Spark: find a photo with two people in it that has a special meaning to you.
Remember or imagine a conversation that was going on before, during,
or after the photo was taken. Use dialogue.
True Photo Emergency
“It’s already hard,” I said. “I have to find a photo at home with two people in it. I don’t have any photos like that on my walls. I don’t have anything on my walls.”
“Haven’t you put anything up yet?” Delia asked. “You’ve only been there eleven years.”
“Well, there’s that kind of Mayan poster in my bedroom. Scarlet macaws perching on open stonework that sort of looks like hieroglyphs — floating in an endless blue sky. Like a portal into another world. I put in on the east wall, because, you know, Air is the element for the East.”
“That’s not exactly two people,” she said. “It’s not even people.”
“Maybe they were people in a previous life,” I said. “Or maybe they’re going to be people in a few cycles. But doesn’t going backwards in reincarnation mean you are getting punished? Being a macaw in the Yucatan Peninsula doesn’t seem like much of a punishment.”
“About this assignment…” Delia started.
“I know,” I said. “I signed up for this, and I want to do it. I really do. And it’s not an assignment. We don’t have to do it.”
“You have photos from your road trips with that group. Those pictures are special to you.”
She was trying to keep me on track. When I call to complain, but avoid talking about what’s really on my mind, she knows she will hear it all again. And again.
“They’re special to me, but they don’t have a special meaning. Besides, most of those are of things covered with shells… or buttons. Or stumps painted to look like animals from southern mystical history…
“You know, a photo that does have special meaning to me is that Diane Arbus one of the twins. Where they have identical headbands and dresses and facial features, but you can see right off that one is a tad more extroverted, while the other somehow draws back into herself.”
“Or the other way around,” said Delia, exasperated. “But do you really think something out of a book is the point of the exercise?”
“Probably not.” I agreed. “I think I’m supposed to get one of those family photos off the mantel, the one of me and my grandmother, or my mother and her sister as young children during the Great Depression… without a penny, yet without a care.”
“Now you’re being obstinate. Is there anything on your walls?” I could tell she only had about two “re-directs” left before she would declare the conversation a dead end and hang up.
“I have more leaning against my walls than on them,” I said.
“Try again,” she said. “Just try again, or you’ll be exactly where you were when you called me.”
“Well, there’s that photo of the new moon, the barely-crescent moon about to set over West Hill. The sunset is dark and it’s colored like a big rainbow.”
“I do like that photo,” she said. “But there are no people in it.”
“There’s probably lots of people on West Hill, they’re just really tiny… The photographer said she was on her way to pick her husband up at the bus station, but when she turned onto Hanshaw Road, she saw this magnificent shot. She had to go home for her camera. She called her husband to say she’d be a little late, there was a photo that needed to be taken right then. It couldn’t wait. It was a True Photo Emergency.”
“You know what,” said Delia. “Here’s your True Photo Emergency… you want to impress the class and please Ellen.”
“Well, yeah. Of course. I always wanted to be popular, like a cheerleader.”
“We know that. How about this… why don’t you just do something you like instead of trying to please everybody else?”
“Now it sounds like you’re talking about my mother,” I complained. “But I know what you’re saying.”
So one truth is: Although I have leaned a lot against my walls, I have hung very little on them.
Another truth is: I couldn’t find any personal snapshots, which is distressing in its own way.
And then there is that hard truth: I still want to be a cheerleader and have people throwing flowers at me.
In the end, however hard as it might be, I really don’t want to wind up exactly where I was when I started. So here it is, and here I am. Whether it impresses the class and pleases Ellen. Or not.
cayugaview 