#19 / This is not a new feeling, but it’s rare, especially without tequila
I have been a treading lightly kind of girl all along, mostly anyway, and I’m not sure if it’s the new coffee or the bodysuits or the blooming Irises out back or what, but it’s making me gallant, game, gritty and gutsy – which is what happens when you thesaurus.com/a force to be reckoned with.
Also it’s letting me wear clothing from my if only drawer
Maybe there’s something in the air. Like the beautiful breezes and the fast skies. Or the way summer suddenly snapped into position at sunrise on the solstice. The sky has been extremely cooperative, raining nicely at night when you should be in bed anyway, and everything is so bright and vivid and alive it’s hard not to feel spunky, especially when you’re walking on the sunny side of the street like I’ve been. And both ways, too.
On a completely different topic, I am very-sure-to-certain that when you get to the end of this post you will shrug
And it won’t be from trite content either, I hope, because what I’m talking about here is the opposite of trite, especially if you are currently a wallflower and if you are, you might want to squint or chug a beverage or brace yourself in another way. I myself am doing all of these things and more. It’s weirdly easier to talk about getting goosed than to talk about being shy, and I know there’s a lot wrong with that statement, including blatant contradiction, because from what I’ve seen, shy people don’t talk about being goosed all day. But writing’s different.
I am a shy person, with brazen bouts, which I know sounds like some kind of foot condition
When I first started this blog and added my picture, I wrote the caption: There are Vikings in my family tree. Also, I come from a long line of wallflowers. So there’s that. I wrote this in one second, as placeholder copy only, which means I wanted to see how it looked but it was fake – just something that popped into my head – and I fully intended to go back and replace it with a couple of fetching little sentences about myself.
But it rang true in a weird way and I just left it alone
I’ve been mostly the wallflower part, as I said, with bouts of Viking, and it looks like I’m in a big bout right now and I guess I’m still learning how to handle these bouts and I’m half-afraid, half-hoping that they will join together and the wallflower will peel from the background which I think might be happening because I’m itchy and touchy around the edges just now, and while I’m in a run-on sentence anyway, do you think my sudden exposure is due to my recent twigging to the idea that it’s pretty easy to be brave and it just takes practice?
Jeesus
And this isn’t just the fake kind of brave that comes with tequila, and it’s not the mother-bear kind of guts that come with danger to your kids, either. This seems to be a deep and burley kind of courage. Not that it’s feisty or that I have my dukes up. It’s actually quiet and it’s just giving me a kind of permission to stand-up and stand-out.
Maybe I’m simply seeing things in a different light
Okay so I was responsible for the light on set for three little but amazing days last week and maybe all the thought I put into that angsty privilege gave me some insight and if not, at least it gave me a pretty great metaphor.
As I mentioned, I learned how to pose last week, and whenever you want to take my picture, just say so. All I’ll need is a sec to snap into position which involves swivelling so my bellybutton is 45 degrees from the camera, core engaged, shoulders back, chest out, chin down (except in spirit), nose just off-camera, back leg straight and bearing my weight, front leg bent just so and foot pointed almost at the camera. Or whatever’s comfortable. Just kidding. It’s not comfortable and maybe that’s the point, but it’s important and once you try it you’ll see that it works, and you’ll wish somebody told you long ago.
Even when your picture isn’t being taken it’s a good idea to practice these things because, as Alexa knows, you’re never alone.
According to photographer Asa, you need to develop muscle memory with your poses and that’s what all models have, and it only comes with repetition, aka practice. Which brings me back nicely to the Viking thing. I don’t want to be a bad or pushy or mean Viking, they can just go to hell, but I do want to be fearless and that’s what I’m practicing.
I’ll let you know when it becomes muscle memory.
