Graphite Glory

“The cult of origins is a hate reaction. Hatred of those others who do not share my origins and who affront me personally, economically, and culturally: I then move back among ‘my own’, I stick to an archaic, primitive ‘common denominator,’ the one of my frailest childhood, my closest relatives, hoping they will be more trustworthy than ‘foreigners’, in spite of the petty conflict those family members so often, alas, had in store for me but that now I would rather forget. Hatred of oneself , for when exposed to violence, individuals despair of their own qualities, undervalue their achievements and yearnings, run down their own freedoms whose preservation leave so much to chance; and so they withdraw into a sullen, warm private world, unnameable and biological, the impregnable ‘aloofness’ of a weird primal paradise – family, ethnicity, nation, race” (Kristeva 1993:2-3). Kristeva, Julia. Nations Without Nationalism . Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

This is a picture of my mother. She was either in high school or junior high. I'm not sure how old she is in the picture. She's the second girl from the left (your left) standing next to the tallest girl. My aunt is younger than my mother by a year or two. She stands third from the right and is wearing white shoes. I put this photograph here because I could probably write a story about what is (or might be) going on in the picture, especially since I don't know anything about the hows, wheres, or whys. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But how many words are in a story?