I woke up feeling like it's The Holidays, in a nice way.
Sitting at my desk at 6:30 this morning, looking out my bedroom window, I see a pink dawn sky. There's snow on the ground, just enough to brighten the dark days.
I'll be going to the grocery store later, for sweet potatoes, dried apricots, pecans, lemons, and brown sugar, for the dish I'm making for Thanksgiving, in two days.
But first, the dentist, to replace a filling that fell out. I've neglected that side of life (dental & medical check ups, etc.) since Covid. Also, banking...
I. Slightly Boring, Slightly Scary Things to Attend To
The other day, my sister asked me if I get lonely.
Not emotionally lonely, so much, I said, as sometimes weary of having to make Every Single Decision alone.
(Which, I always say, is also the NICE thing about being alone:
you get to make every single decision. It's not like everyone who has a partner has a partner who is helpful in the ways they need, either, I've noticed. )
(I'm existentially lonely sometimes, but that comes with being human.)
The decisions I'd most like help with are the slightly boring, slightly scary ones––mostly financial and medical.
(I am lucky they've been only "slightly" troublesome, so far in my life. But when things are BIGly troublesome--"my laptop has died!"––I do kick into gear and take care of them. Usually. Eventually.)
I saw (on Instagram) a graphic showing signs of ADHD.
It included something like, "You ignore tasks to do creative work instead".
What?
Is that a symptom of a disorder? I thought it was a good thing!
I am disordered, for sure:
I was going to take care of financial things on my day off yesterday, and instead spent all afternoon photographing a toy inside a persimmon...
Of course there are serious mental disorders out there, and of course it's good we should have information about them, and help for them.
I remember when it was otherwise, and I would not return!
But personally, I've gotten into this habit of diagnosing everyone I know--and myself. It's the mood of the age.
I'm trying to STOP doing that.
I think of my Auntie Vi, who was never up on psychological terms.
She'd just describe her friends as individuals with unique qualities--sometimes annoying.
Of one friend, she'd say, "So-and-so never listens, so when we go out to lunch, I just listen to her."
What that friend did for Vi, in the end, was stay with Vi for her last few days on Earth, tending to all sorts of physical needs. At this point, conversation didn't matter.
Anyway, I have a backlog of relatively minor boring/frightening (to me) things to attend to. You know? Like, looking into paying my electric and gas bills online. Or, do I want to keep paying them on paper? I kind of like that--it makes me aware of what I'm spending. But, does that matter?
I don't know.
What do you think?
I'm taking a couple days off over Thanksgiving--the store is only closed Thursday. If I don't spend the days all PLAYING WITH TOYS, I may get to some of these things.
I was going to get a big Xmas tree this weekend, but now the time has arrived, I don't think I will. They're too expensive, and too big for my space, really, now I've got bookshelves and chairs... I think I'd find a tree more of an annoyance, and not worth the money.
I'm failing to live on $50/week. The dentist today will use up my entire monthly allowance.
Also, when the temps dropped below freezing last week, I gave in and bought a down coat that comes to my knees. New! Wonderful! But at $140 (on sale, at REI), there's three week's allowance.
My bike has a flat, so there's that to pay for. (If I learn how to change it myself, it'll be cheaper.) Etc., etc.
Life on the Cheap is on my list of Things to Make Decisions About.
Blah, blah, blah.
II. Life in Motion
I'd rather think more about the whats and hows of toy representation.
For Manet Week last week, an Instagrammer DM'd me that she was thinking to recreate Manet's Olympia (Wikipedia article)--his famous painting of a naked white woman being served by a Black woman.
My, oh my.
I DM'd her back, suggesting that painting is "racially problematic", did she really want to get into that? (There's more about that in the Wikipedia link above.)
She wrote back an art historical perspective, justifying Manet,
and I wrote back saying, "But the viewer won't know that. (Of course, do what you want, I'm not policing you, just bringing it up.)"
She did picnic on the grass instead, and wrote an explanation about how Manet presented women as real people...
Okay, but who reads the text on Instagram?
And should they have to, to understand your picture?
I wrote a little text to go with the Persimmon pictures, but they should stand alone. I hope. Does the written explanation really explain them, anyway: "A toy inspired by Bosch hides inside a persimmon"?
My philosophy of toy photography was shaped by the couple seconds that conclude the movie Serenity (2005, following up Joss Whedon's sci-fi series Firefly):
The spaceship, Serenity, has come through a storm, but as it sails safely away, a metal plate tears off and comes flying at us. The show is about navigating the chaos of life and politics, so that's a great way to show There Is No Safe Haven.
What influenced me, however, is that the plate is a tiny bit out of focus as it moves. It feels real, but of course it's not. It's computer generated: they had to CHOOSE to make it out of focus.
It's hard to get a sense of live action with toys, because they aren't moving on their own (not when we're looking!). I've mentioned how kids playing in the Toy Section like
to line toys up. I like to, too. When toys are lined up in photos,
however, they look frozen, like family portraits taken in a studio.
I tried to make the persimmon photos look as if they were taken as the dolls moved, not as if they were posing for an instructional manual: a little bit off-center, a little bit out of focus in spots. Not so you'd notice, but enough, hopefully, so they feel less stiff.
I don't know if I succeeded, but that's what I'm going for in the future.
The other extreme in toy photography is professional photographers who make their action shots look as slick as movie CGI. Too slick, for my taste.
I like to sense the human hand behind it all.
OK, off to the dentist now...
Happy week, everybody!
