the eyes go
I've been having terrible headaches and dizzyness for the past few months but I don't have vision coverage with my insurance so I haven't wanted to have my eyes checked out and besides, my vision has always been perfect. Well, no more—the years have caught up with me. I bought myself a pair of reading glasses and boy, do they help! It's too soon to say if the headaches will all go away now but I'm the last in my family to succumb to the need for corrective lenses. Sigh. One of those milestones we all reach sooner or later...
I've been in Taos one month now, me and the butterflies, magpies and vultures (a whole flock of them hang out in a tree just down the block. Being ignorant of birds, I thought they were hawks!) Now, ordinarily I would think this was kind of cool, but I have to admit that the presence of vultures, and their unsettling habit of circling around any human being walking by, is a bit disconcerting. Are they just waiting for something to happen, for you to stumble or appear weak or frail or something? Still, none are as glorious as the ravens, though there are fewer here than there are in Santa Fe.
I'm still not entirely sure what I'm doing here, and maybe that's okay, but the first month has gone by quite quickly, mostly taken up by deadlines I had to bring with me. It's freezing here, too—May 1 and it's still snowing in the mountains—I can't wait for spring. But I do think I've reached a kind of epiphany regarding my writing, my photography—all the ways I've defined myself professionally thus far, the choices I've made to work in service of other people's work while neglecting my own. I can't do it anymore. Writing a bunch of biographical encyclopedia entries the last couple weeks for the astonishingly low sum of about 10 cents per word (the going rate for encyclopedias)—some on artists my age—during this time when I'm supposed to be focused on myself woke me up to what I've been doing professionally for the last ten years. I don't regret what I've done, but I don't want to go on nickel-and-diming my way through a career. So I'm making some changes. Stay tuned for the progress...
I've been in Taos one month now, me and the butterflies, magpies and vultures (a whole flock of them hang out in a tree just down the block. Being ignorant of birds, I thought they were hawks!) Now, ordinarily I would think this was kind of cool, but I have to admit that the presence of vultures, and their unsettling habit of circling around any human being walking by, is a bit disconcerting. Are they just waiting for something to happen, for you to stumble or appear weak or frail or something? Still, none are as glorious as the ravens, though there are fewer here than there are in Santa Fe.
I'm still not entirely sure what I'm doing here, and maybe that's okay, but the first month has gone by quite quickly, mostly taken up by deadlines I had to bring with me. It's freezing here, too—May 1 and it's still snowing in the mountains—I can't wait for spring. But I do think I've reached a kind of epiphany regarding my writing, my photography—all the ways I've defined myself professionally thus far, the choices I've made to work in service of other people's work while neglecting my own. I can't do it anymore. Writing a bunch of biographical encyclopedia entries the last couple weeks for the astonishingly low sum of about 10 cents per word (the going rate for encyclopedias)—some on artists my age—during this time when I'm supposed to be focused on myself woke me up to what I've been doing professionally for the last ten years. I don't regret what I've done, but I don't want to go on nickel-and-diming my way through a career. So I'm making some changes. Stay tuned for the progress...
posted by Carla at 6:52 PM
2 Comments:
Join the club, I write with my eyes carefully trained to look at the monitor through the bottom halves of my bifocal lenses. =)
A little birdie (not a vulture or a raven -- and maybe it wasn't really a bird so much as a stick figure wearing a superman cape on top of a building) told me what you're thinking of doing, Ms. Williams. All I can say is that I am always gonna support you no matter what.
Rock on with your bad self.
So you know that I have alway considered you an artist, even when you were saying you were "no longer an active imagemaker." Follow your bliss, my sister. The money will follow.
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