Writing Toward Home - Georgia Heard Visual Archaelogy Find a photograph of yourself as a child - it can be of you alone or it can include other people. Run your eyes over it. Write down quickly everything you think and feel. Sometimes description only lets you wander around outside the window looking in. One way to become part of the photograph's world, to go more deeply into it, is to imagine yourself speaking as the child you were. What would you say? What would you hear or smell? You can also find a photograph of something in the world - from the newspaper, old magazines, photographs you've seen repeatedly that have become icons of a certain time or situation. Find a photograph that resonates emotionally for you. Remember, the point is not to just write a description but to drift, dream, let poetry happen, let images connect you deeply to what you see.
I'm not sure if this is the right place to respond...if not say so. The photo; Black and white picture of a 8-9 year old skinny white kid in a pair of shorts, barefoot, no shirt. He's holding a milk pail with 3 kittens peering over the top. I mention color because in the B&W photo back in the 50's the kid looks a bit bleached out, almost as if he is already a fading memory...not quite distinct but there none-the- less. in the background is a large white barn also almost blurring out but not gone. The feelings come along like this...from his expression, he had been stopped in the middle of some mission of his. He's impatient to get on with this mission but has been stopped so someone can take a picture. The kids face is hard to read, as obsure as the B&W photo itself...not the kind of little kid people take to quickly, too distant to be an easy approach...maybe too strange of a kid. At any rate he's not the kind of kid that people try to engage in a conversation...just surface talk..."oh how cute"..."are those your kittens?" Maybe the kid himself is as blurred out as the picture. I refer to this kind of kid as a mutt, not cute like a purebred, not well defined. Just a run of the mill kid...unremarkable, unknowable. If I wanted to get to know this kid, I'd follow him around..his actions will say more than he can put to words. He's at a gawky, awkward stage of life. I would never venture a guess as to how he might turn out later in life. He speaks in a sparse voice, "I found these kittens in the hay loft, they don't have a mom." He has a "hideout" which most farm kids his age have, a secret place where he really lives...not like in a house. "I'm takin' 'em to my place" I'm gonna take care of 'em." He doesn't say he's lonely though he is, he doesn't say he wants a brother. He's said that too many times nothin ever changes... no brother is ever coming. This kid makes my heart ache. It's damn hard to look at him, he is a raw soul being covered by the stinging grit of life.
Joyful emotions, empathy, nostalgia, Mourning, These would be the best words to describe a picture of myself with my family and my cousin. It was already hard enough just to study the photograph and take in everything I feel.
