How I Became a Photographer (part I)

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I drew horses from the time I could hold a crayon. I also ate, drank and slept horses. I even wrote my first horse a poem:

My best friend and means of travel
Over the grass and over the gravel
... (the middle of it escapes me)
And I'll always remember fondly
How she nickered in the dawn.

Her name was Lady, and I was seven.

Although my poetry went unheralded, my first-grade teacher asked my parents if they would be willing to enroll me in a Saturday class for talented children at the city Art Museum. Believing that outdoor play was a lot more important to a child than art lessons, my parents refused. The other child this teacher recommended for the museum's classes took them and eventually went on to become a very successful artist who did some work for National Geographic magazine.

Performing arts were my forte as I got older: dancing (I was awful, but I loved it), singing, acting, directing, writing skits and revues; those were the things I lived for. It is no doubt an ego screaming, "LOOK AT ME!! LISTEN TO ME!!", insatiably craving attention, but it feels like an intense longing to communicate something, be it a meaningfully important message or simply a good laugh.

My Zodiac sign is Gemini, the twins, but it seems that my twins are also schizophrenic, because there are at least four different people running around in my head and body. That's probably why my college career was so checkered.

I started out at Alfred University intending to become a geologist, but got K-O'd by mononucleosis and pneumonia midway through the second semester. The illness, besides laying me flat, left at least one odd imprint on my brain.

Music, so important to me, played in my head. It was like having an internal radio I couldn't turn off. On the bright side, it was music I loved: I was a folk singer, and Bob Dylan or Joan Baez or Peter, Paul & Mary were what the brain played. That internal radio has never gone away. The singers and musicians change, but I still spend sleepless nights hearing them.

It was at least five months before I regained most of my health. During that time, the music pulled me toward New York City, the place every folk artist was or wanted to be. I never returned to Alfred or to geology. I enrolled at Wagner College to study to become a social worker.

A year later I would be sailing on The Queen Elizabeth en route to Bregenz, Austria. So long, New York Town. At the end of that school year, having lived on the edge of the Alps, I quit school altogether. It seemed to me that being a social worker would mean living in a city, and cities had completely lost their allure.

To be continued...
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