Changing tires and packing cars and hauling boxes – I am my father’s daughter, indeed.
Spent yesterday walking around the Reading Terminal Market with Shane. This giant indoor bazaar of everything you could possibly want to buy: a jungle plant called Heliconia that looks like a fraggle, fresh fish, books made of grape leaves, all sorts of food that rob and I should not be eating.
I love when you’re forced to confront your own stereotypes and realize you are not nearly as highly socially evolved and conscious as you’d like to think. While walking through the market, we followed the sound of a live piano, I, envisioning some tuxedo-clad elder gentlemen like the ones you see in malls and ritzier hotel lobbies. But when we rounded the corner, there was this basketball jersey-clad black boy, freshly into his teens, playing jazz for the market-goers. I was surprised how much it shocked me. Hrm. Take that egotistical notions of social awareness.
What sucked was that, though I got a couple pictures, I did not get the picture I wanted, the one that told the whole story. I wish I was a better photographer, or at least bolder. I dunno. I just feel strange inserting myself and my camera like that. But what I saw with my would-be photographer’s mind’s eye was the grizzled black shoe-shine proprietor at his similarly grizzled stand watching the boy with a smile. I wanted the shot from behind the boy, keys in view, with the shoe shine guy in the background with his wizened and easy smile of pride.
Oh, well. Maybe the trip will make me more bold further on.
