So, as some of you know, I have a print shop up now. There’s a link to it in my profile.
The person who was most excited for me to get a print shop up, and who pushed me the most, was my mom. Even at her sickest last year, she wanted me to get it going, so people could buy some of my photos. When it finally went live, she was super happy and proud.
This week is her birthday. You can probably imagine, after the craziness of last year, how happy I am to be able to spend another birthday with her.
In honor of her birthday I’m having a special at the shop!
Put any large print and any small print into your cart, and use this code at checkout:
The person who was most excited for me to get a print shop up, and who pushed me the most, was my mom. Even at her sickest last year, she wanted me to get it going, so people could buy some of my photos. When it finally went live, she was super happy and proud.
This week is her birthday. You can probably imagine, after the craziness of last year, how happy I am to be able to spend another birthday with her.
In honor of her birthday I’m having a special at the shop!
Put any large print and any small print into your cart, and use this code at checkout:
On Friday, the 31st of July 2009, I put my cat to sleep.
(now you are made of light)
My cat’s name was Lint, but I almost always called her Linty. Well, I almost always called her so many things – an endless and endlessly changing selection of affectionate and kooky nicknames: Linty, Linticus, Linticus the Mighty, Lintl Loaf, Loaf, Lintolian, Linty Bean, Bean, Fuzzy Pants, Tiny Fuzzy Pants, Tiny Tuna Pants, Pants, Fuzzbutt, Fatty, The Mighty Stinkmaker, Green-eyed Ladyface Kitty, Mouse, Wondermouse, Bubbles, Minou, Meems, Bunny, and so many others I can’t think of. Fifteen years is a lot of years of nickname giving. A lot of names came and went.
But her name really was Linty. Not like the little specks you lint-roll from your clothing (although she produced plenty of those too), but like the big poochy wads of soft deep grey lint from the dryer, warm and squishy. Especially if you’ve neglected to clean between each and every dry cycle, and there’s some hint of dark blue in the deep grey, which itself is heavily studded with sticky-out kitty hairs. And that dryer lint, of course, trails around after you. As you shake it off one hand, it bounces to the other; as it descends to the floor it finds you and trails behind you, still warm, still soft, covering all the newly clean clothing you tried to protect with a fine film of lint. That was my little girl.
Linty was not all grey. She was grey and white. A grey cape that went down in a V over her ears and face – except for the tip of one ear that was the sweetest transluscent pink, especially when the sun shone through it – all the way back to her tail. Which was the narrowest, silliest tail I’d ever seen on a cat. Somehow she got the wrong tail, a pointy too-skinny tail with faint rings on it. The rest of her was white: around her tiny pink nose, under her chin, her legs and her feet, and her silly hangy-down pouch of a belly that swung when she ran. That tummy, the best of all tummies, was white with pink undertones, where her skin shone through. She was so very white, as she kept herself perfectly clean. Her paw pads were the very pinkest little pearls.
And then there were her eyes: The most spectacular green eyes I’ve ever seen on a cat.
The Lint and I were together for 15 years. I got her when I was 19 and a junior in college. Linty was a teensy tiny kitten, at most 5 or 6 weeks old, still attempting to suckle because she and her sister (who became my roommate’s cat) had been abandoned (maybe their mama kitty had died) and then been discovered by a crazy Berkeley cat lady. Linty especially had plenty of health problems, fleas and worms and gum disease (almost all her teeth behind her canines had to be removed) – just all sorts of other things, and she was the runt of the litter.
She bonded to me and only me.
You can see where this is going.
Over the next many years, Linty would go with me, wherever I went. We moved from Berkeley to San Francisco to New York to Washington, DC to Orange County to Berkeley to Orange County again. The longest we were ever apart was a few weeks. For many years we lived alone, just the two of us, a girl and her cat, talking to each other in our little voices, developing a whole understanding that people always thought was weird and insane until they came over and saw it in person and understood it immediately.
My pops once said to me: “I’ve never seen a cat look at a person the way that cat looks at you. Never.”
I was Linty’s entire world. She rarely, if ever, took to other people. It wasn’t that she was mean to them, although she did hiss now and again. It was more that she’d refuse to come say hi in the first place. Or she’d do a bit of coy flirting and then head back for another nap, having decided there was no point in befriending whoever it was. Occasionally she’d voice serious displeasure at a person’s presence. Very, very rarely she would take to someone. And she was always right.
