on having my photo taken

I have a tremendous fear of standing in front of a camera. It's the last holdover of a time in my life in which the very notion of what-I-looked-like seemed so big and so beyond my control that I avoided cameras and mirrors and barely got out of bed in the morning. Now the fear has changed. It's not nearly so big. It's just that small pinch I get when I look at a photograph and think well-that's-not-right-I-can't-possibly-look-like-that. It's so curious to me that we are the only people who never really know what we look like. We only ever see our image in reverse--reflected back to us. How fascinating and totally odd.

On the Saturday that I was mean to be in Paris, but was not (which on a tangential note, while reading The Fault in Our Stars this second go round there's a line where a character says, "It took me a sleeve of Girl Scout Thin Mints and forty minutes to get over that boy" which is so deliciously good and so exactly how I feel about the man behind my ill-fated-adventure) a friend from college called me up and said Let me take your photo--I'll come to Brooklyn and I said yes because you get over your fears by facing them.

Lydia was a dancer who followed her love to New Zealand where she first picked up a camera. It was so fun to meet after not having seen each other in a few years--after both having trudged through our own muck and come out the other side, better than we were before.

I look at the images and I see my gummy smile and too-small-teeth. I see my forehead wrinkles and the way my eyes sometimes disappear and the strange line separating my under-eye-bags from my nose. I see all the things that I very often don't like...but all together they aren't so bad, you know? All together I can look now and think, Well, there's a girl who made it through--who is imperfect, but happy and full of experiences and stories and memories that belong just to her.

I'm always going to want the pictures that convey movement and history and language--images that embrace imperfections and flaws and the marrow of a life well-lived,  even, and especially, if that means they're a little messy.

lucky girl.

Walking home from the grocery store tonight, a light dusting of snow coming down, I felt so tremendously lucky. New York has had so much snow this year--at least more than in recent years. And everyone is so very tired of it. But, can I let you in on a little secret? I'm not. I recognize that I don't have to shovel anything or drive anywhere, so in that sense I'm in the lucky position that I get to love it--no strings attached. But it's more than that. There's something about snow and how it warms the air and makes everything feel clean, if only for a moment. It is a pause. A deep inhale. So while the world was inhaling tonight as I walked home, I couldn't help but think just how lucky I am. Headed to an apartment I love. Where I would put flowers in water and place a pizza in the oven and pipe music through the small space with no one to tell me to turn it down.

It's the small things. Always, the small things.

It's having Saturday and Sunday off, always. It's visiting places I know so well and seeing them through new eyes. It's a pair of heels--nice heels--and how they make me feel. It's revisiting an old book. It's the event that is coffee, day after day, morning after morning. It's making new friends and visiting with old.

It's this moment in time. And knowing it won't last forever. But giving thanks that I get it for as long as I do.

words to live by | charles frazier

 

on finding my mojo (you got any ideas for me?).

I went and saw one of my most trusted advisors today...which is to say, I got my haircut.

I talked Simon’s ear off for about an hour and he listened and nodded and snipped away at all of the dead ends. And in the end he looked right at me and said:

You gotta get your mojo back.

Actions don’t matter nearly so much as your thoughts. Don’t worry about what you think you have to do; your only responsibility is to get right up here, he said, tapping his head.

Ah mojo….

Elusive, hard to define, occasionally impossible to wrangle… mojo.

I lost it sometime round the middle of this last month.

Here’s the thing about getting left at the airport, it makes for a damn fine story (and don’t you worry, I'll be using it at cocktail parties for years). But it doesn’t sting nearly so much as lying in bed next to someone who doesn’t seem terribly keen on your being there. Nor does it hurt as much as spending four months dating a man who kisses you only a little, and only upon occasion--a man who never looks at you like you're much of anything--the dissonance of  your experience with him leaving you just a bit, ever so lonely.

Because those things will leave a girl feeling like she needs to be hung up on the clothesline and left to dry out a bit.

(And I'd like to say, for the sake of posterity: I AM NOT HEARTBROKEN. Just in case that's what's read between my words, let me state for the record, about this man I am not heartbroken. It's not about the guy. I had a good cry the second time he broke up with me (end of October) and then MOVED. ON. It's about me. It's about feeling like a fool. It's about my confidence and self-worth and all that good stuff. It's about how all that good stuff is flagging, but not altogether lost).

So here I am, the start of February, searching for my mojo.

Which of course means I’ve been looking for the perfect shade of lipstick to no avail (I can, however, confidently advise on which Sephoras in New York City have the very best lighting).

More than the lipstick, I’ve been writing. And drinking jalepeno infused margaritas. And listening to really, really fine music. I bought some new perfume and have even gotten to the gym a few times (people tell me there’s something to that endorphin hoeey, but I go for heart health). I've read interesting articles and curious books and I’ve even gotten my hair cut.

I’ve done all the things I know to do…and yet…no mojo.

Not yet.

I know that sometimes it’s just a matter of time—that one can do all the right things and yet…and yet and yet.

But this notion of mojo, well, it’s gotten me thinking: What do other people do when they can’t find theirs?

So do tell, won’t you? Cause I’d like to try some new things on for size.

image and quote: Before Sunset (2004)

things to read | Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell

Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell...  

...by Marty McConnell

full version here