I have an image in my head,
A colored plate from a book I used to look at as a child.
It's of a little girl waking up in bed looking out an open window at a tree with a bird's nest full of baby birds in it.
Somehow this morning I stumbled into the world of Vintage Illustration...and I've been browsing for hours looking for that image.
I have not yet found it. But there are so many illustrations of children hanging out of windows, looking at birds and fairies...or flying....out of windows...
Maybe that is why at the age of 6 and 4 my little sister and I tried to boost my baby brother out the window to look at a bird nest?!?
My mother tells the story of that incident...our first spanking...which I do not remember. My little sister and I were caught holding our baby brother precariously close to an open window! Maybe due to the influence of the beauty and romance of our children's books we were enticed into inappropriate behavior?!?
Probably...
Because I have discovered something about myself as I looked through all the vintage illustrations.
I was greatly influenced by what I saw as a child.
There is something about being an adult and looking back at things you last saw as a child...
So many memories are running through my head...
I also realize where I got the sense of beauty and order and perfection that I've tried to re-create my whole life!?!?
I used to use look at those pictures trying to see what the perfect world looked like
house
play
family
I realize that I have always been more about the image
a collector of images...more than the words, or books
I used to collect cards...the perfect image
and then children's books for my kids...trying to recreate that romantic perfect world I remembered as a kid
now it's the photographic image...
What a perfect specimen I am for advertising huh...but as an adult I am aware of that
As a child I think I very much wanted that perfect world I saw in books...I thought that's how real life should look...
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