I find myself surrounded by women planning their weddings; women incessantly leafing through wedding industry magazines and discussing such details as the color of the flowers (satin orange, vanilla cream, lilac dream), the color of their dresses (white, champagne, ivory), the date (two years from now, but the date is already set), their budget (in the tens of thousands (and these are not wealthy women by any means)).
This is not going to be a rant by an unmarried woman jealous of their fairytale parties and flurry of meticulous planning. This is going to be a rhetorical, inquisitive, rechauffe by a jaded lady with limited experience in these desires and the finite quest to fulfill them. These ladies make me worried that I am not enough concerned about my conjugal future, or at least its initiation ceremony, and so, I am trying to make amends to my disinterest.
About a year ago I was looking for photo assisting jobs with Philly's somewhat quantitatively lacking, hiring photographers. I came upon a website where a wedding photographer wrote to his excitable clientele the following, indirectly quoted, entreaty: Your wedding day is going to be the best and most memorable of your marriage. It won't be as good from hence forth, so hire the best and you can at least remember the good times by leafing through your wedding photo album. (I'm not rewording in order to exaggerate, rather, because I can't find the website.)
Was the gentleman's depressing sales pitch telling it how it is? Is the wedding day the lead zeppelin of a convivial future, gleaming so pretty in the sky for that one moment only to fall to the dull ground? Does it set a tone? They're not exactly maidens dressed in their ivory gowns, dancing pretty before succumbing to the dirty fate of womanhood, the couples meeting each other for the first time and having their inaugural quivering in bed at the end of the festivities. Chances are, they already live together, know each others' families, how to make each other cum fast and slow, and how they like their pants folded. Chances are, they'll fight planning it. What is the big deal?
If I get married one day, I'll probably have a party. It will be in someone's backyard and I'll likely have more kegs than flower arrangements. If friends and parents shower us with money on that fine day, we will probably take it and fly far, to not return for some time. It seems silly, to me, to spend so much on a party to then not be able to afford an extra two days on the honeymoon, making it a full week (a week!), like someone at my work just did. This, however, is not the point.
The point is, weddings are rampant. Lasting marriages, not so much. In putting all of one's hopes, dreams, and efforts into a ceremony, are they also investing in their relationship? Who is the showiness and formality for? What is it that they really get out of it? I'm also curious, what's the morning after the party like? Some of these productions seem too unreal to even have a morning [ever] after.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
West Virginia - Dolly Sods
Dolly [after the German Dahle family, who farmed the land and used it for their sheep to graze upon] Sod [1. a section cut or torn from the surface of grassland, containing the matted roots of grass. 2. the surface of the ground, esp. when covered with grass; turf; sward. 3. sodomite; homosexual. 4. chap; fellow; guy. 5. child; kid; brat. 6. to damn: Sod the bloody bastard! ]
The sun sat upon the red leaves of the huckleberries in a rather unspectacular manner, except when it hit them at the right angle, when it shone through them as if they were thin, veinous membranes, alighting them in a lambent red glow that spread over entire fields. One couple was unimpressed; they drove up to the lookout, remarked that 'there wasn't even anything to take a picture of,' and drove back down in their miserable car. Well, sod them! There was plenty to take a picture of and plenty more to revel in without pictures. There was a ubiquitous, lithe silence, crisp mornings in a soggy tent, raging camp fires that in shyly bewildering winds threatened to besiege whole, blond fields, forest floors covered in key lime colored ferns, and fields, fields littered with trees and covered by wind-swept grasses, all poised in an undomineering quietude...
The sun sat upon the red leaves of the huckleberries in a rather unspectacular manner, except when it hit them at the right angle, when it shone through them as if they were thin, veinous membranes, alighting them in a lambent red glow that spread over entire fields. One couple was unimpressed; they drove up to the lookout, remarked that 'there wasn't even anything to take a picture of,' and drove back down in their miserable car. Well, sod them! There was plenty to take a picture of and plenty more to revel in without pictures. There was a ubiquitous, lithe silence, crisp mornings in a soggy tent, raging camp fires that in shyly bewildering winds threatened to besiege whole, blond fields, forest floors covered in key lime colored ferns, and fields, fields littered with trees and covered by wind-swept grasses, all poised in an undomineering quietude...
