This entry took me 3 months to complete and was written in several phases. I’m not going to bother checking for spelling or grammatical errors, so let your internal spellchecker rev up for some hard wok. If you finish reading it all, let me know.
In 2005, I experienced my 15 minutes of fame. And it was dork fame. Kind of like Jeremiah’s Apple commercial, only not as vast in reach and certainly not as dorky. I was contacted by a writer for WIRED who expressed interest in interviewing me for a piece on Apple product packaging. The phone interview went well and I tried to sound neither like an idiot nor like an arrogant sophomore. What resulted was an article that changed my life. Ok, and maybe the article was dorkier than Jeremiah’s commercial. I really must admit that.
Following the fame, I received many emails from Mac users on campus who hadn’t met me saying, in effect, “Way to go; thanks for reppin’ VT”. My website traffic increased 2-fold and stayed there, thanks to curiosity encouraging those people to google my name. However, many people read the WIRED article and didn’t google me. One such person even wrote a blog about it.
Every so often, I end up googling my name. For instance, a search right now shows that my newly-added VAL graduate student page is in the top 10 hits. Yes, my photo is as acoustically-nerdy as possible, thank you very much. Anyways, on one of these googling occasions after The Great Fame of September 2005, I found a blog entry written by someone who loves Preston. Her words were short in analyzing the matter and they intrigued me. I quickly commented on the post as a “thank you” for the recognition, thinking nothing more about it.
On yet another time of googling the wonderful search entry “ryan harne”, I again rediscovered this post on iheartpreston.co.uk. After looking over that post again, I proceeded to browse the whole website. Lots of good writing, some enticing photos, and an About page which requested the occasional postcard to be sent, if you so wish. I think that the first time I noticed this postcard semi-request, I just ignored it, probably paying more attention to the photos.
In the summer of 2006, my approach to the postcard request changed. It was a summer spent in Blacksburg, and spent, generally, all alone. I was maxing out my summer courseload, immersing myself in studio work, and taking as many shifts at Bollo’s as was possible. It was the summer of 4-hour nights of sleep–the summer I ate my body weight in Bollo’s pastries. The summer that I was willing to take chances and live outside of the box. Like the time I randomly pulled an all-nighter in studio, even though I didn’t need to, then took a Heat Transfer test and went back to work in studio before heading to my Bollo’s shift. Like the time I dressed up in my nicest clothes, put on some Converse All Stars, grabbed my umbrella, and walked downtown at 10pm in the middle of a hurricane-induced storm just because I wanted to live a little and escape the 3rd floor apartment. Like the time I decided to send Becky Clutter a postcard.
I made the postcard myself. I used some of my scrap poster paper from studio, drawing some geometric shapes on the photo-side, and writing some cordial randomness on the script-side. I mailed it using 2 stamps because the postage had recently increased and I had to use a 2 or 1 cent stamp to match the difference.
After taking it to the post office, I didn’t think much more about it. However, I was checking my website traffic information for any mid-Georgia-located hits, hoping to use that data as proof of receipt. When I saw it–specifically, showing up as “Duluth, GA”–I took a note of the ISP information and from then on would recognize when “Duluth, GA” went to my website. That summer, when I spotted Duluth for the first time, I surely grinned and was giddy with my randomness and its results.
But, I truly had no idea what I had begun.
As that fall semester of 2006 was about to begin, I received an email from Becky Clutter asking for my new address because my blog mentioned that I had to move back onto campus as the school year started. This shocked me since I wasn’t particularly thinking of a response, having always considered my postcard as a one-way high-five. I waited for a week or so for a reply by post but nothing came.
On some random day in October, I got a postcard in my on-campus mailbox. Used to junk mail and the occasional holiday card from my loving mom, this postcard was a beam of joy. And it was from Becky Clutter. Along with a dinosaur and speech bubble, the photo-side contained the word, “hello”. It had begun.
Two-way communication. We might as well have given each other a walkie talkie tuned to a similar frequency, or an immensely long string & cans telephone system. Our postcard method, however, became a trademark communication portal.
Her postcard remained on my desk in the right corner, laying flat. Sometimes it was covered with important documents and sometimes it was exposed to my frequent glances.
Sometime after I received her postcard, I googled her name and eventually landed on a website that forever altered my enchantment of this postcard persona. 35 Unger was the street address that Becky lived at during her time at university. But it is also a website that she, her brother, and a best friend constructed to share their love of food and food experiences. The website also had a vidcast, quick documentaries regarding restaurants, baking, and anything about food. You’ll never guess who the host was.
