Relief and a Debut

It turns out that my friend Sally wasn't really angry that her images and stories had appeared on the blog. It would have been perfectly  normal had she been, but our communication was the victim of the lack of humor that e-mail has. She was being ironic.

I'm not that sorry that I misunderstood, because it gave me pause to think. I know that she's a far more private person than I am and what right did I have to use her photographs? I got into trouble with someone else, 100 years ago, because I included her portrait in my first exhibition and she was furious. It's a big question. And brings up issues about my writing this summer. But let's let all that go because..............

I'm enormously glad, enormously, that Sally isn't mad!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Recently I lost a friend of thirty years because of poor communication. I would never have given up her friendship, even if I've been quite uncommunicative for the last five years, but she got mad for a different reason than that. I wish I'd been dumped for how tired I have been of myself and how unwilling to talk much except in writing.

Anyway, now I can reconstruct the gorgeous story of Sally buying a Marimekko dress with her baby sitting money. And the dress she wore to her college interviews. I was grieving for those stories because I thought she might not have occasion to tell them again and they seemed to precious. I was whirring away like myself-the-tape-recorder, in my only form of rapture, while I was listening. 

So, this is the debut of her photographs from the trip. I absolutely love the one of me in the Bagel Bin and should probably add it to that series. (Wouldn't you love to have that face staring at you while she's photographing?) And I love the one of me in the downstairs apartment, looking like I lost my lunch money as I usually look if I don't force myself to smile or look, somehow, engaged. And I love the one of Krissy, Polyester and me. (I look more together and a bit more like the self I once was in this photo, so it's a very graceful image, a kind photograph.) And ditto for K&C on the porch and the one in the Bagel Bin.  Sally's a fine photographer. And I couldn't be  more pleased that she'll allow me to have her photographs on the blog. She will have to identify herself................I hope.

She hasn't seemed to like blogging, so I was surprised that she even looked at mine. So this is, as she says, an introduction to this odd new way of communicating. But, I hope she doesn't stoop to facebook. That's only good as a replacement for e-mail.............