Postcards of Disillusion

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(Down to four tubs since I moved to this cottage older than me several years ago. Slow going.)

Only six Rubbermaid tubs left to sort through full of a lifetime’s worth of words on paper. Less than half what I started with when I moved to this small apartment that passes for my personal archaeology dig. I was never a very careful filer.

Date on a letter that came to the top of a pile today is December 27, 1965. They built stationery to last in those days, and ink as well. I could still write longhand legibly then if not elegantly so everything is easy to read.

The second paragraph arrests my attention:

“As I sat writing the postcards of disillusion, she walked in and passed my table in the little writing room of the USO with its window opening from America onto the hurrying traffic and strollers and flute players on Champs Elysees….”

Postcards of disillusion; nearly half a century later, the phrase resonates.

I wonder now why I didn’t use it in the story I later wrote about that Christmas in Paris when she taught me everything I needed to know about women, that forever mysterious race with which men co-exist so uneasily.