One night, after returning from a Bollo’s shift, I was hopping around 35unger and looked through the vidcast section. I randomly selected a recent video and watched as Becky spoke of a trip to New York from the comfort of her desk chair in her office. At some point she shows some neat fruit-shaped erasers she found. She places them on the desk and the camera zooms in on the sitting objects, next to her Mac’s keyboard. As the camera pans back to resume footage of Becky speaking personally to the viewers, a great portion of her desk is visible. In while watching this zoom-out that I left up from my own audience member desk chair and paused the video.
It can’t be.
It’s blurry. Maybe it’s a bill or something work-related.
But it has 2 stamps. Two stamps.
There, against her monitor, lays my postcard. In a position that would constantly be visible as she works, continually reminding.
Is she thinking of me? What am I thinking?! We’ve never met. I should stop thinking about this, otherwise, I’ll go nuts considering the possibilities.
And I did. For several months, I thought little of it. With one caveat. Her postcard to me now had a new home, against the monitor of my own desktop Mac. Constantly visible. Always reminding.
As the winter arrived and the spring semester of 2007 began, I was back in studio more frequently and shades of that original risk-taking period, which spawned the first postcard, reappeared. I wanted to send something else. Am I actually going to go through with this? What am I trying to pull? What do I expect?
I took a piece of scrap pine wood from my parts bin and crafted it into a square with a rounded, parallelogram-like cross-section. On it, I sprayed some red spray paint. And scribbled a few words. After the application of a stamp, I assumed it would be post-able. Surely the USPS gets wooden postcards all the time? No object of terrorism here.
I remember the CLUNK it made when I dropped it inside the USPS mail bin. I don’t remember if anyone turned to look at me as I briskly walked out of the post office thinking not about the potential queer looks but about what Becky would think when she receives a wooden block. Dang it. I should have rounded the edges better. And spray paint? What was that about?! Such an idiot…
As the spring semester rolled on, I kept thinking about that wooden postcard. I never really knew that she received it because Duluth, GA already had a frequency of attendance at ryanharne.com. How could I know that she received it if the sudden appearance of Duluth was no longer a unique sign.
I think it was in this period when I first wanted Becky Clutter a little bit closer.
Towards the end of the cold spring months, I was enthralled with a Print Graphics course that I was enrolled in, so as to finish up the Industrial Design minor. I would spend long nights in the studio making expensive creations utilizing my greatest of care and patience. At some point, I decided to stop wasting the excess paint from that evening’s activities and, instead, began making mini-prints with the materials. Some of them ended up as postcards to friends. It was tough resisting the desire to send something towards Georgia.
One evening, I decided to push my luck. My mini-print would be for Becky Clutter. And I would mail it to her. She hadn’t yet responded to my ridiculous wooden postcard, so this might seem out of place, too forward.
I decided to do it. The effort spent in crafting the postcard was clearly more focused than for the major print of that evening. The postcard must be perfect. And it must contain and intersection. The postcard shows 2 white lines intersecting with a blast of color.
I was contemplative when I put that postcard into the mail. No longer was my mailing centered around being random. This was targeted. Clearly aimed at maintaining communication with her.
Unfortunately, not long after that postcard was mailed, the shootings at Virginia Tech took place on a Monday morning, April 16, 2007. The full events of that day are documented elsewhere within this website but I was eventually able to return to my place and instinctively checked my email. I had been fielding calls during most of the morning from my family and email seemed like the next thing I should utilize to inform people who might not be able to call me that I was alright.
One of the first people to email me that day was Becky, very simply asking if I was ok because she had just walked past a tv in the break room at work. I replied back to her email once I had some words to say—the events of that morning having left me speechless for weeks after it took place.
Another email from her that night encouraged me to call or IM if I needed someone to talk to. Since I don’t have the records of my iChat conversations on this computer, I can’t say for sure, but I believe that I did briefly IM her at some point not long after the shootings. Making nothing more than small conversation to get my mind off of my environmental stigmas that still lingered.
The iChat communication gateway wasn’t utilized very much beyond the occasional message or so, although we did begin lightly emailing as the semester closed.
That summer, Becky was planning on a month abroad, in India, Sweden, and more. Having her cell phone number from that April 16 email, I decided to send a direct line as she was boarding her plane, wishing her the best on her travels.
A few days later, I received a package from her. A package? But she’s abroad. It was a care package, put together with careful attention to detail and designed for me to open one piece per day, for a week.
The care package was the best gift I had ever received to date. Even though the gifts were small, so much thought was put into each that I practically had to peel the sentimentality off of the gifts before I could even breach the wrapping paper.
In the month of her absence, I began to desire to know her, to find out who Becky Clutter actually was. Two postcards arrived at my door that summer, one from India and one from Sweden. A postcard told me that she was thinking of me. I lit up upon finding them in my mailbox, putting a vigor and skip in my step.
