We were looking up as we walked along the crumbling sidewalk of oldtown Palestine, east Texas. Way above our heads we saw the year 1878 posted high up on the Victorian ornamented peak of the period wooden building. That’s when I spotted the hanging sign with the curious title in a lovely french inspired script. “LA Picture Book Hair Surgeons.”
Having four creative and inspired stylists in my inner circle I wondered if this was a bit too clever/confusing of a name for a hair salon, or in Texan terms, a beauty parlor. Was LA for Louisiana or the City of Angels? What does “picture book” have to do with it? And then my eyes lowered from the hanging sign to the shuttered doorway of whatever this establishment used to be. The glass entrance door was dirty and was hung with the old school not cool metal blinds that my dear grandma used to have in her living room windows. This establishment’s title was repeated in stick-on lettering—the kind you can buy for a few bucks a sheet in a hardware store but was now crackled and peeling away. Eerily so as the doorway resembled the unraveling bandages of a creepy mummy. I thank old horror films snd Scooby Doo cartoons for that one. But the sight of it was as compelling as the opening paragraph of a good mystery story.
I wanted to know more but a google search yielded nothing. I wanted to know more for no good reason other than simply to justify the mixed messages being sent by the same five words presented in two completely different ways.
Here’s the leap . . .
What’s your truth? How are you presenting it, intentionally or otherwise? Does it speak to the heart of your essence or confound the folks around you? Let’s bring clarity to our message in the year that’s just about to dawn. I’m personally going to give that a try.
The Daily Cuppa Jo 