Schoolyard

Well, first I was not in the mood. Then I went away for a week in which there was no talking, let alone talking to strangers. After that, for a few days I found I was almost never alone in public. Then I wasn’t in the mood, again.

During my week away I really bonded with my cowboy hat’s shadow, so that’s partly where today’s self-portrait came from.

Another part is, I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship to photography, what I might want to take pictures of, & the idea of control & some of my control issues, & so it makes sense I had the urge to take my own picture for a change.

Rainy morning BART ride

After that first glance she seemed to decide that she wasn’t what I was shooting, or if I was, it didn’t matter. She rubbed her nose, settled down, & paid not another jot of attention to me—or to bumps of the train—as I watched her apply makeup with a practiced hand. She drew on lipliner, filled in her lips with one color & then another, & then casually brushed on mascara, all as steadily & precisely as if she could just as well do it on a rollercoaster or a runaway horse.

I wish you could see her perfectly pedicured feet. She wore a very snappy pair of new-looking orange sandals that matched her headband. Meanwhile, I was bundled up in waterproof hiking boots, ski parka, wool hat, scarf & wristwarmers.

Cole Coffee & a video(!)

You can watch this without the sound, if you prefer (I do, slightly):

Well. Something different was bound to happen eventually. You could accuse me of having a short attention span, or lacking focus, or something harsh like that, but I prefer to think of it as having an open mind, paying attention to how things change, looking for openings & possibilities, & learning—always learning.

It was good for a while to not work on this project when it was rainy & gloomy out, fine to notice when I just didn’t feel like asking strangers to take my picture. But today I stuck my camera in a waterproof purse, opened my umbrella, & walked through the rain for a lunch date with a friend, who never showed up because she thought we were meeting at her studio, & I thought we were meeting at the cafe.

By the time I finished my sandwich, I knew we’d miscommunicated somehow & she wasn’t coming. I settled in to being alone with my tea, & thought about asking someone to take my picture, but it was really all wrong for that. Cafes are particular; people in them often wrap themselves in a little cocoon of daydreaming privacy that I tend to respect, having done much of the same myself.

I thought about how this project in one sense is a study of my time alone in public—a very specific slice of my life—& how cafe space is so much about that. Why not enlarge the parameters, just a little, to include how I see the world when out alone, what it looks & feels like to me when I’m not talking to strangers? Instead of having a project on/off switch for sunny extrovert vs. rainy introvert, how about a dimmer that allows for something in between?