Quiet that Vinegar-Lipped Reader Lady!

First I wanted to post a link to this article about a mouse riding a frog in an Indian monsoon. Photograph from Reuters/Pawan Kumar (India). From 2006, in the norther Indian city of Lucknow, they captured it on film:


This week, we were charged with reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. And I absolutely loved it. It spoke to my soul. Yes, it's about writing, but like Rita said, it can apply to creating photographs. I love that it's not just me that grew up awkward and teased and tormented. I like to think that Anne got a note passed to her in 6th grade titled, "Who Hates Anne Lamott" with classmates signatures on it, so that I'm not the only one. I like to think that she got called Trapjaw because of her underbite, or harrassed with some stupid song like There's a Hole in the Buckett. I mostly like thinking that I'm not the only one who sometimes wants to sit frozen because she's convinced everyone would rather she not exist because she's so annoying or stupid or whatever crime I might have committed.

I loved the image of the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady.


She really does look like this in my head, going, "That's interesting? Really? That's a terrible idea! How disappointing."

I need to picture her more like this:





Or Mary Poppins.

That person who has total faith in you and can make wonderful things happen in your life, touched with a little magic.

I also loved the imagery of that cartoon finger beckoning you, one you can't resist and so you float, nose first, toward that pie that's not yours, but that will eat.

I'm glad that I don't have to be that perfect woman, unflawed. I'm glad that to truly create, I have to be messy. And that as long as I have passion, whatever I focus on *will* be interesting to someone else. That I can just be me. And that it's hard work and about 5 years of working professionally to reach my 10K hours of photography so that I'm *really* good ;)



Painting with hat - Old Spinter with a Dove, 1976, Tamas Galabos.
Renaissance woman - Woman with Pearl, c. 1858-68, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot.