Photographs: August 2009 Archives

A woman I'd just met started to tell me my fortune the other day, or rather, to describe my inclinations.

Indulgent, she said. Check.

Dreamy. Oh yes.

She was a striking woman. Long dark hair, some kind of Middle Eastern heritage, but she was from Sweden.

I was drinking wine, which I seldom do anymore (and for which I paid dearly the following day). We were sitting on large cushions on the floor at a party.

It was a strange party.

All the women there were exquisitely beautiful. There were only four men, and two of them were a couple. Around them flitted tall, long-legged international supermodels.

Okay, they weren't actual supermodels; they just looked that way. They were restaurateurs, writers, photojournalists. My friends are very interesting, and often quite decorative (or decorated), but they don't look like this crowd.

I teased the host about having a hobby of collecting beautiful people, and he gallantly gestured to me, as if to say, yes darling, that's why you're here. It took two tries before I realized what he meant.

Over the weekend I bartered my playmate into sitting for me and the Nikon, but it took some doing. He dislikes having his picture taken. I often think taking photos requires the same skills as taming wild animals. You have to distract the subject with something - a little soothing conversation, a little soft noise, so they're looking elsewhere, so they forget you're there with a big black lens.

The photos came out beautiful, even for me. I sent him some, and he wouldn't even look.

Sometimes it takes someone else to show us to ourselves.

I think we all have an image of ourselves, or maybe several of them, and having to see the external face and body captured on film or video is unsettling.

It makes us realize that our self-image is of the internal us. And that while we may occasionally meet others who can recognize our Selves shining out of our eyes, or being transmitted in the way we move, laugh, or dance, that's not what is visible most of the time to most of the people we come into contact with.

That's disturbing, and so we hide from it.

I liked that woman at the party. She wasn't the person with whom I had the easiest, most smoothly moving conversation, but she was my favorite of the people I met that night. It was something about her eyes, and her warm energy.

And I'll tell you this - I have fallen in love at first sight a few times. In each case, it wasn't romantic love. It was just - I met a person and instantly felt who they were, could see it radiating toward me.

Sometimes I wonder whether people get that from me, too.

I eat and I eat and I eat, and then in half an hour I am hungry again, and the cat comes over to say hello and perch at my shoulder.

Thankfully she is not perching on my shoulder, as it is hot(ish) and she is furry.

I got this hungry by dint of sprinting 15 miles this morning, then another 8 or so, then the last 7 or so home. So. Tired.

So tired that I had to stop at every light to drape my upper body over the handlebars. So tired that even my friend (boy) said I looked tired, and usually he says something a little nicer, like that I look about 12 in my Oscar T-shirt.

He looked adorable, by the way. In case anybody is asking.

I had a funny day. I did so much riding, and then a bit of hanging out with friends who were equally tired (nobody slept last night, it seems), so that we were a roving yawnfest with very interesting bicycles. It was fun.

I realized today that the odd, confusing situation I am in (with regard to boys) happens to be exactly what I need. It reflects my emotional weather forecast, which is rather unsettled and not quite this thing or the other. It's not necessarily comfortable, but it's certainly interesting. And it's fun. Sometimes it's a lot of fun.

It's strange that I needed to give myself permission to not know what I want. And once I did that, I felt better. Why we think we always have to have so much taped down and clear, I don't know.

Sometimes life is just a muddle, and sometimes that's fine. It's like having your good angel and your devilish angel having a party above both shoulders. Occasionally you get kicked in the head (by accident), but the music they make is really entertaining.

PS. I found the pocketcam I want, but it's twice what I was expecting to spend, so I am going to sit on that for a while and ponder.

PS2. Oh my lord. How can it be possible? I am starving again.