I've got a book coming out next month. Very exciting stuff. I'm going to need a photo for the jacket cover. So I have my husband take a few pictures of me posed in various natural settings. Well, the man is no artist, I'll tell you that. Each picture is worse than the one before.
Obviously, I need a professional photo shoot.
I make the appointment. Get looking at my hair and decide I'll go in and get it puffed up a bit before the session. I mean, this is not the last book I'll have published. Unlikely I'll look any better as time takes its inevitible toll. May as well spring for the picture now.
The day comes and I go into the gallery. Walls covered with glowing brides and soft skinned babies. Wow. This guy seems good. The photographer, thank you Jesus, turns out to be about my age. The last thing I need is some thirty year old looking down the length of the camera with those eyes that telegraph, 'Gotta make arrangements. If I ever get this old, have someone shoot me.'
The guy takes about twenty pictures in three different poses. He reminds me that in the old days (meaning forty-five years ago when I had my high school picture taken), they put all kinds of filters on the camera before they took the picture. Nowadays, everything's digital. The proofs come back harsh, sort of -what you see is what you get. He's careful to explain that he'll send them to me via a webpage. Then, once I choose a couple of poses, he'll go in and retouch, soften, do whatever I ask him to do.
Okay dokey. So, I got the proofs today.
Holy crap! Who is that old woman? Have I had some kind of silent stroke? Why is my face all cockeyed? Did it used to be symetrical? And when did my shoulders get all hunched over like my grandma's used ot be? Mother-of-God! Could I really be that fat?
Twenty-two pictures and in every single freakin' one, I appear shockingly old.
Very humbling and a teeny bit frightening.
I immediately chose the three least horrible photos and fired off an email telling the photographer to remove my double chin, the black circles under my eyes, and the forty excess pounds the camera seems to have added. Airbrush my right eye so it's the same size as my left. Straighten out my mouth so it looks less like I'm grimacing and more like I'm smiling. Basically, I ended the email, just retouch the photos to within an inch of cartoon character.
Sheesh! Good thing I've spent a little of my extended years doing my best to develop some inner beauty. Lord knows my outer beauty has gone straight to crap.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Redwing
I was four or five the first time I saw a Redwing Blackbird. Riding in the backseat of my parents Impala, up on my knees, my face pressed against the triangular back window. This was over a half century ago. A generation before we imprisoned our children, most often screaming, in specially constrcuted car seats, strapping them in as though preparing them for the inevitable lethal injection. In 1955, we drank water from the tap, chewed tar from electrical poles like free gum and got up to make our choice of two television channels.
So. Back in that Impala. We're somewhere between Eureka and Arcata in Humboldt County, California. Along that stretch of Highway 101 that skirts the slough. When I notice a shiny black bird clinging to a shedding cattail. In late Fall, the six foot stalks decay and loose their stuffing, so that the soft brown fluff hangs like the velvet on the antlers of the bucks my Dad shoots each October. As I said, I'm on my bony, kid knees making breath prints on the Chevy's passenger window, preparing to write my name with my finger. That's when the Blackbird takes flight.
The surprise of that flash of brilliant red against the shiny black feathers and the dying cattails, is my first memory of joy. My heart jumped in my scrawny chest. A sharp squeal escsped into the car. No one else had seen this miracle. My sister was asleep on my mom's lap in the front seat. My dad was driving, his eyes on the road. That unexpected gift of color seemed aimed directly at me.
I live now in Northwest Arkansas. Last month a thousand Redwing Blackbirds fell from the sky here. No one knows why. There is speculation that fireworks frightened them to death, that a mystery virus struck them all dead of blood clots to the brain at the same instant. One pundit suggested that a flock of Canadian Geese forgot to honk, thus running into the smaller Redwings. Sort of a mid-air collision of feathered Hummers and tiny Smart Cars. The last explanation seems as likely as the first two.
When I heard about this phenomenon, my first thought was of that lone bird fifty years ago, taking flight over a ragged patch of dull estuary. An instant of pure joy, an unexpected glimpse of intense gemlike red. It feel like yesterday. It feels like now. Pain haunts us but joy bursts forth in electrical moments that, while we understand are memory, feel more like a re-living of the moment.
Still, I can't help seeing those dead birds. Imagine. One second you're soaring above the earth on wings feathered in shiny blue-black, that finger touch of jeweled red exposed proudly to the warm sun. The next instant, you're a falling bundle of death, bouncing off the dead Bermuda grass or steaming roof or gray concrete below.
So. Back in that Impala. We're somewhere between Eureka and Arcata in Humboldt County, California. Along that stretch of Highway 101 that skirts the slough. When I notice a shiny black bird clinging to a shedding cattail. In late Fall, the six foot stalks decay and loose their stuffing, so that the soft brown fluff hangs like the velvet on the antlers of the bucks my Dad shoots each October. As I said, I'm on my bony, kid knees making breath prints on the Chevy's passenger window, preparing to write my name with my finger. That's when the Blackbird takes flight.
The surprise of that flash of brilliant red against the shiny black feathers and the dying cattails, is my first memory of joy. My heart jumped in my scrawny chest. A sharp squeal escsped into the car. No one else had seen this miracle. My sister was asleep on my mom's lap in the front seat. My dad was driving, his eyes on the road. That unexpected gift of color seemed aimed directly at me.
I live now in Northwest Arkansas. Last month a thousand Redwing Blackbirds fell from the sky here. No one knows why. There is speculation that fireworks frightened them to death, that a mystery virus struck them all dead of blood clots to the brain at the same instant. One pundit suggested that a flock of Canadian Geese forgot to honk, thus running into the smaller Redwings. Sort of a mid-air collision of feathered Hummers and tiny Smart Cars. The last explanation seems as likely as the first two.
When I heard about this phenomenon, my first thought was of that lone bird fifty years ago, taking flight over a ragged patch of dull estuary. An instant of pure joy, an unexpected glimpse of intense gemlike red. It feel like yesterday. It feels like now. Pain haunts us but joy bursts forth in electrical moments that, while we understand are memory, feel more like a re-living of the moment.
Still, I can't help seeing those dead birds. Imagine. One second you're soaring above the earth on wings feathered in shiny blue-black, that finger touch of jeweled red exposed proudly to the warm sun. The next instant, you're a falling bundle of death, bouncing off the dead Bermuda grass or steaming roof or gray concrete below.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)