Who Knew

I’ve been working on MIXED KNOTS all day.  I’m in the stretch to the end.  The only break I took was for a peanut butter sandwich and a look at the newspaper.  I skipped over most of the news as I already knew about most of it.  But on the op ed page I saw a small article with the title…. Curious I read the first few lines to see what it was about.

I ended up reading the whole thing, though at the end I was kind of surprised the L.A. Times had included it.  A piece about people posing for photographs hardly seemed on the same level as a piece about a school funding bill that didn’t pass.  It made me think of an op ed piece I read years ago about crows.  I’d had the same thought that it seemed like an odd thing to include on that page.  And yet I remember the crow piece and points it made about the birds all this time later.  In case you’re interested, some of the points were that crows mated for life and they were smart enough to create tools out of twigs.  It forever changed my view of them.  Now when one of the big black birds lands in my backyard I think what a smart pants it is and wonder about its spouse.

The article kept mentioning the word contrapposto. I was curious enough about what the pose was that I checked it out online hoping for pictures.  There were, but all were statues and I realized how familiar the pose was though I’d never really noticed it.  It’s basically putting most of the weight on one foot and bending the other leg.  It causes the hips and shoulders to shift and is supposed to be slenderizing. Not that statues care about that last thing.

Hmm.  I’m not good at posing for pictures.  I always freeze up and forget to do things like lift my chin.   We had a family friend who was a professional photographer.  Holiday gifts were often photographs of me or my brother.  I didn’t really like being the focus of attention and my eyes would water and were closed for probably half the shots he took.

I’m better about not closing my eyes now.  And maybe if try this contrapposto pose I’ll get a good picture.  I guess the point is the article was more meaningful than I thought.