Leni & Love: June 2011

Recently, I stumbled across a website in my lengthy bookmarks folder, that I had essentially forgotten about. I remember months ago when discovering it I knew I had to share it. This is a website compiled of 400 love letters, all to different kinds of people - strangers, lovers, family, friends, enemies, crushes, you name it. The Author is a woman named Asia, other than noticing her intimately complex love affairs and feelings, that's all I really know about this wonderfully creative and candid woman. Hours and hours I spent on this website, reading close to all of her letters. I cried, I laughed, I related to it and I cringed. Personally, I am a bit of a romantic and do find power in the written word, therefore I couldn't tear myself away from this wonderful project. Below is an extract from her personal explanation of why she wanted to write these letters, and few letters that are my personal favourites -

"So: what is this project really about? Of course, it's about love, and relationships, which anyone who knows me can tell you are about the only things that I'm interested in. Well, not the only things, but two of the main ones. At the start I had one very simple goal: by the end of this project I wanted to be able to write a love letter to anyone, a stranger on the street, or someone that I have nothing but scorn for. I wanted to be able to pull out and vocalize the small thread connecting me to them, them to me, the something in them that I found beautiful or real and the something between us that existed beneath everything, acknowledged or unacknowledged, forgotten gestures and moments, strange and rare affinities. In the same way that part of art school training is training your eye to take in and process the world around you, to stop and notice things, to learn how to really see , I wanted to train my heart to really feel. Some romantics are wincing now: how can you train your heart? It's a lot like training your eye: there was always that crack in the sidewalk, you just never noticed before the way that the lines trace like lightning bolts, the starkness of the light grey concrete, and the blackness of the crevices, the perfect intricacies of it all. There are always connections between people, things to admire in people, trust that goes unnoticed, small kindnesses, shared silences. There is always so much to see, and there is always so much to feel."

You can find Asia's projects on - www.sleeptrip.com