shame and fortune

"...my mother once traumatized me at age 5 by chopping off ALL MY HAIR from the ears down. My id has never been the same again. (She also once did this secretly to my sister by sneaking up to her from behind, gently stroking her locks, and then SNIP!)"
—the chicktionary


—victo ngai

the two images really speak to me. let's just say i've been on the receiving end of a cut or two.

introduction

i stayed after work today to scan my collected archive of family negatives. it's really amazing to see pictures of things you've lived but don't remember and have never seen before. the digital images are just placeholders until i decide which ones i want to print from film, and how. in the meantime, i think i may periodically post images from the archive with an accompanying story. you know, from my past to yours.


this is my mummy and me in boulder, colorado, where most of these negatives take place. my parents always liked hanging out in grassy fields and taking pictures, something i always took for granted but now realize is not universal. we used to share one of those clapboard houses with someone; i think it was the blue one. i will always describe my mother as beautiful in these pictures. she's very demure and ladylike. even now, she seems ages away even though photographically she's no more than a few years older than me currently. as for me, i began my love affair with multicolored dresses early. also a hint of things come, i loved the camera. i used to smile a lot before my teeth grew in and got crooked in adolescence, and i got self conscious.

first 5 minutes home

dad: yeah, so can you give your brother a hand with his college essays? his counselor wrote him the worst recommendation. your mom read it and got so mad. she said this is how the counselor ruined your life!

they're still bitter that i only got into cornell.

peanut butter to your jelly

i was around 5 or 6 and reading judy blume's entire oeuvre for children when somewhere in the fudge series (maybe?), i learned the concept of 'the bite'. 'the bite' was illustrated with butter, but also applies to jam, peanut butter, nutella, and/or honey. 'the bite' is the philosophically perfect part of a sandwich, and it occurs when you slather a piece of bread with sugary goodness, fold it over, and take your first bite right smack dab from the center of that fold where the topping gathers up and its gooeyness is enclosed by soft crustless bread. it is the absolute yum.

also, today at work i convinced a teenage girl that rihanna, and no one on this earth, can "deserve" a beating from chris brown. activism, bitches!