One of the things I learned in photography was to see things in a new way--to notice the unnoticed. But seeing requires looking, which is something I don’t often take the time to do. I’m not alone in this, I don’t think. Yet there are people who make it a practice to look, to smell, and to enjoy.
Take a college friend of mine who worked with me in a nearly window-less office. One day she swept through the door ten minutes later than usual. “I stopped to smell the roses,” she gasped as she threw down her bags. The fluorescent light overhead cast a ghoulish tint on her pink cheeks. She had literally stopped to sniff the sweet fragrance of summer on her way to the dungeon, before she would spend four hours under the watchful, harsh light created by humans. I retreated to my small office, turned off the lights, then yanked the window blinds open. They screeched up the glass and hung at the top, squenched together like a smashed accordian. It was afternoon, and the sun was hidden behind our building. All that came through my window were the leftovers. Consequently, the room was dim, illuminated only by the sunlight reflected from the tall white library across from my office. But it was enough. I stared at my hands, my arms, my legs. The clear light wrapped around them, molding them. It produced deep shadows and highlights on my skin. I was three dimensional. I felt illuminated, luminous—alive. I bathed in the quiet natural light until my employer came in and carelessly flicked on the fluorescents again. “Why’s it so dark in here?” she asked. I could hardly tell her that I had been figuratively skinny dipping in the afternoon rays. I looked at my hand, two dimensional once again, like a cardboard cutout of a human. In the flat and lifeless light powered by wires and cords and switches I answered, “Just stopping to see.”
love this reminder!
Posted by: shelby | May 19, 2009 at 11:21 AM
What a BEAUTIFUL PICTURE!!! HEY THANK YOU sooooo much!!! I got your letter in the mail and it was soooo NICE! They said 3-6 weeks and I will know if I passed...still waiting:( BUT Thank you for your sweet letter LOVE YOU!!
Posted by: Kayla Rawle | May 04, 2009 at 07:17 PM