Nothing To Hide (2010)
To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength. ― Criss Jami
[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Last week’s project was incredibly time-intensive, taking up several hours of my day, every day, in order to have the videos ready for the next morning. After all that, I’m ready for a week where I don’t have to think quite so hard or worry about doing everything wrong. My first thought for this week was to make it totally random, to just open up a folder, close my eyes, and click on a picture. However, when I opened an archive folder I discovered that the first several, from 2009-2010, all contained naked people and, with one exception, none had appeared in any other #POTD series before now. In fact, most are not even in my art portfolio. They’re not bad shots, just unused. So, what we have this week, through the process of semi-blind selection, is random (sort of) naked people.
The next question was what to write. I’ve talked about the virtues of posing nude so many times before I’m not sure I have another seven days worth of words to talk about the subject. Would I find something different to write about?
Thank you, Sharon Stone. The 57-year-old actress, who has a new television series starting this fall, appears nude in front of Mark Abrahams’ camera for the September issue of Harper’s Bazaar magazine. I didn’t request permission to show any of the pictures here, but you can see them and read the article online on their website. There’s a lot in this article that is important regarding who we are, our self-esteem, and being honest about ourselves regardless of our age or what we’re doing with our lives. For everyone who thinks that posing nude isn’t classy or demeans one’s femininity, please take a moment to read what Ms. Stone has to say. Not only is her perspective unique, she looks much better saying it than I would. [/one_half]
[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Sharon has earned the right to be rather frank, though I don’t think we ever thought of her as being shrinking violet. The actress suffered an aneurysm resulting in a nine-day cerebral hemorrhage. This is the type of thing that kills most people, and those who do survive often have difficulty walking and/or talking ever again. Talk about clawing your way back up from the absolute bottom, Sharon Stone has done just that and now that she’s back in the limelight she doesn’t mind talking about the reality of being naked.
“I’m aware that my ass looks like a bag of flapjacks, but I’m not trying to be the best-looking broad in the world. At a certain point you start asking yourself, ‘What really is sexy?’ It’s not just the elevation of your boobs. It’s being present and having fun and liking yourself enough to like the person that’s with you.”
Had she said something like that in 1992 when Basic Instinct came out, we probably would have dismissed it as being self-serving. Now, though, it’s a statement of triumph over a set of circumstances that would have left most people relegated to a treatment center for the rest of their lives. Not Sharon Stone, though. She’s re-gathered, despite permanent brain damage, and moved forward. Naked.
I will always applaud those strong enough to be naked, whether literally in front of a camera, or figuratively in how they live their lives. Naked people are the strong ones, the wise ones, the ones who endure. Perhaps the rest of you should step up and get with the plan.[/one_half_last]
Dust On The Trail
Dust On The Trail. Model: Lisa Petrini
A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity. ― George Bernard Shaw
[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Death can be a difficult issue to discuss with children, especially when it comes to family members. One moment, you think they have a grasp of it, then later, seemingly out of the blue, the topic comes up again with new questions that need to be answered. With a five- and a six-year-old around the house, the subject comes up surprisingly often, sometimes in ways we weren’t expecting. Trying to figure out how best to respond to those questions and situations is a mixture of wiping tears and trying to not laugh at the wrong time.
We were driving past a mortuary and its large cemetery one afternoon when Baby Girl pipes up and informs us that this was where her pre-K teacher, Miss ‘Nay, works. When questioned as to why her teacher would work at a cemetery, the little darling responded without hesitation, “That’s where she puts the people she doesn’t like.”
Miss “Nay was horrified to hear of the exchange. She’s a jolly, pleasant woman who does a great job with children, but might be a bit superstitious. “I can’t stand dead people,” she told us. “I don’t even go to funerals.”
More frequently, and certainly with less humor, it is Little Man who raises the subject, frequently in tears over the loss of his great-grandmother a couple of years ago. Trying to explain to him that people don’t live forever and that his great-grandmother had lived a long life does little to appease him. She’s not here now, and that’s what counts. At other times, though, he can look out across a cemetery and explain that once one has expired that, rather than becoming dust, our bodies become tree seeds that grow new forests. While perhaps missing a biological step or four, that perspective of a renewable life is certainly less traumatic and easier to discuss.[/one_half]
[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Growing up in rural Oklahoma, and especially the son of a minister, death was such a normal part of life for us that we were almost callous about it. After all, we played and ran in large fields where it wasn’t unusual to come across whole sun-bleached skeletons of cows. The general opinion of ranchers at the time was to only remove a cow carcass if it was diseased and posed a health risk to the herd. Coming across skulls in the dust just wasn’t that uncommon.
Western philosophies have evolved over the past couple of generations where we no longer see death’s natural role in the life cycle. Instead, we see that passing from life to dust as the ultimate unfairness, the unjust removal of someone important to our lives. We expect explanations where there are none to be had and look to blame people who are not genuinely at fault. In matters of violence that should never have happened, our sense of outrage stems from our own sense of privilege that the deceased should never have been taken from us; a warped sense that it is we, more than the dead person, who have been short-changed.
Today is the thirteenth anniversary of my mother’s sudden and very unexpected death, a mere six months and four days after my father’s passing. I was living in Atlanta and one of the challenging decisions we had to make was whether the boys should go to their Mema’s funeral. To do so would mean them missing the first two days of school, but to not take them would deny them the emotional closure we thought they might need. We left the decision up to them. They opted to not go. As one of them put it, “We’ve been to enough funerals this year.”
Life is a wonderful thing, but sooner or later we all become dust on the trail. Love now. Live now. Find peace. Embrace the full cycle of life, even when it seems unfair.[/one_half_last]
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