When she returned to the states, the occasional emails began again. Our IM conversations became more frequent, however, and we started to form a friendship or, rather, a bond. A connection.
As the semester began and moved along, I was busy with work and also biking all the time, by that point. Becky and I were talking via the internet more and more. By mid-October, we knew a lot about each other. But we hadn’t yet broken the direct line of communication barrier.
The night of October 10, I received a text message asking if I was busy or asleep. I replied no, in short. Moments later, my phone rang. I don’t remember the conversation all that explicitly but what Becky and I both remember with great clarity was the ease with which we spoke to each other.
I do remember hearing her say goodnight. It hasn’t yet stopped echoing in my head.
From that point, we began the occasional phone-calling. One a week. Twice a week. Every other night. We started to suck nTelos and T-Mobile dry on their unlimited nighttime and weekend minute features. Our calls were nightly and began to grow in length.
At Halloweentime, I decided to send another postcard. In fact, two. They were to be handmade and sent consecutively. While taking the photos for these postcards, a package arrived for me, interrupting my work, keeping me from taking the photo for the second card. It was from Becky.
I was elated with this unexpected gift. Within moments of having received the package, I took the second photo for the postcard. A second self-portrait. This time, with me lightly smiling with exactly the same inner excitement that I was experiencing at the moment. It may be one of the few self-portraits that I actually didn’t try to force a face for. Those webcam shots going back in years had permanently affected how I took self-portraits leading up to that moment.
Anyways. I sent the postcards, labeled before and after. They were intended to be the most unambiguous communication with Becky to date, telling her that I think about her and that I know it’s mutual.
From that point on, our communication was steady and without gaps. In mid-November, during one of our now-regular nighttime conversations on the phone, I asked when we would finally meet. This got the ball rolling. We tossed around ideas for a few more weeks before deciding that we should meet after the new year.
I had to hold onto my seat, I was so excited, after I booked my flight to Atlanta, where she and I would finally meet and I would meet her family, including Preston.
Christmas passed and I was counting down to my departure. The day arrived, January 4, 2008, and I found myself in Atlanta. Not realizing the convenience of the trains taking people from concourse to baggage, I walked the whole 4000 meters from E to A and walked up the steps ready to lay my eyes on Becky Clutter.
When I made it up the great stairway, I peered with a hawk’s eyes for the familiar face I had seen in several videocasts and a few photos. But, no luck. I wasn’t depressed, knowing that she was the type who arrived on time or slightly after time. Still, I walked around the baggage area anxiously wanting to hold her in an embrace.
I circled the perimeter and reluctantly came back to where I started originally, from the stairs. But this time, I came from the reverse side, where family & friends would have been waiting for their loved ones to arrive. And this time, I saw someone from behind. A head of blond hair that looked awfully familiar. Pink highlights in her hair that I had noticed before from the vidcasts. I savored that recognition and paused before walking up behind her, she know was watching the arrival staircase thinking I was yet to emerge.
I was within inches of her, suddenly feeling nervous about what to say to get her attention. “Becky!” sounded strange and forced. A weak “hey” would give away my nervousness. Nothing was going to be perfect and I couldn’t stand not holding her for any longer.
“Sometimes, I’m sneaky” was what I said as I leaned right up behind her. Her head rapidly turned and her eyes lit up, and she immediately squeezed my arm in an interesting arm-hug. We moved away from the crowd and gave each other a proper embrace. The embrace we both needed.
The following days were spent introducing me to Atlanta, showing me what attractions and good food was available, and having me hang out with some awesome basset hounds. But, we really did none of those things.
We spent 4 days staring into each other’s eyes and holding hands. Non-stop. Every glance in her direction was immobilizing. Every time we touched I knew that I was then feeling the warmth of the one woman who was meant for me.
The visit was over, tearfully, and time went by tortuously slow. Our communication after that point was no longer filled with subtle messages or stuffed innuendoes. We both experienced an unprecedented confidence that what was now moving along was the inevitable result of two people in love, an intersection that could neither be stopped nor stifled.
Eventually, Becky brought up moving to Blacksburg, since I would be in school for some more years as I worked on my master’s degree and contemplated a Ph.D.
Long story short, Becky moved on July the 1st and I assembled an unbelievable amount of IKEA furniture in the days following.
On August 16, 2008, I knelt down before Becky at the corner of Preston & Airport Avenues and asked Becky to be my wife, Preston nearby on a leash wondering why we had stopped our evening walk.
We will be married on October 10, 2009, two years after having begun speaking to each other on the phone (also happens to be the day Becky took her 1st postcard to the post office from the postmark, 10-10-2006, we discovered later).
I can’t believe you made it through reading the whole story. Thank you.
ryanharne.com is not done yet, by the way.