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Persistent Mediocrity
Hallelujah, I'm employed. Oh yes, I've taken the job that I refused to take exactly one year ago, citing something about freelancing glory and not making plaintive allowances to my bills, my interests or my way.
I work for a certain national company that takes school photos. I can't say which because, in fact, it explicitly says in one of my many color coded handbooks that I cannot blog about them, unless I am prepared to field their wrath.
My job is this: Wake up before sunrise, dress and tuck in my emblazoned polo shirt, take out my lip ring, leave before the coffee shop opens, drive drive drive, arrive in a nice school that makes my alma mater, Masterman, look like a litter box of undesirables, set up my equipment along dotted lines and color-coded, idiot proof guidelines, take photos of kids, jump around so they smile, make sarcastic remarks at eighth graders so they don't punch me with their pimply faces, pack up, make nice with the hovering administration, drive back a) home, where I have to spend two hours recovering from hating my life or b) to the office, where my paper work is checked by senior photographers, a process that makes me hate my life a little more.
Training for this job took two weeks; two entire weeks of assembling and disassembling color-coded, marked and practically Archimidean, self-constructing sets and practicing posing. Lean in for me, yes, just like that, now sit up tall, ok, turn this way just a tad, great, now tilt your stupid head just a nibble and give me a big toothy smile. Great, your ma is sure gonna like that one, you cute, little bastard.
At the end of training there was a luncheon. The main manager, G-, was to come sermonize to us about our bright new futures. "You'll recognize her when she comes in," everyone had said. G- walked into the firehouse wearing high heels and an elegant suit jacket.
After she thoroughly welcomed us to the company, she lectured us a rechauffe, in a restrained manager voice, in passive aggressive rigidity. This season’s motto is Zero Tolerance for Negativity in this Zone, she said. Along with the help of enlisted lower managers and long-time photographers, she talked to a fire hall full of underpaid employees in unbeauteous polo shirts about making it, introducing yet another motto in her speech, Success Is What you Make It . Interestingly, she also mentioned an alternate, darker mantra, not officially written on the cake as the others, We’re All In This Together.
There seemed to be genuine enthusiasm among the more established employees, those beckoned to the front of the room to receive their 5, 10, 15 year rings, trophies like anchors, and the others in their in between years, killicked but not berthed, sitting attentively at their tables. They were psyched about the catered meatballs, the chance to sit at large round tables instead of behind small, cubicle-enclosed desks, the promise of more sales and more yearbooks and a fall photographing season that would no doubt inaugurate that bright, new future G- was preaching, giving an early morning birth to a photogenic hereafter.
I sat at a table with some of the other new photographers, a small conglomeration of the more disgruntled and jaded hatchlings. It was comforting to know that my horror wasn’t singular, my shock at the blatant power play and demeaning slogans not my own snobbery and a lucky lack of previous experience in real, corporate America.
G- had clearly gone through intricate managerial training, where she took extensive notes on the fine art of making people feel appreciated and irreplaceable. She remembered everyone’s names after our introductions, for example, and used them unabashedly. I had stood up and said, “My name is Irina, and I am a new photographer.” “An appreciated photographer,” she corrected. Then, she proceeded to ask questions, a sort of pop quiz review of the slogans and goals and technicalities of the company and the job entailed. She called on people to answer, using their names, and when they answered correctly she pointed her manicured nail in their direction and a man with a stack of crisp bills rushed over to the recognized employee and handed them a $5 bill. There were $10 dollar questions too, after which the room swelled with a covetous excitement and hands shot up faster to answer the next question. She would wait, composed, until the masses settled down and then pop a $15 question.
My table slowly emptied out. I voluntarily stayed, taking notes on this strange scene that I had only previously seen in satirical sketches.
I wonder why they stay. When I talk to people separately now, they readily admit the shortcomings of this company/job (although still with a fair amount less of disdain and, let’s face it, haughtiness than yours truly). Is it the convenience? The company’s willingness to tolerate everyone as long as they tolerate the company? A sense of security? Or is it all ok – am I overreacting to a reality that I simply have not been exposed to before, gaping ignorantly at a norm that I just haven’t had? I grow vicariously weary at the thought of that. Not so weary, I hope, that I stay.
I work for a certain national company that takes school photos. I can't say which because, in fact, it explicitly says in one of my many color coded handbooks that I cannot blog about them, unless I am prepared to field their wrath.
My job is this: Wake up before sunrise, dress and tuck in my emblazoned polo shirt, take out my lip ring, leave before the coffee shop opens, drive drive drive, arrive in a nice school that makes my alma mater, Masterman, look like a litter box of undesirables, set up my equipment along dotted lines and color-coded, idiot proof guidelines, take photos of kids, jump around so they smile, make sarcastic remarks at eighth graders so they don't punch me with their pimply faces, pack up, make nice with the hovering administration, drive back a) home, where I have to spend two hours recovering from hating my life or b) to the office, where my paper work is checked by senior photographers, a process that makes me hate my life a little more.
Training for this job took two weeks; two entire weeks of assembling and disassembling color-coded, marked and practically Archimidean, self-constructing sets and practicing posing. Lean in for me, yes, just like that, now sit up tall, ok, turn this way just a tad, great, now tilt your stupid head just a nibble and give me a big toothy smile. Great, your ma is sure gonna like that one, you cute, little bastard.
At the end of training there was a luncheon. The main manager, G-, was to come sermonize to us about our bright new futures. "You'll recognize her when she comes in," everyone had said. G- walked into the firehouse wearing high heels and an elegant suit jacket.
After she thoroughly welcomed us to the company, she lectured us a rechauffe, in a restrained manager voice, in passive aggressive rigidity. This season’s motto is Zero Tolerance for Negativity in this Zone, she said. Along with the help of enlisted lower managers and long-time photographers, she talked to a fire hall full of underpaid employees in unbeauteous polo shirts about making it, introducing yet another motto in her speech, Success Is What you Make It . Interestingly, she also mentioned an alternate, darker mantra, not officially written on the cake as the others, We’re All In This Together.
There seemed to be genuine enthusiasm among the more established employees, those beckoned to the front of the room to receive their 5, 10, 15 year rings, trophies like anchors, and the others in their in between years, killicked but not berthed, sitting attentively at their tables. They were psyched about the catered meatballs, the chance to sit at large round tables instead of behind small, cubicle-enclosed desks, the promise of more sales and more yearbooks and a fall photographing season that would no doubt inaugurate that bright, new future G- was preaching, giving an early morning birth to a photogenic hereafter.
I sat at a table with some of the other new photographers, a small conglomeration of the more disgruntled and jaded hatchlings. It was comforting to know that my horror wasn’t singular, my shock at the blatant power play and demeaning slogans not my own snobbery and a lucky lack of previous experience in real, corporate America.
G- had clearly gone through intricate managerial training, where she took extensive notes on the fine art of making people feel appreciated and irreplaceable. She remembered everyone’s names after our introductions, for example, and used them unabashedly. I had stood up and said, “My name is Irina, and I am a new photographer.” “An appreciated photographer,” she corrected. Then, she proceeded to ask questions, a sort of pop quiz review of the slogans and goals and technicalities of the company and the job entailed. She called on people to answer, using their names, and when they answered correctly she pointed her manicured nail in their direction and a man with a stack of crisp bills rushed over to the recognized employee and handed them a $5 bill. There were $10 dollar questions too, after which the room swelled with a covetous excitement and hands shot up faster to answer the next question. She would wait, composed, until the masses settled down and then pop a $15 question.
My table slowly emptied out. I voluntarily stayed, taking notes on this strange scene that I had only previously seen in satirical sketches.
I wonder why they stay. When I talk to people separately now, they readily admit the shortcomings of this company/job (although still with a fair amount less of disdain and, let’s face it, haughtiness than yours truly). Is it the convenience? The company’s willingness to tolerate everyone as long as they tolerate the company? A sense of security? Or is it all ok – am I overreacting to a reality that I simply have not been exposed to before, gaping ignorantly at a norm that I just haven’t had? I grow vicariously weary at the thought of that. Not so weary, I hope, that I stay.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
A Sushi Feast
It's fun and delicious to butcher the fine art of sushi making by neatly rolling your maki with a respectful disregard for sushi's minimalism and stuffing it with whatever you happen to have cut up and placed at arm's length. Proceed to do this in large quantities, display on different shaped plates, and eat on Sunday nights. I'm finding the weekly sushi feasts to be a sort of Havdalah for the week - maybe next time I'll light candles?
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