Our family has two go-to hikes in Blacksburg: the Cascades and, my personal favorite, Dragon’s Tooth. Even though my stomach lurches when I watch our kids crawl around on a jagged rock that juts over the edge of a mountain, the crag is impressive and I can’t keep away from it.
Plus, it reminds me of funny conversations about animals farting in the woods.
Trying to post a photo each weekday in November. I think I’ve succeeded so far. I’ve lost count. What day is it? Who’s the president? What’s my name? Here’s my entry for Photography 101: Landmark.
We are a family of hikers. The four of us pile into the car and drive off into the hills to hang out with each other and explore nature.
When we don’t have time for a full blown hike in the mountains, our kids and I like to connect with each other and with nature in walks through our neighborhood. We pull our Flower Fairies books off the shelves and go out into the world, equipped with poetry.
The photograph shows our daughter on a chilly autumn day bidding farewell to summer with “The Song of the Marigold Fairy.”
I thought I’d take this Photo101: Connect challenge all the way: this is my first post ever that was shot, written, edited, and published entirely from my phone.
One of the biggest challenges of transitioning from stay-at-home mom to full-time-working-mom has been carving out time for errands, time for exercise, and the element I yearn for most: time for creativity. Which, for me, means quiet time. Alone.
I decided to experiment this week by scheduling a work day on Saturday and taking a flex day today. I had a hair appointment at 9 AM – grooming! a first step in starting to figure out this work-life balance thing – and made a long list of errands I’m rarely able to get to anymore during the week: bank, post office, library, kids’ school.
When I saw that the day’s photography challenge was Solitude, I grabbed my camera and added “photos” to my list.
Leaves and tombstones, November, Blacksburg, VA
I was inspired by my photo-genius coworker, Jen Hooks, who blogs at lightcandy: she is not pulling photos from her archives for the Photography 101 course many of us are taking. She is aiming to get behind her lens every day and shoot new work. And with a day off, I wanted to do the same.
The first thing I thought of on this cold, misty November day, when I had the day all to myself, was the cemetery. Is that weird? It called to me with its emptiness, and its silence. Though my days have no noise, my mind feels loud. I feel like I’m rushing all the time – rushing to get the kids’ lunch boxes packed, rushing to throw the dishes in the dishwasher, rushing to get the kids to sports, rushing to take my shower, rushing to “get to work” (down in my basement office).
There’s no rush at the cemetery. It is quiet. It is peaceful. It is slow-paced.
It was exactly the stillness, and the solitude, I needed.
I shot these photos for Photography 101: Solitude, and for Jen Hooks’ Minimalist challenge.
Cloud with rainbow over Gulf of Mexico. Anna Maria Island, FL.
I am a morning person. I love to get up before the world awakes and listen to the quiet.
When we camp, I boil water for coffee on a Coleman stove that pings and hisses, then I sit quietly and watch a leaf fall, and feel the warmth creep over me as the sun rises.
Even better than that, though, is when we vacation on Anna Maria Island on the Gulf coast of Florida. I don’t have to boil water there. I have a coffee pot that does that for me. When we are at the condo, I’m often torn about whether to sleep in or get up early.
But those mornings I do get out of bed early? I bring my mug down to the beach, sit on in the shade of a big pine tree, and sip coffee while I watch clouds grow.
I hated to post a photograph of a cloud yet again, but this photograph, and the memory of the morning I shot it, is my bliss.
I thought I would agonize over what kind of photograph to use for water: should I use the marshes of my Georgia childhood? Or the Gulf waters of our vacation spot on Anna Maria Island? Or maybe the crystal fresh waters of an Appalachian stream, or our trip to Lake Superior when we lived in Minnesota – or maybe the Cascades waterfall that is our children’s favorite hike? I’ve got photographs of those waterfalls from every season – maybe I should go with those.
But despite all the bodies of water I’ve loved in my life, and all the bodies of water I will love when I meet them (geyser pools, Bahamian shores, arctic lakes, glaciers), the image that kept popping into my head when I thought of water was that of giant white cumulus clouds building over the aqua waters of the Gulf of Mexico in summer: the water cycle before my eyes. I can’t get enough of those clouds.
The possiblities are endless for today’s assignment. I had a hard time editing for this one. Photography 101: Water.
“So, have you noticed that irony is super trendy now?” I dealt Phase 10 cards to Amy and my two kids. “‘The Ironic Generation.’ I keep hearing that. What does that even mean? That people want to live off the grid, yet they can’t survive without Facebook and Twitter?”
Amy fanned and arranged the cards in her hand. “It’s a hipster thing.”
“What’s a hipster?” Our son’s big eyes looked up at me.
“Well,” I said, “Every generation – do you know what a generation is?”
“Yeah, it’s like a thousand years or something.”
“Not quite,” Amy and I laughed. “It’s a group of people of a certain age,” I told him. “Like, you and all your friends are your generation. Daddy and me and Amy and all of our friends are our generation.”
He discarded. “Okaaay.”
