Haha - Tom Williams best book review I've read in a good while. Spoiler: it's atrocious!
Oh my gosh, Herculon. That's one of those words guaranteed to take me to a very specific period of childhood, like heatilator. Cool posts, both, and the first link is smart, warm, and very in-depth about the world as some of us remember it - scratchy, brown, not always forgiving, and warm.
Strange Company has been a simmering new favorite for a while now. This post is a great example of why - a nicely written, in-depth look at one of the oddments of history - in this case, a look at the gruesome depths to which vanity can take us . Fun!
Edited to add more from Tom Williams - this post about Ely Cathredral is a wonderful piece of history. Part 2 here. Both have stunning photographs, and the architectural story, as it tends to do, is also the story of politics, people, and the land itself.
Showing posts with label vanity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vanity. Show all posts
Saturday, July 13, 2019
Saturday, March 2, 2019
Collection
I am a fifty-one year old woman, and this very blog reflects that experience. Take a look at the history of the vanity tag; it tells a story.
Yep. This is, more and more, informative of my spirituality.
My personal favorite Hawai'ian deity is Kamapua'a, but this guy actually does hang on one of my walls. (My print is definitely worth less than $5k.) Another interesting tale of repatriation and also a story about provenance.
Sigh. When you check your stats, and all the Russian and UAE bots seem to be swarming to the post you wrote about your best friend, who just died. The post you wrote in 2015, when that wasn't even conceivable.
Ahww, man. Guilty ...
A reduced sense of visibility does not necessarily constrain experience. Associated with greater empathy and compassion, invisibility directs us toward a more humanitarian view of the larger world. This diminished status can, in fact, sustain and inform—rather than limit—our lives. Going unrecognized can, paradoxically, help us recognize our place in the larger scheme of things.
Yep. This is, more and more, informative of my spirituality.
My personal favorite Hawai'ian deity is Kamapua'a, but this guy actually does hang on one of my walls. (My print is definitely worth less than $5k.) Another interesting tale of repatriation and also a story about provenance.
Sigh. When you check your stats, and all the Russian and UAE bots seem to be swarming to the post you wrote about your best friend, who just died. The post you wrote in 2015, when that wasn't even conceivable.
Ahww, man. Guilty ...
In this moment of political division, Garry sees a spiritual test. The temptation to discard others has always been strong, and in some ways it is stronger than ever. But this is an old problem, maybe the oldest, he says. The Bible is all about overcoming the temptation to discard, to dismiss, to unfriend. If it were always easy to love your neighbor as you love yourself, it wouldn’t be a commandment. “We trust anger. We believe anger gets things done,”
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Happy Enough Old Year
The evening is underway, as are feline and canine post-supper naptimes. Goss has his front half upended inside the warm curve of his back half, curled in the new chair, and Pen is flaked out on her flank in the floor. I chose "Arrival" tonight; slow-moving and blessedly low on explosions, at least halfway along it is - it's gloomy and murky but not too thinky so far. Seems to be just the ticket for me.
The year has been dwindling down with oddness and pains in my head, a great deal of work around the house, but mostly quiet. It is one of my pensive years, to be rung out alone and contemplating.
Last year was a jangle. Good times with friends, but the car got towed, there was loud music and cigarette smoke. This year, just this; staying in, staying warm. Remembering, and looking forward as as I do: seldom and poorly. The memories are ones which once were so painful, but now only make me who I am. And I am content with that, mostly. Always some work to do.
Life is like homeownership; if you don't have something you think you need to work on, the place'll go to pot.
In two weeks from now, many long months of meeting planning, and two trips to attend them, will be over. I realized this a couple of days ago, to my own surprise. Most of 2017 has been occupied with these events; and now I will be able to just do my day-to-day job. It'll be strange for a little while.
I am as content as the fur-bearing critters, this hour. Never satisfied. But content.
CONTENT NEW YEAR TO YOU, and to yours.
*Raises a glass, be it whatever you happen to like* Cheers!
The year has been dwindling down with oddness and pains in my head, a great deal of work around the house, but mostly quiet. It is one of my pensive years, to be rung out alone and contemplating.
