darkroom

Cynthia made a deal with me: she would do the dishes if I wrote a blog. Hmmmm. Conundrum. Either avoid a creative activity or do the nightly cleanup. Okay, so you know which one I opted for! But, perhaps surprisingly, the choice was a hard one.

Creative acts still scare me. They seem too risky. Too fraught. To likely to cause tangles. And I am not much for tangles. Tedious. Tiresome. Making me, Testy.

When I was 12, I used to ride my bike to the creative arts center, based out of an old, beautiful home, circa 1920, in my home town for a photography class and for the occasional tye-dying workshop. In the photography class, I learned how to develop film, how to alter negatives for different effects, how to play with light and the side of photography which is often forgotten -- processing. Alot happens in that hermetic, basement environment. Things grow in the dark. Images, colours, light. Too much or too little of one or the other and it changes everything.

The red light is glowing in my little darkroom, and I am fiddling with the canister of film, rolling precious celloid exposed to secret slants of light round and round. In preparation. The images embedded, out-of-sight, will be called out and defined, for others to see and perceive. I wonder, in the obscurity of this imposed night, of what will emerge when the lights of daytime and industry are switched back on. What will they see?