inaugural post

"I love myself when I am laughing. And then again when I am looking mean and impressive." Zora Neale Hurston wrote this in a letter to Carl Van Vechten on December 10, 1934 about some photographs he took of her, and it's the title of the Zora Neale Hurston Reader edited by Alice Walker. I found her several years ago through Their Eyes Were Watching God and have read most of her work. As my graduate studies in literature seem to have me leaning in a Harlem Renaissance direction, I've continued to have Zora on the brain. I just like the way she lived on her own terms. Some thought she was brilliant, some crazy, some just didn't know what to make of her. At the risk of inappropriately comparing myself to the great Zora, sometimes I feel quite misunderstood myself. Anywho . . . with this blog I am committing to spend time on the activities that replenish me, that feed me spiritually: connection with God and meditation on his word, writing, altered art . . . and who knows what new frontiers may come. This image is a "paper doll" I made with instructions from one of the Somerset Studio Gallery magazines.