A continuation of punctum/obtuse meanings of images

I previously mentioned that when I was a child, I associated God with Curious George. This is a continuation of the same exercise. I shall take images, some by famous photographers, some by me (I like to think that I will eventually also be a famous photographer ;-D) This ties in to my career choice, as I would like to pursue photography as well as design.

First, the genius that is W. Eugene Smith:

Reality: Two children exploring a path. My thoughts: Hansel and Gretel entering into an enchanted forest.













Another by the photographer:

I'm not sure what the reality of this is, but the skewed, otherworldly angle of it brings to mind someone passing from this life to the next.










Now some by me:

This is just an old mannequin in an antique store, but when I look at it, it speaks to me of once beautiful women clinging desperately to their youth even as time chips away at their appearance.













A toy at another antique store. But to me this symbolizes a past time of racism and the wear on the toy shows that most of that era is behind us... it only exists now as a relic of harder times.

Antidefinition of my aforementioned boring name.

Laura = Mountain Laurel
Christina = Follower of Christ
Windham = defined in searchforancestors.com as "A town in the county of Norfolk, England, said to be a corruption of Wimund-han, 'the home or village of Wimund.'"

However, those strict definitions don't particularly describe me, though I do associate myself with Christianity, as it is how I was raised.

LAURA. A Laura by any other name. No, that doesn't work, then it wouldn't be Laura. Anyway, as my wise friend Erin just told me, I am named after Mountain Laurel, and I adore the mountains - Eureka! I love hiking and just... being there... and... now I'm excited.

Also, mountain analogy associated with religion. Which path shall I take? And... Petrarch! So I hike, I explore, I find different paths!

When I was a child, I got so mad when people pronounced my name "WindHAM" The H is silent. So I would tell them that I am NOT a ham on a flagpole blowing in the wind, no sir. But it proved that I kind of am a ham, in the ridiculous goofy vein. I definitely was and still to some extent am a ham. Maybe the fact that I shied away from that pronunciation means I shy away from my funny side. OR MAYBE THAT'S JUST NOT HOW IT'S PRONOUNCED.

Wind. Winddddd. Does it mean anything? Am I blowing through life's windstream like a leaf? Am I getting ridiculously philosophical? Yes. I'll stop. If I was a musician, wind could mean the instrument sections of Winds... but I'm not, so it doesn't. But I do enjoy windy weather, though not when wearing a skirt. The wind literally has bitten me in the ass many a time. Too much info. I'll stop. Wind could be associated with the climate of Scotland, where I studied abroad last semester (with miss Erin, coincidentally).

I also like Ham. It's a good food. Quality stuff.

Take away the L from my first name, you have "aura". I have an aura. Not sure what exactly it is, but I have one. Erin says goofy and colorful. Myes, colors, myes. Patterned. That is my aura. A confusion of color and pattern. I'm alright with that.

Let's see. I'm running out of associations. I shall continue later.

Note: While researching for my much later post on my emblem, I was at an Elvish language site, and had an epiphany! Laure in Elvish means "golden" or "golden haired". I am in fact golden haired, and prefer to think that I am golden as well. I also found a site which actually translates my name from English to Elvish. Here is the screen shot:

My punctum God

This is bizarre: please don't judge my childhood self for her imaginative construction of God. But, whenever anyone mentions "walking with God", I envision myself, mentally 3 or 4, walking with an anthropomorphized Curious George dressed in the yellow suit. He is very wise, and I guess he is what made me comfortable with believing in a higher power as a child. I wasn't even that enamored with Curious George. It's all very interesting how children come up with the mental images that they do.

Where I came from and how I feel about that in general.

By name only, I am Laura Windham. Because of the fact that Laura is derivative of Laurel, the mountain flower, I would say that by definition, I'm not quite myself. That is, no one would ever describe me as a delicate flower, though sometimes I tend to overdo floral print in my wardrobe and surroundings. Windham was a village in Germany, though the name is largely English in origin. So although my name means and mountain flower in Germany, I prefer to think of Laura Windham to mean mighty warrior princess, or strikingly beautiful creative genius.

But this has little to do with my career choice of graphic design. On my Windham side, I come from a family of artists. My grandfather dabbled with watercolor, very basic stuff. My father was very close to a creative genius, an immensely creative man who shared his love for art with inner city middle school students for years. He was an expert at realism, but preferred creating fantasy scenes of anthropomorphized animals or abstract situations.

But my mother, eh, well, she's an accountant. She had to be forced into creative thinking, though she rose to the task very well. I like to think that my choice of graphic design came from the marriage of both of my parents' ideologies. I do not possess the massive creative spark that my dad does, but I have an eye for aesthetics along with a very logical head on my shoulder.

When I was a child, I was quizzed on the masters. Literally at age 6, I could look at slides of impressionist paintings and name the artist and part of his life story. When I was 10, my father decided to keep up with technology and get photoshop 2.0 (laughable now). He taught himself the program and taught me the basics. At that age, I decided I didn't like the covers of my pop CDs and decided to redesign Britney Spears and Shakira, etc. CD covers. I liked to think that they would both thank me for my genius if they ever saw my designs and would hire me on the spot. As far as childhood experiences go, that was the introduction to my love of design. Between then and now, I fluctuated wildly in my wishes for my future career, but always came back to what I loved and was good at. Recently I realized that I should combine that with my obsessive love of reading and presto! A career! Book cover designer! (Hopefully tangible book covers will still exist for as long as I need a career.)