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Today is the first day of creativity boot camp, and the assignment is ivory. One of my primary — and most difficult — tasks will be to be kind to myself and just follow what happens without being mean and critical. That’s hard for most people, I think, and if you have a cruel and hateful inner voice, as I do, it’s just shy of impossible. But I am going to try – to step out and be daring, and just follow myself without offering explanation and apology.
high school graduation, 1977
Ivory is pale skin, skin that is lit from the inside, skin that is soft and beautiful. I have ivory skin; I always have.
me and my camera
Ivory skin is one ideal, peaches and cream, pale and beautiful. There are other ideals, too – tan and bronze and cafe au lait and olive and honey. But those beautiful colors do not make ivory their opposite, ugly – ivory is another beautiful way of being in this world.
Ivory is cream.
Ivory is precious.
I am ivory.
My hands are ivory. My hands are MY hands, they resemble the hands of my father, and my grandmother, but these are my hands.
my hands
Throughout my life, other people have commented on my skin – my lovely complexion – and I insisted on belittling it. I can’t tan, I’m pale and ugly, your skin is honey but mine is putty. But I was wrong, every time. I am beautiful ivory.
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
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Hi. My name is Lori and I am a photographer. I sell photographs on a stock photo site – fotolia. This is a link to the gallery of my photographs.
I haven’t uploaded any new photos in a couple of years; the ones that are in my current gallery were taken before I knew very much about taking pictures. I’d delete some of them now. There’s nothing spectacular about them, but what’s so confusing to me is that 91 people have paid for this image:
It’s a fine picture of red leaves, but (1) photos of red leaves are a dime a dozen and extremely easy to find, (2) for free. I don’t know why 91 people paid for this.
I use stockphoto sites when I’m trying to find images to use on jackets of the books I am publishing, so maybe it’s just people like me, people doing their work and needing a quick and simple resource.
Anyway, I guess this makes me a photographer. After my excessive rumination below, I guess this nagging issue is taken care of. 
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When do you shift from saying “I do X” to “I am a X“ From, for example, I knit, to I am a knitter. I design, I am a designer. I like to write, I am a writer. There is an important psychological shift that has pretty fascinating implications for health-related concerns – I have diabetes –> I am a diabetic.
This morning I was reading through a ravelry forum about photography. One woman said something like “I am a photographer blah blah” and she gave a link to her work. I really love photography; I have favorite photographers, books about the philosophy of photography and how-to books; I have a folder of photos of favorite photographs. And I enjoy taking photographs. So I clicked the link to see her work and it was really not good at all. Very poor lighting, trite, poor quality of the images themselves, etc. And she is a
me and my camera
photographer. My photographs aren’t anything special, but they are considerably better than hers.
So my point is not to boast about my photographs, because I’m not doing that, but rather to think about the identity issue. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to make those kinds of claims – it’s not as if it matters! I could walk around saying “I’m a writer,” “I’m a photographer,” “I’m a baker,” etc., and it would not make one bit of difference to the world or to anyone. But I can’t do it. I like to write, I like to take pictures, I like to make bread. I see other people making the claim, and I’m always in a bit of awe at their self-confidence.
I can imagine possible reasons for my hesitation: it feels like bragging; it feels like I’m saying “I am a professional X” when I’m not, and if anyone looked at 
my ‘work’ that’s exactly what they’d think, that I’m full of myself, or lying in some way. I think another aspect relates to my thoughts about writing and photography; books have always been extremely important to me, and I hold writers in very high esteem. They have a kind of exalted place in the world, to my mind. Photographers less so, but good photographers can transform people, understandings, even policy. To say “I am a writer” just feels impossible. Salman Rushdie is a writer. Cormac McCarthy is a writer. Victor Hugo is a writer. Jose Saramago is a writer. I am not Rushdie, or any of those.
I also think that saying “I am a” invites people to ask if they’ve seen/read your work. It implies public or professional acceptance and reward. At a party: “I’m a writer.” “Really, have I read anything of yours?” “No, I just like to write.” Clunk.
But that’s not what people mean when they casually claim these identities (I think). The ravelry woman is a photographer because she takes pictures. Maybe I just need to get over myself and quit over-thinking everything. I do have a tendency to do that. In psychology, there is a construct called “need for cognition,” the meaning of which is pretty obvious. People vary along a continuum in their need for cognition, and I’m way way way at the top of the scale. 99th percentile, I’d guess.
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If you already watch TED Talks, you may have seen this, or you’ll at least be more willing to watch. If you don’t know about TED Talks, I hope you watch this one.
Ryan Lobo is a photographer who practices what he calls compassionate storytelling. I was listening to it on my iPod on the train home and I was so moved and choked up I cried, right in the crowd. And I didn’t even get to see the photos! For now I’m off to watch it too. It’s just 11 minutes long. I think it might be the best 11 minutes of your day.
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Finally, I finished the Hedera socks I’ve been knitting all month, just in time for the daughter to arrive home for spring break:
Hedera, in KP Felici, colorway cochineal
a pair of socks for a cold dorm room floor
The snow has been really amazing here in Manhattan – yesterday we got just shy of 21″ of snow in Central Park! We’re knocking on the top 10 list of biggest snowfalls since 1869 or something like that. Here are some newer shots from my neighborhood…..
CLICK to continue reading socks and snow... Continue reading »
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I know, talking about the snow is getting SO OLD. Posting pictures of the snow, the same. But I haven’t done so yet this year, and even though I’ve been living in the north for 7 years now, snow is still an exciting thing for a Texan – especially this much snow.
As much as I complain about the soul suck of my job, one good thing about it is that for the most part, it’s possible for me to work from home if I need or want to. And today I wanted to, because of the silly pronouncement of the “snowricane” or “snowrnado” (depending on which weather site you pick). Reports of Gusting! Winds! UP TO 75 miles per hour! Days and days of power outages expected! Watch out! And also: back alert weather. The snow is heavy, and you might hurt your back so watch out.
We haven’t had the winds – at least here in Manhattan – but it has been snowing without stopping all day long. It started snowing before 7am and there hasn’t been a moment’s pause. Some hours the flakes are huge, like monarch butterflies (thanks to my husband for that one), and other times they’re normal sizes. The trees are hanging with heavy snow on the branches – all the way out to the tips, hanging heavy. The snow is so wet, it falls in fists off the ends of the branches. It’s really pretty. I sit at a desk right by the window and work work work, pausing to glance out the window at the beautiful view. Want to see?
practically my back yard
pretty lampposts
Riverside Drive - so empty!
the end of my street
I know they look like black and white photos, but they’re not. It’s just a black and white world right now. Very very pretty – especially since I get to just watch it out my window.
Tonight I hope to get some knitting done, and I have a LOT to get done this weekend: making the pillows using my new fabric, finalizing a syllabus, cutting out that wedding dress I still haven’t cut out, and encouraging my husband to paint. That one might be the trickiest. You know how that goes, right?
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