Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1914 (Heft 47))

WHAT 291 MEANS TO ME
Each is ill with his own malady. And there are, happily, as many
maladies as there are humans. Yours may be a craze to bite a bit
of the moon. No one knows why—you, yourself, least of all. But that it is
something which has eaten its way throughout the sum total of you, you
know. At times, you are discouraged. You say, I am a no-good. I am
not like others. I eat, drink, sleep, breathe this bite-a-bit-o’-the-moon.
Nobody else does. What use am I? Let me die.
No, let me not die. There might be some hospital, some nurse, some
spirit who would soothe me back to health, to my belief in this bite-a-bit,
without which I am somebody else, and being somebody else, do not wish
to be. Then you remember somewhere. You smile. A funny worm is
tickling you. And you go there.
There may be six pictures on a wall. Six pictures about onions. They
say something to you. Or there may be six words spoken by some one to
some one. Six words about capon being more palatable than chicken.
They, too, say something to you.
Go ahead. Try again. We believe in you and your bit of the moon.
’Tis the only craze worth while. Bite away. And you return home, the
happiest invalid that ever was. You are not a no-good. That night, you
nearly break your neck trying to reach the moon. And for many nights
thereafter, and days, as well. Until you have to go somewhere again.
That is what “291” means to me.
Alfred Kreymborg

WHAT 291 MEANS TO ME
It is the most helpful place to be in for anyone whose mind is open to
suggestion. There is no feeling of smallness there. Frank, honest criticism
of a constructive kind always. No subject is too small to be ignored, no
idea is too great not to find a response. All kinds of people go and come.
If you go there often enough you will find just how big or how small you
are. Sometimes the awakening comes as a shock. But after all it is an
oasis in the desert of American ideas.
Francis Bruguiere

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