Artist KAJSA LOVE writes secret love letters to anyone who requests them.
My sister discovered it in a flower bed. A small particolored sign, staked among the blooms of multicolored zinnias. In small and curious capital letters, the small poster read: “What message do you need? ASK FOR IT. Ask for it! A lamp for your path. A gift of the heart.”
Variations on this handmade sign have been posted up and down the West Coast, radiating out from Sonoma. Each of the signs includes the message, “KASJA LOVE sends good mail to ANYONE that asks.” A sweet mystery, its QR code beckons to the reader to find out more.
In this age of anxiety, this time of fear, our dreams (and our politics) are haunted by the archetype, “The Stranger.” This deep-seeded archetype is the outsider, the foreigner or the criminal who lives beyond the pale of law and right action. The Stranger wants inside, it wants something, to take away all that you have. I evoke The Stranger to explain the profundity of KASJA LOVE’s simple offering, and the profundity of the appreciative response that it has received. She has turned the archetype on its head. KASJA LOVE’s Stranger brings the help you need.
A sampling of the responses includes, “I saw your sign today and it brought me to tears. I feel like I saw this and your website at the perfect time in my life.” Also from a recipient, “It was like rediscovering that magic is real. You’re embodying the heart of the new paradigm and broadcasting it out for others.” There are scores of published responses to the hundreds of handmade letters KASJA LOVE has sent out to strangers via snail mail.
When I received my letter from KASJA LOVE (requested by my sister), I saved it for a dark night and midnight walk. It was large format, triple-stamped, made of multifarious construction paper and washi tape. The two halves of the card were held together with a single delicate thread. It contained a handwritten lyric poem on loss and a note—held in a secret compartment flap. I read it again and again as time slowed and then stopped altogether. What was transmitted spoke directly to my heart: “You are not a stranger.”
So, I reached out to KAJSA. I sat with her in companionable company on green grass and listened to her story. We were separated only by a few fresh-baked pastries laid out on my coat. She is a graduate in the study of archetypes. Labyrinths are her specialty.
Her letter writing is a continuation of the letters she has always sent her friends. It just expanded with her concept of “family.”
“The signs ask passersby what they need. What do people ask for?” I asked her. “They ask for all sorts of things,” she responded. “But most commonly they ask for reassurance that everything is going to be alright.”
This article is yet another KASJA LOVE sign. Use it to request a piece of “good mail.”
KAJSA LOVE asks for nothing in return for her letters, though she accepts small donations. She writes every day but is currently in a two-month backlog. She is also accepting artists who want to become letter writers in a growing collective. Find her at kajsaallison.com/kajsalove.