Another stereotype shot down

This is my neighbor Michael, who is Native American. "I don't know shit about the earth," she laughs. "I grew up in Seattle. I've been to a few pow-wows in my time, probably about as much as you. Everybody thinks if you're Native you're supposed to be all earth mother and shit, you're supposed to invoke the four directions and chant and just naturally know how to grow things. I got me this little piece of community garden a couple months ago, not even big enough to bury a short person in, and it's the first time in my life I ever tried to grow anything. So far all I grow is weeds, and they tell me you can eat these weeds, but look, try 'em. They're bitter as hell. I can't even grow edible weeds, me."

Yesterday, thanks to the tech genius and the extreme generosity of a former blipper, I was able to see the BBC documentary on Vivian Maier that everybody in the UK watched last month. What Joel Meyerowitz says right at the end of the documentary moves me so much I've added it to my About page.

What matters to me most about Maier is the purity of her practice. She left over 150,000 photographs, but so far as we know she never, after her youth, shared any of them. She didn't need praise, affirmation, or approval. She didn't court comments (or give them). She just did what she came to do, even when she couldn't afford to develop her film. I believe it was, as Meyerowitz says, about being alive to the world; about gratitude for what is given. She didn't count views or seek popularity, and that inspires me.

So I'm planning to shoot more pictures and post fewer Blips. Maybe I'll post a couple of times a week, maybe not that often. I'm here because words matter to me as much as pixels, because I enjoy the exchange of ideas, authors, stories, and questions. I value the relationships I've developed here and I love "following" a few people and learning from them, connecting with them. But I have never wanted to post every day. I can't take pictures if I'm sitting at a laptop commenting for several hours a day. So I'll still be around, but less regularly. That's my idea tonight, anyway.