Janie's Books

Janie thinks she would like to write books. Ten words long, but lots of photos.  The first is about celebrities, and it’s called Human. The photos depict celebrities – the really big famous ones – Helen Mirren and Greta Garbo, the entire cast of Philadelphia Story and Leonard Nemoy, in their cars.  She dreams that she has a photograph of Abe Lincoln driving a convertible, but it’s never turned out to be true.

In cars, people are human. They pick their noses and sing with silhouetted lips to songs on the radio that no one else can hear. They cry and mince their fingers along the steering wheel and swear at pedestrians and reduce themselves to the foibles that unite us. Maybe Janie would call it Foibles, instead. But errors are more the topic of her second book. The Book of Oops is what she’d call that one, or maybe, Rewind. It  features close-up pictures of couples who wish they hadn’t.

The lens hones in on a face - his or hers - sweaty and tired and confused and exalted and full of dread for the repercussions - there always are some. She will have to explain how she got to this place - this bed or backseat or airplane bathroom - and how she failed for a moment to realize it would matter to someone, herself maybe, even. The photograph captures this moment of confused self-reflection. There is internal disorder and loneliness, although the subject is very much not - and almost never - alone.
Janie recognizes too late that the photos are similar. It's disappointing. She thought she's had two ideas.