Dear Diary: About the Tulips

Sometimes Hotel guests leave their diaries open. Although privacy is sacred at this stage of life, the management believes that the best way to navigate your stay at the Half Century Mark and Beyond (our sister property) is to share our truths. It is in this spirit that we offer the following. 

Dear Diary,

For the month of February I’ve been taking a wonderful class with photographer Catherine Just. Catherine’s classes have a way of working on my insides as well my skills. Toward the end of the workshop, I stumbled upon the idea of a Self as Flower project. So I started sketching.

Here’s me as Prickly Blue

Dancing Bud

All then came Tulip Me.  And everything changed.

To me the other photos, with some edits, had some measure of lovely in them as in lovely creepy but the human side of Tulip Me offered little lovely. Even its title felt flat. I came to the realization that my tulip days were over.

To be a tulip requires softness, movement and a young or partially obscured neck. What to do dear diary?

Although I began to get quite depressed, I reached for my iPad and quickly applied filtering layers like warm compresses to my soul and voila..to quote a dear photography teacher / friend of mine, “I am a tulip, damn it.”

The tulips have been placed in the freezer and asked to join me in the aging process. Should they cooperate in an interesting manner, we may try our diptych again. I will report back on their response.

ps Diary. Remind me to tell people about Catherine’s classes @ www.catherinejust.com. They are so wonderful and she does not require you to become a tulip. Should you attempt it however, she is there for you. Remind also to tell you about the abstracts I created during her class. They are definitely Hotel lobby material.