Thursday, February 21, 2019

The Custodian of Books

What a hoot!
Here I am with Big Boss on the cover of the latest ed of the local Catholic rag, The Catholic Spirit, in an article about SVDP. Big Boss was newly made associate director.



I'm not in the article, only the photo.
I LOVE that they accepted my self-designated job title, "custodian of books."  I told them that was my title, when they asked. They seemed dubious, but they wrote it down and printed it in the caption.


What were they going to do?
Well, they could just have said, "staff member." 

The title Custodian actually comes from Marz––she first used it to describe my relationship to bears and dolls and toys.

The photographer seems to have used a fish-eye lens, which gives a weird wrap-around effect (I'm not quite that round!).
This photo cracks me up: 
it captures the sort of exchanges I have with Big Boss. I go bouncing into his office like Tigger, and he looks at me like, "What's she going on about now?"

Even his body language--hands held protectively across his stomach--like Gene Wilder in The Producers?
"Don't jump on me!"


What's happening in the Catholic Spirit photo is the two journalists happened to come through my books section with Boss, and being Tiggerish, I leapt into talking with them, and they said I should pose for a photo.

"Talk to each other," the photographer said.

I happened to be holding Henri Nouwen's Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming––HN's exploration of the Biblical story, based on his reactions to the Rembrandt painting.


Fun Fact: The scene at the end of the movie Solaris (Tarkovski, 1971) recreates this.

So, I was telling Big Boss about this book, gesturing, you can see, and saying he really might like to read it, since he likes opening up stories from scripture.

After the reporters left, I went into Boss's office and saw the book.

"You don't have to take that," I said. "I know you don't have time to read, I was just going on for the photograph..."


"No," he said. "It sounds interesting. I'll take it."

My real job title = BOOK PUSHER!

2 comments:

  1. I couldn't get through Consider the Lobster. I got as far as the part about the lobster being alive when cooked and I had to stop. And then I found this bonus post -- yeah, why did that photographer use a fish-eye lens?? Unless he wanted to get all that stuff in the background -- your store is HUGE -- and also, it makes you and Big Boss look as if you are at oblique angles to each other. Arty.

    Are there chairs hanging from the ceiling?

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  2. VIVIAN: Yes, yes, that's DFW's point: HOW CAN WE DO THIS TO LOBSTERS?!?!
    I don't know if you got far enough in to know that--
    that's why I recommend the essay--
    it's about looking at our casual cruelty that seems "normal" to us.

    We do it to other people too--we casually judge them because they are not like us.

    The choice of a fish-eye is weird, isn't it?
    Makes sense for space, maybe (makes it look bigger),
    but it distorts people in a weird way.

    Yep, those are chairs hanging on hooks--there's not enough space for them on the floor.

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