While the kids work on their journals, I admire the sunlight and find myself captivated by the conversations of recently-read authors in my head. The motif is a combination of Ellis Island and Atlanta, Georgia, though I don't have any particular story I'm trying to tell about either.
The extraordinary grandchildren portrait
SAUL BELLOW: "Though everybody wished to be an American, everybody's secret was that he hadn't suceeded in becoming one."
The extraordinary family portrait.
LISEL MUELLER: "At her wedding, a woman gave up
half of her name
and exchanged it for another.
Half of her is public,
subject to trade; the other
private, treasure and loneliness,
what he thinks of as her ,
what she would share, if she could."
The King's cross-stitch design and handwork
SAUL BELLOW: "Dreams are readmitted only through the Ellis Island of science, by officials qualified in the legitimate interpretation of dreams. Music we bootleg. We bring it across the threshold surreptitiously."
LISEL MUELLER: "At night, with the lights out
and the TV turned up,
a woman whispers his secret name:
it frightens and excites him,
like the hundredth name of God."
The Eldest recoagulates.
SAUL BELLOW: "When the noise dies down you'll find yourself with the "I" you first knew when you came to know that you were a self-- an event which occurs quite early in life. And that first self is embraced with a kind of fervor, excitement, love-- and knowledge! Your formal schooling is really a denaturing of that first self."
HERBERT LOWENSTEIN: "If you are a poet, I hope you can use language not just as it is, an oily lubricant for the frictionless working of the system."
All family portraits were taken by the talented Wildnei Suane. You can see more of his work online at Willarts and schedule a photo session with him if you happen to be in Atlanta. Because Brazilian photographers rock.
