Forward Looking Back

I used to scan and photo a lot of things for this blog.  When I first started doing this I had the notion that a "blog" - a word that no longer has meaning - should be image driven.  So, I included these visual elements.  It was fun.  It served the mission at started with, and... it was easier.  Here's an example, Postbituary.

As a result of that, my computer (the one in the cold basement) desktop was littered with folders, poorly marked, sometimes labeled by date but more often called something obscure like "freeelies" or "PLOVIES".  It's just as bad on the "Tooshba", the aging Toshiba I use these days.  I've run amok here as well, littering the screen with folders and random homeless images, sometimes a draft or two.  I pretty sure it drives Marci nuts.

I should have been more organized.  I wasn't.  I know why I wasn't.  You see, sometimes there is a urgency in the creative process.  To stop mid-project and carefully archive something...?  not gonna happen.  Painters leave paint-tubes unlidded, potters leave wet clay uncovered.  I watched so many musicians just drop the sheet music onto the floor after song.  I've seen actors forego a break to continue on, dancers decline a much needed break.  I, personally, write mostly indecipherable notes to myself.  Nobody wants to loose it, the vibe the process the energy the... whatever.

I am so profoundly off track here I am about to get lost...

Earlier, I opened my computer, waited, waited a little longer and, when it finally came up, I was looking around and noticed a folder marked "9.17tempim".  I'd not noticed it before, scrunched up into a corner and also because it was relatively new.  I'd scanned some stuff in September and shoved it all into this file and, well, completely forgot about it.

Whaddya say we take a look?

What fun!  I'd forgotten all about these.

First there is this.  We'd forgotten to take pictures of the boys on their first day of seventh grade.  I rendered this for the obligatory FB post about the first day of school.

Here is an actual picture I took when they got home.

I think I nailed it...

There's this.

Dude is weird, but, that is a snappy scarf.  I'm not really sure what Z was going for here, but this squirrel-bear has a pair of kaleidoscopic glasses - although he's not looking through them, safety concerns I'd guess - and I believe he's thrown a love-bomb there in the foreground.

This still has me baffled, I see what's going on, but, well... why?

 
"Chariot" won, right?

I'd forgotten all about this disturbingly cute family portrait Nick made.

Zack is on my head working a Rubik's cube, Marci is on Nick's head holding the banner and laughing.  Nick and I are below.  Those are frying pans in our, well, not hands... at the end of our upper sticks, and we are flipping a steak back and forth.  It's a T-bone, because it has a 't' on it.  It's really... odd.

Just a few more.

It's a full-sized sheet of paper with a little cat not centered on it.  I hate obscure symbology.  Is this about Z's cat, the emptiness that surrounds it - and us all - or is it just unfinished, which could mean something, too?

This was an abandoned idea for his skin on his school-issued Chromebook.

It's interesting, don'tcha think?

There's just two to go.  But...

You know how I always says there always more.  Here's these images "more" first.  (What a delightfully horrid sentence.)


If you want to get into a fun conversation with an actor, ask them about their "headshots" over the years.  They'll smile wistfully, maybe chuckle out loud at just the memory of some of them.  She might tell you about the big wall of hair in one, or the sultry makeup in another.  He might remember the slightly cocked head of one that went too far and he looked like a cocker spaniel or the one where his hair actually looks like a helmet.

I had a few over the years.  I don't have a single one left.  They were expensive and you only got a few printed and ended up giving them all away and... you never really liked it in the first place.  Actors are funny that way.

I wish I had a faded, crumbling one of mine in particular.  Remember, it was the mid-eighties - I looked very stern and serious and was sporting what I thought was a stern and serious looking mustache.  I was wrong about that.  I pretty much looked like an emaciated, dirty-blonde, Confederate drummer boy from a Civil War textbook, or maybe I looked like Billy the Kid on the run and hungry.  I was supposed to look rough and tumble, Marlboro-mannish.  I ended up more, sort of, cute, in a "bless-his-little-heart" sort of way.

I imagine having a lifetime of headshots, I know many actors and former actors who do.  It would be hard to look back on them, I'd think.  Not just the way they'd age and gray and droop with years, but the memory of the hope and dreaming that they inherently project could sting a bit.  I'd compare my first to my most recent and try to fill in the time in between.  I think I am glad I don't.  I sometimes wish that someone would have been taking pictures when I was in college and thereafter, it'd be lovely to see those faces again, young and eager, but secretly, I'm glad there aren't any... I think.

Nick and Zack worked on the crew for the fall play, something called "Toto, Too", and seemed to enjoy the show.  For the program, they wrote a little bio about themselves and next to it was a grainy black and white photo of each of them.  I didn't know it, but there were also prints of each on boards in the room they held a reception in after each performance.

They got to bring them home.

Nick...

And Zack...

These may look off for some reason, it's because they both don't have their glasses on which they've had for the past several years.

There's something about these a really like.  They look happy.  They look confidant.  They look... well, whole.  They look like they know who they are right now.

They shine.

I hope they never regret looking back at them, and, I hope they will always look forward with this kind of joy.


I've just recently entered my sixth year of blogging and this is my 470th post.  That seems crazy.  For the past year or so I've been trying to not focus as much on the boys.  I've explained why in numerous posts including this one, Transitionings.  I may have been wrong on that.  I asked the boys about using these images, they said they didn't care.  Listen, the truth is only a few dozen folks will see this.  I'd post any of these images on FB and, with the "likes" and such, a few hundred might see them there.  I think I'm fretting over it more than it's worth.


So, that's all I've got today.

Thanks for stopping by, I appreciate it, really I do.