to hope to be extraordinary
Some weeks are just weeks. They fall into that category of ordinary, which is the same as not extraordinary, except they are indeed extraordinary in the fact of our mere mortal existence. This was one of those weeks, just a week, a work list so mundane it need not be archived with words. The highlight of the evenings was Ken and our conversations, too late past bedtime, I love him so.
I once read some passages from my great grandmother’s bound journals, kept at a time when she still lived at home. Day after day she wrote about the mundanity of it all: laundry, grocery shopping, shoveling snow. Somewhere in there, buried behind pages of curly, hard-to-read handwriting, surely there must be some profound observation or meaningful thought, something bigger to life than chores? She was no Iowan Dorothy Parker.
Tomorrow I am headed into the City to pick up a canvas print of that photo I took of Ken and the boys. It’s the first photo of mine that has ever been printed on canvas (or bigger than 5x7, really). It’s 24x36 or some such and will have a wall to itself. This all pleases me, makes me proud.
Ken got me the Vivian Maier book for Jesus was Born Day and I love it. There are photos in there that give me the chills. There are moments that the photos make me think I’ve never taken a good photograph in my life. There are many pages where the work is technically inspiring and eye-opening.
There’s something about the story of Vivian Maier that haunts. That she lived her life collecting these images, honing her skills, diving so deep into this singular passion and yet no one really knew. That we even know of her work is serendipity. But there are something like 7 billion +/- such stories, right? Everyone living their lives, the depths of their untold stories, the boldness of their actions, fleeting aromatic memories, mental slideshows come and gone, so many feelings and never enough time to understand or share them all. Ah, the human condition is a strange one. And so we love and write and make art, to be in the moment, to share, and to hope to be extraordinary. Perhaps.
But for now, enough philosophyishness, I have clean sheets and tired eyes. Goodnight moon.
