Postcard 007 - Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley, send to [L]

Bridget Riley, Bolt of Colour, 2017-2019. Installation view, Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas.
Colmandavid, CC-BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The picture of Bridget Riley that's on this postcard can't be reproduced here, as it's in copyright.  However, you can find it here, so that you can at least get an idea of what I'm talking about. 

There's something about the way that she looks out of the image that made me think immediately of the recipient for this card.  The eyebrow isn't raised but the suggestion is there; a cross between curiosity, resigned-to-slightly-pissed-off, and a touch of the world weary.  I'd bet she tells good stories, and I definitely want a pint with her.

A great deal of my friends live on the opposite side of the country to me; I have a community over there that I do a lot of travelling to see.  It's partly L's fault that I'm involved, and for that I'll always be grateful.

I miss my friends.

As would be expected during a global pandemic, the post is being a bit weird, deliveries are delayed, things get to different places in different orders.  This altered sense of time affects all things, postcards included.  I send out 9 envelopes last Monday, hoping that they'd arrive by Thursday, and some of them did, but at least one - going to the same city - arrived just yesterday.  One that I sent weeks ago still hasn't arrived, and I'm fairly sure that it's actually still stuck in the postbox, as it was a big envelope.  I'm half considering going back to the postbox and seeing if I can feel if it's still lodged in there, or waiting for the postie to arrive and ask them if they can have a root around and check for me.  This last thing seems like something that L would do, to be honest. 

We are far away in many senses from the people that we love, but this won't last forever.  The remote working / working from home thing is largely business as usual for me, and the social-digital ways that I have of keeping in touch with people are still going, so that's not exactly been a big change.  My day is often punctuated with messages from L, amongst other people, and that's still happening, and it makes me glad.  But last week had an important date in it for my community, and we all got together online to celebrate it, and I found I was crying a lot, and it all just kept coming, that night and the day after, because of a rush of the sense of lost potential energy, the stuff we would have been doing.  The parties we would have had and the in jokes that would have developed and the connections and memories that we would have made.  This baseline is fine, but it's the stuff on top, the stuff that is somehow extra but also essential, that I'm missing. 

I'd normally be out and about all over the country, but I haven't left this city since the middle of March.  This is... very unusual for me.  Last year I did too much travelling - it was rare that I spent 7 nights in a row in my own bed - and this year, well. 

I miss you, love.  I know that you have people you miss terribly.  We'll be sat on a beach or in a forest or both soon, I hope.  And you can tell me what you're making and what you're reading, and there will be fire, and cider.  And send me more pictures of your art, because I like it.