Hers was the little face I saw nearly every day for 15 years. She was the one constant in an ever-churning sea of growing up, becoming, learning, failing, figuring out, changing, moving, being. Few things made me as happy as coming home to a dark bedroom and quickly switching on the light in order to see a tiny little face in the middle of a big bed, sitting there, looking at me, blinking a sleepy and happy hello: Squinty Linty.
She was the only real routine I ever stuck to, the animal who never should have lived past two months but made it to 15 years, the cat who drove me crazy at times, the one I only once considered getting rid of in a fit of stupidity at a very unhappy (and young) point in my life. The creature who was loyal and loving to me, who would yell at me with delight and anger and flop on the floor and pound on me with her little footies when I’d return from a trip, who had annoying habits that drove me nuts in the best possible manner, who DEMANDED steak and corn on the cob and eggs with cheese, who allowed me to manhandle her in ways you’d think a cat would never tolerate, who let me cram my face into her belly and kiss her toes when I most needed it, when stress and sadness got to be too much. She really was my best little friend.
We were both beginners, out in the world, and we found each other, that tiny kitten and I. So on that recent Friday afternoon, I did the only thing I could for someone who had been so loyal and true: I ended her suffering. It came quickly and I did not expect it to happen quite as suddenly as it did: one day she was climbing in my lap, the next we were at the vet, and I was making the decision. Cats are masters of hiding pain, and she had been hiding by sleeping in the closet and not eating as much. She had cancer in her intestines – we think lymphoma. She had lost a lot of weight, more than I even realized. I could have done a biopsy, tried to battle it, to save her, but at what cost? On that Friday, she was so clearly sick and in pain, with a rough coat, and when I found her breathing shallowly, panting and shaking, her whole body hot, her eyes sunken and dark, I knew. To try and save her would have been to torture her. As much as I did not want to lose her, I wanted even less to cause her any more suffering. She had given me love for 15 years. There was only one thing I could do.
The vet agreed with me – while it was the hardest decision, it was also the best. The assistants brought me Linty wrapped in someone else’s old tea towel, all pink and white and green. She was scared and upset, just like I was, but I held her in my lap and tried to soothe her, kissed her head, scritched her cheeks and chin, kissed her toes, looked at her sad belly that had been shaved for the ultrasound, and talked to her through my tears. The vet, who was so kind, came in and asked if I was ready. She told me it would be very fast, and it was, so fast it still makes my head spin. Within seconds my little kitty’s head was on my knee and she was gone.
I held her for a moment more, kissed her little foot one more time, her little nose. The vet shut Linty’s green eyes one final time, and lifted her out of my arms. She took her away, and I broke down.
Later I decided I would not take her ashes. I had nowhere to sprinkle them; after all, where did Linty like to go besides out on the deck? She slept in her donut, on my bed, and followed me from room to room. And keeping her ashes – while I could respect that some people would want to have them, I knew the ashes weren’t her anymore. Even the body wasn’t, as much as I desperately wanted it to be, those pink toes and the little ear tip. I let it go. I still have her, in my heart, in my photos, in a video, and in a box I created with her little catnip hemp bags and mousie toys and a clump of fur from the very last time I brushed her. These things are more her. I can see her in them.
And while I wish I could have buried her in the garden in Berkeley, so beautiful flowers could grow from her, I’m glad she died in Orange County. For that’s the real, true reason I liked Orange County. Linty loved the condo we lived in there. It was her favorite place ever.
I wanted to scan the photos I have from when she was a tiny kitten, but one of them is stuck to the glass of the frame, and the others are scattered in books and piles. Some time soon, I’ll add them to set, and to this post. For now, I give you these, most of which are recent. One of which is me, the day after she died. And I include a very important video (the only one I ever shot) and what I consider to be the single best photo I ever took of her. Oh noes!
Forgive me this long post. But she was the best kitty for me, and my heart has a big Linty-shaped hole in it these days. I miss her terribly, and after 15 years, I wanted to remember her the best way I know how. Thank you.
(on an adventure with my friend Bradley, Orange County, CA)
So far as I can remember, I’ve never written an ode to this season. I’ve never been its most ardent follower, its peppiest cheerleader, its Number One Fan. I mean, summer is great and all, but give me spring or autumn any day, with more moderate temperatures and those beautiful tones and colors. You know, colors that are more than just of the bright sun-shiny primary variety.
