postcards from yaddo

I read about this thing on the Internet where people take days off. The week ends, apparently, and the people just stop working. Sounds crazy, but I thought I’d give it a try. Since I got here I’ve been working on a series of very short stories. Very short stories are sometimes called postcard stories. So I took the day off today and wrote postcards. Nine of them. All bearing the same picture…

The Yaddo Mansion, of course. All the postcards for sale in the Yaddo office are in black and white. Black and white makes everything look older. Especially old stuff. Sepia makes old looking old stuff look even older.

This look isn’t for everyone. I hope Yaddo sold colour postcards back when Elizabeth Bishop was a guest here.

“Postcards come from another world, the world of the grandparents who send things, the world of sad brown perfume, and morning. (The gray postcards of the village for sale in the village store are so unilluminating that they scarcely count. After all, one steps outside and immediately sees the same thing: the village, where we live, full size, and in color.)”

Elizabeth Bishop, “In the Village,” Questions of Travel, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965, page 52.

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