I’m a fan of Post Secret. I read it every Sunday morning if possible. Then I check back a few times in the week to read the email comments.
I’m amazed by the creativity, poignancy, pain and humor that can be delivered in such a confined space. But then constraints are often a good thing. They focus effort, elicit creative solutions and deliver powerful results. For example, a few months ago someone posted longitude and latitude coordinates as their secret. Just some numbers written in pen on a piece of cardboard, if I remember. I was immediately intrigued and wondered what the sender meant but failed to follow up and plug those coordinates into Google maps or some other program.
Well, I didn’t have to look the location up because a few days later, a Google Map satellite picture shows up with an arrow marking the exact spot as a wooded area in VA surrounded by what looks like farms and some residential development. Then a day later a picture shows up, ostensibly of that spot from Google maps. It kind of looked like a small gulley or maybe the beginning of cave in a wooded area. It was hard to tell what it was exactly because of the distance and the dead trees obfuscating the area.
Three different people could have sent in those materials – The Secret. The Google Map Image. The Image. Maybe just one person. I guess only Frank, the site moderator could tell.
Thing is, when I see coordinates posted as a secret — to me that just screams crime. What happened there? Was something supposed to be found there? Was something hidden there? A body?
Of course it’s all supposition and it’s just modern cynicism to assume the worst — but the thing is these posts can get you thinking. They stimulate. Sometimes they’re disturbing like the “coordinates” post, other times just poignant or sad or funny. For the most part, I don’t internalize them.
I say for the most part because this week I saw this and Jenn lept to mind immediately. I wanted it to be from her so badly. Often I think of her as not being gone, but being still in Oklahoma or wherever, working it all out and getting it together. I think maybe it was some clever ruse and it wasn’t her cold skin at all that I felt but some doppelgangers. She’d gone into hiding and now I’d gotten a message from her.
Of course that’s not true. I know that. But sometimes I like to pretend. It helps me deal. I don’t think I’m alone there.
So the secret wasn’t from her. But I figure maybe it was for me. Maybe it was for you, too. Maybe she, maybe they, are finally okay. How nice would that be?
