Connection in Different Forms
Token Tales — Reflections on invisibility, presence, kindness, and what it means to be noticed through small handmade notes.
Manuel was our server at the SportHotel café in Pontresina. Portuguese, but he’d lived in Italy, Spain, other corners of Switzerland. He spoke five languages, fluently, he said: Portuguese, Italian, German, French, English. I only speak the one.
I handed him one of my small painted notes after he took our order.
He read it, turned it over, looked at the painting for a while.
“Thank you,” he said. “You made this?”
I nodded.
“This is the first hand-painted note anyone’s given me.”
Then he told me about a box he keeps at home. Small notes, written by travelers he’s met over the years, each one in their own language. He’d been collecting them since his twenties — six or seven years now. Sometimes he takes the box out, just to look through them. They remind him, he said, of his journey.
I love knowing that he keeps them. Little parts of stories, little pieces of conversations. It’s his way of holding onto the people who pass through, even briefly. His, in a box at home.
Mine, in the hands of strangers I'll never see again.
માનસી
Received a token? I'd love to hear where we met and what stayed with you.
