Last Updated on June 7, 2023 by Christine Kaaloa
(Bukcheon Village, Seoul)
Love letter #1 to Korea
As I said 2011 would be my year to ‘experience love’!
Love comes through many doors, inspiring our creativity and playful curiosity of life. For a traveler, love portals can be opened through countries we immediately fall in love with or find rocky romances with. It can be discovered through the odd kitsch souvenirs we find wandering an off-beat alleyway of shops or entered through the trusted smiles of a hotel front desk clerk after a long day of haggling…
If the door is wide open and we’re curious, love rushes in.
Why not write love letters?
“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire…. “
— Roland Barthes (from A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments)
A blog, a photograph, a video or postcard… these can all be “love letters”. But sometimes, the love letters we find for a place can be vague, indirect, the je’ne c’est quoi of mystery. You don’t know why or what it is about a place… but damn it, you love it!
After revisiting Jeju Island’s Olle trails this past holiday season with my mom, the inspiration to write love letters opened up inside me…
I wanted to leave behind an trail of anonymous memories for love to find me.
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What are some favorite love letters of places that you’ve written or received?
*Note: Images or writing must be suitable and tasteful for post.
