What to Write

No idea.

I have this photo I like from this past week, with Salish girls dancing, their hats shaped like Tahoma, but about 50 miles closer.

But maybe, I like this one better. Is it the composition? The perfect dapple of sun on her hat, the face not shown? Maybe. But really it's the documentary aspect, the less-cropped shot revealing the field of vehicles, the inescapable petroleum footprint. I took a shot short of Art (but also of artifice), glimpsed some meta, was rewarded by an obliging sun.

That's the photos, but what to write?

One thing I could write is why these girls are dancing, where, and so on. But no, I know too little. They are Nisqually Tribe members, and they are dancing for a crowd before a dinner and potlatch. I could go all anthro here, or worse yet writerly, but the fact is this was only the third tribal event I've been to, and who the hell am I to hold forth when I am but a freakin' infant in the world of which I would write? Same exact conclusion as I came to in 1991, having been in Hawai'i a year and realized that my dream of a year prior, of becoming a freelance writer, of doing articles on Hawaiian culture, that was a bullshit dream. No better really than Dan's plan of moving to Jamaica and editing one of their newspapers for them because he liked to smoke pot and was an offpring of Jewish NYC intelligencia (his dad wrote the screenplay for "Star 80" and grew up in Brooklyn, whereas Dan grew up in a rural NJ farmhouse).

So no. I won't give you some bogus insight on the culture of the People of the Grass (which is what Nisqually or Squally-absch people translate to in English), a factoid I include for those of you uninclined to surf off to their website where I found it.

So yeah. No good idea of what to write. Good night.