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Croatia · Mea’s notebook

The Postcard I Kept

Four views and one unfinished sentence

Mea Zen with her postcard in Trogir — a small rectangle of possibility

I thought a postcard ought to explain a place in two or three excellent sentences. In this imagined journey along the Croatian coast, I gave myself a pencil, a small card, and considerably too high an opinion of my ability to summarise the sea.

Trogir, Split, and Dubrovnik offered stone, shade, a clock, and a wall. The words took the scenic route.

Illustrated fiction with Mea Zen, inspired by original Travel2City photographs. These adventures, thoughts, dialogue and weather are newly imagined, rather than documented autobiographical events.

01—04

Four views and one unfinished sentence

Mea Zen with her postcard in Trogir — a small rectangle of possibility
01
Trogir

I bought no grand souvenir in this imagined version of the day. A postcard would do. Across the water, the towers stood perfectly still while their reflections refused to cooperate. I wrote “Wish you were—” and stopped. The sentence already sounded borrowed.

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Mea Zen with her postcard in Split — the sentence in the shade
02
Split

The palms made a moving fringe of shade. I sat beneath it and tried again: “The light here is—”. Another unfinished line. A little wind lifted the card, and I caught it against my knee. Perhaps the useful words would arrive if I stopped interviewing the view.

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Mea Zen with her postcard in Dubrovnik — a clock with no appointment
03
Dubrovnik

Under the clock tower, everyone seemed to have somewhere to go. I checked the hour, although I had made no appointment. Then I turned the postcard over. On the blank side I drew a crooked circle for the clock. It said more about my afternoon than the tidy sentences on the back.

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Mea Zen with her postcard in Dubrovnik city walls — the postcard that stayed
04
Dubrovnik city walls

Beside the round stone fortress, I finally found my line: “Today I had time to look.” I read it once, slipped the card into my notebook, and kept it. There would be other postcards to send. This one could wait between the pages until I needed reminding.

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One last line

Back in the notebook, the postcard became a bookmark. It held my place without explaining it. The next page was still blank, and for once I was pleased about that.

“Today I had time to look.”
Mea’s notebook · The Postcard I Kept
More from the notebook

The notebook keeps growing.

Follow Mea on her own, or turn a shared page with Colombine and Lu Cia.

Lu Cia, Mea Zen and Colombine with a map outside the Bratislava theatre

Three companions, one notebook

Where our shared pages begin
Colombine, Mea Zen and Lu Cia climb a shaded stone passage toward sunlight in Granada

The Long Way Round

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Lu Cia sets down coffee while Mea Zen and Colombine sit beneath the stepped gables of Bruges

A Pocketful of Weather

Belgium & The Netherlands · Four illustrated moments