Yes, summer did often mean amzing things like camp when I was younger – and thus an escape from the small-town mean girls who made the other nine months of the year seem an eternity. Or, in high school, the odd jobs were certainly odd, but they were often an odd sort of fun too. And my birthday is in summer! But summer? As a my favorite season? I just can’t remember a time that my heart called out for it: Summer! You! Are! The! One?
I think there’s a reason I’ve lived in Southern California on and off for nearly five years and can count the number of times I’ve been to the beach on both hands.
But oh. Summer. This summer. Has been different.
Summer is about sunshine and good times, about endless days and ice cream, about friendship and warmth. Or it’s supposed to be, right? But when things are turbulent or sad, then summer is hot and hard and frustrating. The big difference is that this summer, there’s happiness. So much happiness.
Sure, there are problems too but they don’t seem so tough when you’re standing on a beach in Laguna, with your friend Bradley and his Mamiya, taking a photo of the setting sun glinting off the choppy ocean with your cellphone so you can send it to your true love who is in San Francisco and who will be here to visit you next week.
When you’re filled with sunshine and sand and ocean water, clutching cameras lent to you and given to you, watching the sky as it turns shades of hazy pastel you never knew were possible in red, white, & blue July. The churning waves a pale silvery aqua tinged with the last baby blues and violets of the sky, a nearly improbably metallic sheen, constantly heaving in an irregular rhythm. The sun showing its last rays of gold and yellow, then suddenly deep burnt orange, the legendary sky of California, setting off rocky bluffs with palm trees and an endless ocean that travels all the way to the other side of the world. And you try to remember every detail, every moment as best you can because you can’t capture any of this perfection because you’ve already run out of film and your phone battery is dead and you didn’t bring a digital, and you laugh and laugh, your pants soaked by sudden waves and your hair full of salt and wind.
In honor of my birthday – today – I had a blog post all planned out in my head. I was going to scan photos I’d found while looking through photobooks with Ashley on her first day in town, and write about discovering something that must have been there all along.
And then I forgot the photos when we left Orange County.
Ah well. Typical Leah. Some things never change, no matter how much older I get. I’ll scan them in one day, and I’ll write about all that some time. But in a way I’m glad I forgot, because it gives me the opportunity to write about something else that means even more to me.
As a little girl, long before I ever imagined picking up a camera, I used to look through a book. The book had a profound impact on me in so many ways. It was called The Family of Man and was the book version of the exhibition curated by Edward Steichen. The exhibition was first shown in 1955, which gives you an idea of the age of the photos; most of them were taken at least two decades before I was born. Yet there they were, these people, these men and women and children, from around the world, scattered across the pages, loving and fighting and eating and sleeping and working and living and being. They became a part of me, not just as images, but as the exhibition intended them to be: as a world of different people who are all at heart part of one family.
If you follow me on flickr, and most of you who read this blog do, you know I take great inspiration from the people in my life. Whether or not they are actually in my life, they are to me a part of it, inspiring and teaching and pushing me on. More often than not I still feel like the little girl reading The Family of Man: agog at the world and all it has to offer, amazed at the possibilities and astonished that such things are possible, impatient to learn everything there is. I wonder if I’ll ever outgrow the feeling of wonder at the world, of being wide-open to experience, of being ridiculous and silly and terrified and unafraid, of reaching out to those people in that family of man.
Sometimes the inspiration is too much. When you look out at that many people, it’s not simply that all the eyes are staring back. Gazing into all those eyes means that many windows into that many souls.
Or, as the case may be, reflecting as windows often do back onto ourselves.
I have done a lot of reflecting on the self this past year. In this next year, I am sure that will continue, but I am ready as well to reflect out: I want to contribute to the family. With my work. Maybe make a multitude.
And make images that hopefully help someone stop and feel the way I did, all those years ago. To see the people I see and to want to be a part of this great family of ours.
Last year, I fell in love. He wasn’t someone I’d ever imagined liking, certainly not the Prince Charming of my dreams. But there he was: unassuming in the looks department, kind of square around the edges and chunky, a little temperamental at times. But the second we locked eyes, we clicked. And we both knew, that little Polaroid Spectra System SE and I, we just knew it: It was meant to be.
If you know me at all, you know a few things about me.
