I felt my life with both my hands – Emily Dickinson

I felt my life with both my hands

To see if it was there –

I held my spirit to the Glass,

To prove it possibler –

I turned my Being round and round

And paused at every pound

To ask the Owner’s name –

For doubt, that I should know the sound –

I judged my features – jarred my hair –

I pushed my dimples by, and waited –

If they – twinkled back –

Conviction might, of me –

I told myself, “Take Courage, Friend –

That – was a former time –

But we might learn to like the Heaven,

As well as our Old Home”!

I will not argue who might be the best Canadian photographer still alive, but I can assert I am the best in the country with hands. It was my Rosemary who in the late 70s pointed out a little finger that was sticking out in portrait that I was going to take to the Vancouver Magazine, for art director Rick Staehling.  I pooh-poohed her opinion. Shockingly, Staehling noticed, so from that point on I always made sure I noticed hands and fingers in my portraits. It helped that I shot many ballet and modern dancers.

In my memory, I know a man who had and probably has the best hands I ever saw in a man. His name is Jim Cummins and he is still known as I, Braineater from his 70s and 80s punk days.

I came up with the idea of taking his portrait at his studio that happened to have a white wall (or was it a black one?). I made an 11x14 inch print and then asked Cummins to do his then trademark art work on it. The photograph ran in Vancouver Magazine.

When Staehling returned the print, I had it framed. It is up in my guest room. My only concern is that the photographic paper, Ilford Ilfospeed is not archival. I may in a near future have it scanned and printed in archival inkjet paper.

One of the pleasures of writing my blogs,6031 including this one, is finding poems that go with my photographs. I have used at least 100 poems by Emily Dickinson. This one is one more. But in a past blog I used another Dickinson poem on a hand. 

I TOOK power in my hand 

More Emily Dickinson

That clarifies the sight 

 Nature rarer uses yellow

Rosemary white and a bit of yellow 

Nature rarer uses yellow

Luck is not chance 

T is iris sir 

The white heat

I tried to be a rose 

nature rarer uses yellow 

The Tulip

Nor would I be a poet 

November left then clambered up
You cannot make remembrance grow
November
the maple wears a gayer scarf