Mellifluence

Reverb10: December 25: Photo

Following a link from Gretchen Rubin at the Happiness Project, I found the Reverb10 site, which encourages us to spend each day of December looking back at 2010 and thinking about what we want in our lives in 2011, through daily prompts. Since I started nine days late, I'm not going to write about all of them, but I think I'll write now about one that sings to me. 

December 25 – Photo

Sift through all the photos of you from the past year. Choose one that best captures you; either who you are, or who you strive to be. Find the shot of you that is worth a thousand words. Share the image, who shot it, where, and what it best reveals about you.

I believe it was in April. My company, bless its collective heart, sent me to a psychology conference held, of all places, in Cancun, Mexico. My boyfriend at the time, an eager traveler who lived for 10 years in Mexico and speaks fluent spanish, agreed to come with me. I mean hey, free hotel, warm tropical beaches, what's not to like? Oh, and then of course there was his wonderful companion, me. Due to the vagaries of cheap air travel, he got there a day ahead of me and we agreed to meet in the lobby of the hotel. The night before I arrived, he got a cheap hotel in town, and, wandering around that evening looking for a place to eat, he found a sushi restaurant that had just opened up. The food was excellent and he bonded with the owner and manager, so later that week, after the conference was over, he brought me there. We were the only people in the restaurant (it was pretty early) and we got to talking with the staff. The dinner was great, and after dinner, the owner, a former interior designer from Japan, decided he wanted to show us a wedding kimono he had just bought for some ungodly amount of money. Several thousand dollars, at least. It was gorgeous, of course, and he insisted I try it on. This photo is of him adjusting this amazing concoction of silk and ribbon, with me as the model.

This photo is special to me because it represents so many things that are dear to my heart: travel, love, my ex-, adventure, good food and company, and those kind of experiences that you could never in a million years make up. I'm trying on an expensive wedding kimono in a sushi restaurant in downtown Cancun! It's so surreal it's wonderful.

To me, it represents something I like about myself: my capacity to gleefully travel outside of culturally prescribed norms and be open to this wide, wonderful, crazy world in all of its weirdness and mystery.