What’s Your Secret?
“I knew it was a mistake on the honeymoon. Nine years later (and 2 kids) we’re still together. I don’t think I’ll ever have the courage to leave.”
“I like to go to church just to see what the other women are wearing.”
These are a just a few examples of some of the secrets posted online at postsecret.com.
According to the Web site, “PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.”
Postcards that are submitted are meant to provoke many responses, including humorous, heart-wrenching or tongue-in-cheek ones, and the cards can even be cleansing for the sender.??ATT??
One postcard on the Web site shows a soldier dragging another through mud, both carrying guns. The text reads, “I do not support the troops & my dad is one.”
Another postcard shows faraway blurry figures playing tennis on a court. Written over the postcard is, “Every day that I’ve called in sick over the last four years was spent at this nudist resort.”
And one more postcard shows a corner of a piece of standard plain white paper with blue lines and reads, “I am so sick of this by-the-book life that everybody seems to be living.”
Sometimes e-mails are posted after a postcard. One example is a postcard that reads, “I want to give up trying to pass the New York State Bar…and just be a travel photo-journalist!”
The e-mail response to this was, “You know you’re in law school when. . . You consider dropping out of law school approximately every hour, but after that first semester you realized you were already in too much debt to be anything other than a lawyer.”
Another postcard states, “When I see a traffic cone…I get the urge to hit it with my car.”
The e-mailed response: “I hit one once. It was amazing.”
Another aspect to the post secret Web site, postsecretcommunity.com, has activities like Secret Voices, where visitors can upload their own secrets or listen to others tell their secrets. Visitors can also chat and put up video secrets, news and a blog.
As for secrets that don’t make it on the Web site, books have been published with these postcards.
The first published book is “PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives.” One postcard example from this book shows a drawing of a bride with text that reads, “When I see an ugly bride, what I’m really seeing is a glimmer of hope for the future. Maybe I will marry, someday.”
And one secret from the second book, “My Secret: A PostSecret Book,” shows the body of a thin woman, and it reads, “I truly believe all my problems would be solved if only I were not fat!”
The third book in the series is “The Secret Lives of Men and Women: A PostSecret Book.”
One postcard from this book shows two women sitting side by side in dressy shirts but not showing their faces. The text reads, “Dear mother-in-law, If you tell me how good the deals are at Costco one more time, I will burn the place down. No jury would convict me. Love, Your devoted daughter-in-law. P.S. I hate those giant muffins. I don’t care if a dozen costs less than five dollars. I am throwing them away as soon as you leave.”
The newest book, printed in Oct. 2007, is called, “A Lifetime of Secrets.” One postcard from this book shows half of the upper body of a well-dressed woman, and the text reads, “I wrote my will today, not because it was the sensible thing to do – but because I am worried about what would happen to my purse collection.”
Frank Warren is the author of the Web site and the books. He said the concept of secrets on postcards all started in a dream he had while in Paris in December 2003. According postsecretcommunity.com, Warren purchased three postcards in France. In his dream, the postcards each had messages on them. He said this later led him to begin a project where he put messages in bottles, which were found by random people. After throwing 47 of these bottles into a lake, Warren said the PostSecret Web site began.
Warren is doing a book tour for “A Lifetime of Secrets,” which runs until Oct. 30. It started in Washington, D.C, on Oct. 13 and hit cities such as San Francisco, Chicago and Milwaukee.
Postcards, 4 by 6 inches, can be sent to: PostSecret, 13345 Copper Ridge Rd., Germantown, MD, 20874.
A PostSecret event can be hosted at any college campus by going to harpercollinsspeakersbureau.com.