"are you a famous musician?" he asks.
dead serious.
i laugh. "no, sir, i'm not."
"well, you look like a musician or songwriter or something," he says to me. "and you," he directs to the young lady at the table next to mine who's wearing huge headphones over her hipster haircut and a short red pencil skirt, "look like a writer working on a great novel or something." she stops typing on her laptop and frees her ears.
"well, i am a writer," she says. "but not working on my novel right now."
"i'm a writer, too!" i say.
"ah-ha! well, of course you're a writer!" says the man in black to me. "that's just wonderful! what do you write?"
"well, i write poetry and several other things, depending on the day and the assignment"
"oh wow! you're a poet!" he exclaims. and as the woman he walked into the coffee shop with moseys closer to our table he shouts to her, "carolanne, you've gotta come meet her! she's a famous poet!"
he was dead serious. again.
"oh my! what's your name?" she asks as her hand extends to shake mine.
i laugh again and squirm and stumble to introduce myself. "well, i'm not . . . uhhh . . . famous, errr, i'm . . . uhhh . . . ciona. my name is ciona."
so we all chat for a bit, and i finally ask the man in black his name and if he's a musician.
"oh, my name is scott, and, actually, i'm a famous photographer."
of course he is.
and as we continue to chat the kind of chat of four mostly strangers, scott whips out his famous camera and starts taking photographs of me.
and i decide right then that i love this moment. it's taken me so long to even say, "i'm a poet." and while the goal of being well known and admired isn't a driving force in the soft focus of my future desires, i decide that i love not only being a poet but being an amazing poet, a famous poet just in that moment. and i love that scott--who may have spent his life flying around the world and sharing work in galleries and books or simply walked through his days taking snapshots of strangers in coffee shops--claims his art in a grandiose way. and i love that none of us asked each other what we had published or where our photographs were seen; we were just sitting together all being famous. as simply marvelous as that.
may you love your art, your work, your life in a grand way today! go ahead, be famous.
4 comments:
This makes me cry because I for so many years would not claim my craft either. My family would say, "She's a writer," but I stammered like you did today whenever someone would inquire of me. But for today and every day hereafter, I am a famous and phenomenal writer, too, regardless of what I have published. Interesting that you have written a book, a documentary and over 200 articles and you still stammered. The important thing is that you did what so many of us fail to do -you gathered yourself and declared. Some of us deny who God created us to be to everyone. We simply hold it in our hearts and whisper it before mirrors. God bless you for living out your dreams and inviting others to do the same. The simple fact that you will soon be very famous and he will own your photographs will make him an even more famous photographer! Smart guy! He knows beauty and talent when he sees it...when he sees it...when he sees it! May we all see it in ourselves and others as we declare and encourage!
Yay, Ciona!
--From one of your many fans!
This is beautiful. I love it.
It took me years and years to say, "I'm a poet," and once I got good at it, I started writing novels. Go figure.
Weeping the happy tears of the affirmed. ❤️
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