The freshly built Minneapolis Central Library is a site to see in and of itself. The new modern shelves are lined with spines of every shade. The Dewie decimal system is nonexistent here. The endless rows are ordered and labeled by name only.
The glass staircase led me to the next floor and the second reason I crossed the river today. The library had selections from the community art project, Post Secret exhibited. I had vaguely heard of the postal phenomenon, but had never seen the collection before.
I wish I would have had someone there to experience it with me. As I read through people's realizations of their lives, their confessions and purgings ... I just wanted to talk. A lot. I don't think it was the voyeurism that compelled me. I walked from postcard to postcard with goosebumps from the thought that these people discovered their own brutally honest truth. Not only discovered it, but live up to it, faced it ... then created these powerfully beautiful images to boot. I couldn't stop thinking about each individual process.
What it would be like to pick out the picture that best draws your most painful experience.
How to capture their situation in a sentence fragment.
How carefully those words are chosen.
How other words would mean something entirely different.
Whether they laughed or cried writing out those words.
Some of the mailings are utterly depressing stories of rape, hate, fear, betrayal. Others are personal quirks and embarrassing habits. 
Most show the human conscious at its most unforgiving. Measuring bodies and love.
I walked away saddened and inspired by man kind. Strange feeling. I can't even fathom what my secret would be if I sent mail to Frank's home address. Interesting to think about I suppose.
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