The also-rans…

As you can see below this post is tagged with the phrase “daily photo”. Which means that it’s part of my practice of taking pictures every day. What is not readily apparent is that while there is at least one pictuer a day, because of the format restrictions I’ve come up with for this blog there is also usually one post per day, with only one picture in that post. So at the most, one picture gets published per day. But for each that gets used, there is at least one other that gets taken and processed and uploaded to my photobucket account. There’s quite a few of them over there that haven’t been posted yet, and I don’t quite know what to do with them.

For example, this was taken the same day as the above image. Why did I think that the first one would make more sense as the lead off? I couldn’t tell you. For the most part the relationships between what I’m writing about and the images I’m posting are oblique, but I know that when the time comes to figure out a post there’s always one picture that seems to make the most sense. And sometimes that picture choice eliminates the topics for the post altogether.

For example, today I’m tempted to write about the odd habit that I’ve noticed in certain women to continually pat and smooth their hair. I see them do it on the subway often, women who’s hair has been coiffed into swooping bangs and straight sides: they form their hand into a kind of mitt, thumbs opposed to all of their other fingers which are held rigidly parallel; then they grasp the hair and slide it between the the thumb and fingers. I suppose the grip is to keep the nails from snagging the hair, and the hair has been straightened in some way, so the smoothing is to keep it all straight and aligned. There is something that reads as so considered and technical and yet unconscious in the gesture that it marks for me the extent to which these women feel observed and displayed, how the regime of appearance has become so utterly internalized. The other night I watched the “Housewives of NJ” and a couple of the women there did it frequently, more so when they were agitated. Many times a preen can be a mark of power, a subtle amping up of allure: think of Mae West adjusting her furs or rolling her shoulders. But this gesture just seems trapped to me. Trapped in a constant state of disrepair.

Now have I taken any pictures lately that I could place alongside that? I think not.