes. She says she’s doing it “so that poems can be in everyday life.” How lovely! [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vneTvZ-d-44]

I think it would be kind of magical to pull on a new jacket and there, stitched into the inside pocket, is a jewel of wisdom, or humour, or beauty, from one of the world’s great poets. I would treasure that jacket.

It’d be like a fortune cookie that you can wear. Or a tiny message in a bottle.