Two postcard views of the Blue Grotto on Capri. I have hundreds of tourist postcards from the early part of the 20th century. In the 1980s a tiny bookshop in downtown Oakland called The Gull was going out of business. It was run by an elderly chain-smoking lady, and she had decided to retire. I found a carton full of old postcards on a low dusty shelf. Without even looking at the contents she sold me the whole box for $5. Sometimes I pick one out and mail it to a friend, but the card-stock is too soft to send them through the mail without the protection of an envelope. Today when I was looking through the jumble for views of Rome, I came across these two similar-yet-not-similar scenes of mystery, and I couldn't remember ever having noticed them before. They might have inspired collages if Joseph Cornell had happened to find them.