One: photography is a fairly new pursuit. I’m still learning the ins and outs of this, Polaroid included. Most of the world fills me with wonder on a daily basis, but photography does in particular, and Polaroid most of all. It’s a mixture of science and art, with a dash of magic thrown in right at the end, the way those chemicals mix to create your image. And of course the magic is the best part. Not just the way it develops before your eyes, which we all love. But the way it develops and creates colors and landscapes and seascapes and dreamscapes – some of which we’ve lived through in decades past, some of which we’ve never visited, even in our wildest dreams.
Two: I kind of like to be in control. Just a little bit. Polaroid takes the control away from you. It’s the ultimate in WYSIWYG. Yeah, I can scan the image and fuss with it in Photoshop but why do that? Why not just shoot with film or digital? Polaroid just is. Sometimes if I don’t like a shot, I’ll have to re-take it until I like it. And sometimes that will teach me – over and over – that the first shot was the best. It almost always is.
Three: I have a very short attention span. Three minutes! Polaroid is the Motown of photography. It’s the punk rock. It’s the early Beatles. It’s the Sesame Street and the Electric Company and the Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It’s everything I grew up listening to and watching and loving. Three minutes or less, and you’ve got something! Maybe even something you love! Maybe not! Who cares! Onto the next one! ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR! LET’S GO!
Today is the last day of Polaroid Week on Flickr. The images I’ve shown you here are the some of the shots I’ve posted there. There are so, so many more in the group – incredible shots from enormously talented photographers. Go check them out. You won’t be sorry you did. And we’ll see soon, Polaroid Week. Thanks for giving us a home.
Many years ago – okay, only eight but it feels like a decade – I lived in New York for a spell. It was a brief stop between a long sojourn in the Bay Area and “am I going to get into graduate school anywhere?” Which I did, as you may or may not know, and went off for a few years to one of my favorite cities: Washington, DC.
I had long wanted to live in Manhattan. New York! Center of the universe! Like half the planet, I’d become convinced that I absolutely had to move to New York in order to be happy and to find myself and to do all the important things one needs to do in life and so forth. While this may be true for some people – and really, I want to meet those people and stare at them in wonder and then dissect their brains when they are dead – for Leah in her mid-20s it was not at all the case. And anyway, as we all know, you can’t move somewhere in order to be happy. Being happy is a little more complicated than that.
But let me tell you one of the things I was most excited about when I moved to New York – one of the things I never stopped being excited about. In fact, you could go as far to say it’s something I’ve been excited about in every place I’ve ever lived or visited, city or otherwise: The little things.
I’m not a very good tourist. I don’t go to the right places, see all the important sights or sites, and do not ever make me take a guided tour. Please, for the love of all that is holy. No guided tours. I feel itchy and agitated just thinking about it.
When I go somewhere or move to a new place, the best thing to do in my estimation is go get coffee. Wherever the people who live there get coffee. And see how the people who live there do it. Last year I went to Seattle to visit friends and I’m quite certain that was one of the first things we did – and not because Seattle is known for coffee or because I hadn’t had any yet that day, although those things played a role.
So when I moved to New York, I was terrifically excited about this one little thing in particular: Getting a real New York cup of coffee. It wasn’t quite as prevalent as it once had been, given the rise of boutique coffee shops and espressos and lattes and all that. But you know what cup I’m talking about – the small cup, flat lid, usually carried by someone rushing off to catch the subway and who also has the newspaper folded just so under the other arm. Having that cup of coffee meant that person lived in a neighborhood, had a neighborhood coffee spot, knew exactly what to order and how to order it, and did it all without a hitch. Everything had a rhythm for them, was a part of their fabric of life, which is what created the real city, the city I wanted. If you marched into the joint and ordered the coffee wrong, not only would you disrupt the rapid flow of service and make people late, you’d clearly be marked as an outsider, a non-local, someone other than. A loose thread to be yanked. Who wants that.
Eventually I mastered the coffee – the ordering, the carrying, the rushing. I still can’t fold newspapers for the life of me.
It’s been a long time coming, but I finally bought this cup. It sits right next to me on my desk, way here over here on the west coast. And funny, I got it from an amazing store in Seattle, not New York. You should get one too. And if you do, call up and get some personal service from Emily. She’s about as sweet and friendly as they come. Unlike some of the people in line waiting for coffee in New York.
You may have noticed that sometimes I’m compelled to write a little more than people normally do on flickr. I’ve decided to move the words here, to a proper blog, in order to give the photos a little room to breathe. The photos will still be at flickr but they’ll make appearances here as well.
I hope you’ll grab a cup of coffee and join me in both places.