“Each generation has a group of, I don’t know,” Rebels? Outsiders? “A subculture that kind of defines the generation. In the 20s it was flappers.” I played a card and looked across the table at Amy. “When were beatniks?”
“Beatniks were in the 60s,” she said. “And hippies were the 60s and 70s.”
“Punk was the 80s. And now,” I said, “it’s hipsters.” I peered over my cards at our son to see if he understood. He did not.
“There were tons of hipsters in the Twin Cities,” I told him. “They think they’re really cool. Like, they were cool before cool was cool.” He had no idea what I was talking about. He’s nine.
I played a card and asked my friend, “Do you know how the hipster burned his tongue?”
She raised an eyebrow, waiting for my answer.
“He ate pizza before it was cool.” I giggled hysterically. Our son rolled his eyes.
Amy was more useful to him, describing the hipster look – the skinny jeans, the PBR tee shirts. “And then there are the older hipsters, like Ira Glass and my husband, with the glasses, and the beard, like my husband has,” she said. She moved some cards around in her hand. “Although he had the glasses and the beard before they were a thing.”*
I giggled again, thinking she was making fun of herself, saying that her husband had adopted the hipster look before it was cool. I looked up from my cards to acknowledge her cleverness, but she wasn’t smiling about it. She was laying down her sets, getting ready to go out.
“So, back to irony,” I said. “I’ve always loved irony, but I never know how to explain it. If somebody asked me to define irony, I could give an example, but I couldn’t define it.” I laid down my sets of four and discarded. Amy looked thoughtful, turning her eyes up as if she could look into her brain, rifle through files, and find a definition for ironic.
“Only Hipsters Know Irony,” writing and “art” by J. David Ramsey
“But the irony I know is not anything like that Alanis Morissette song,” I said. “‘It’s like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife.’ What the hell is that? That’s not ironic. That’s just annoying. Ironic has some sort of, I don’t know,” I gestured toward my heart. “Mystical quality.”
Amy’s eyebrows shot up and she grinned. “Let’s look it up!”
I gave her the dictionary, and she riffled pages while I shuffled cards. Her face turned scowly.
“What the hell?” She said. “Listen to this:
Ironic. 1. Characterized by or constituting irony. 2. Given to the use of irony.
“That doesn’t tell you anything,” she said. “It uses irony in the definition!”
My son arranged his new cards. “It’s your turn Amy.”
“Oh, sorry,” she said, then smiled and stroked the book. “I have this dictionary now, you see,” and she played a card.
“Well, look up irony then,” I said.
She followed the words with her long finger.
Irony. 1.a. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
I had had a couple of whiskey sours at this point. “What? That confuses me,” I said, and took another sip. “This is an example of irony to me. I have this friend whose mom was a super fructavore – she loved fruits and veggies and ate them all the time. They were her snacks, her desserts, always a component in her meals. Tons of fiber, you know? Well, she died from colon cancer.” I laid down a card. “That’s ironic.”
“Okay, listen, though. Here’s the third definition of ironic”:
3. Poignantly contrary to what was expected or intended.
“Poignant! That’s going in my Lexicon.” I jumped up to get my Moleskine. “Poignant is one of my favorite words. It’s like irony – it has this mystical quality,” and I gestured toward my innards again. “It makes me feel.”
“Mom! It’s your turn!”
“Sorry babe.” I played a card and thought of the example of irony I had just told. “My friend’s mom contracting colon cancer after a lifetime of fruit eating is, well, poignantly contrary to what was expected. That’s a perfect definition! That’s the irony I’m talking about. It’s all about the poignancy.”
“You really need to read the usage examples here,” Amy said, pointing at the entry in the dictionary.
I thought about all the young hipsters in the Twin Cities as play went round the the table. I thought about the sad irony that they try desperately to avoid anything mainstream, yet they have become so mainstream they even have a look. Glasses, skinny jeans, fixed gear bicycles. iProducts.
When it was my turn again, I fingered my cards, then hitched up my skinny jeans so I could start the music back up on my iMac. I smirked, “Well, I’ve loved irony for, like, 20 years. Irony spoke to me before it became a ‘thing’.”
And then I laid down my cards and laughed.
Usage Note: The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply “coincidental” or “improbable,” in that they suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly. Thus 78 percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of ironically in the sentence In 1969 Susie moved from Ithaca to California where she met her husband-to-be, who, ironically, also came from upstate New York. By contrast, 73 percent accepted the sentence Ironically, even as the government was fulminating against American policy, American jeans and videocassettes were the hottest items in the stalls of the market, where the incongruity can be seen as an example of human inconsistency. (The American Heritage College Dictionary)
When I was researching this post, I came across some pretty hilarious stuff. Like the wikiHow article 9 Ways to Be a Hipster. I also found a fascinating opinion piece in the NY Times: How to Live Without Irony by Christy Wampole. Both great reads if you are curious about hipster subculture.
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I originally published this post Februrary 26, 2013. When I saw this week’s writing challenge, Oh, The Irony, I couldn’t resist reposting. I don’t know if hipsters are still a thing, so hopefully this isn’t woefully outdated.
Butterfly Mind 