Last year was a jangle. Good times with friends, but the car got towed, there was loud music and cigarette smoke. This year, just this; staying in, staying warm. Remembering, and looking forward as as I do: seldom and poorly. The memories are ones which once were so painful, but now only make me who I am. And I am content with that, mostly. Always some work to do.
Life is like homeownership; if you don't have something you think you need to work on, the place'll go to pot.
In two weeks from now, many long months of meeting planning, and two trips to attend them, will be over. I realized this a couple of days ago, to my own surprise. Most of 2017 has been occupied with these events; and now I will be able to just do my day-to-day job. It'll be strange for a little while.
I am as content as the fur-bearing critters, this hour. Never satisfied. But content.
CONTENT NEW YEAR TO YOU, and to yours.
*Raises a glass, be it whatever you happen to like* Cheers!
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
I'm not sure whether this is amusing or not
I'm a writer, so let me tell you a few stories.
Somewhere around fifteen or sixteen years ago, I'd been rocking a longer-haired Bettie Page thing for a while. It amused me - all it takes to "get Bettie'd", as I used to call it, was having brown hair and cutting bangs. But after a while it bored me, so I decided to grow out my bangs.
In those days, I hung out at a blues bar a lot. Enough that I was apparently a fixture - perhaps more than I had realized. One of the resident drunks, a woman I was acquainted with, but not particularly friends with, commented on my hair one night, and I told her I was growing out the bangs. She *wigged out* on me. "But you're our Bettie!"
Needless to say, this rather cemented my resolve than made me trim the fringe.
The fact that I shortly thereafter met a guy online who literally wrote the (crappiest-reviewed-on-Amazon) book about Bettie didn't hurt, either. This was, by the way, pretty much a complete accident. We only dated for four months (four too long), but my divorce from Bettie-ness was complete.
...
Then there was the time I went as Clara Bow for Hallowe'en. I got a little wig, wore a drop-waist, hankie-hem satin dress, threw a couple strings of pearls down my back instead of down my front. I under-painted my lip line, over-painted my eyeshadow and liner, and tweezed my brows to nothing.
Some time later, when I had photos in costume, I happened to see one of my aunts. She peered at the pics, and SWORE that was not me.
...
One of the few moments from my middle and high school years that sticks with me was the time one of the more popular kids said to me that my hair looked different every single day. It's a throwaway thing to say, it doesn't have deep meaning, but it has always somehow informed my self-image. I liked being a human mood-ring, or whatever it is that meant to me - and maybe still means. Certainly, I don't want to be the same thing every day, even if that were a pretty thing - how drab, never changing.
...
For years now, my hair has been the same day in and day out, 95% of the time. Maybe for decades. This is "not a good look" as the kids really don't say these days.
Right now, I have a new hairstyle every five minutes. Short hair can be awful versatile, kids.
Amusingly, one of the first impressions I had of my new haircut, after the stylist made it sort of big and round, was that it resembled Clara Bow. I remembered my beloved late aunt and laughed a bit.
Then, after I'd emailed mom a few pics so she could have and share them, I heard that another of my aunts, and my uncle along with her, were saying, "That is NOT Diane!"
(I wonder - if I put on a pair of glasses, would they call me Diana Prince, maybe? It *was* my dream, lo these forty years ago ...)
Let it be said, none of them, including mom, seems to have noticed I got a second piercing in my right ear, the short side of the asymmetry. Observational skills, y'all. (SCIENCE! WOO!)
I was a long-haired person most of my life. After the initial tug-of-war (usually literally, with a hairbrush) with my mom over hair length, it just became a battle of wills, and I internalized long hair. Mind you, I've always loved it. I loved having a living cape, I loved playing with it, I loved the way it felt. I like long-haired men quite a lot, too.
It's been many years since I found my long hair to be pretty.
And I wasn't playing with it so much, and never had it down anymore, to feel it.
Hmmm, sed I.
But you know how that post goes.
Somewhere around fifteen or sixteen years ago, I'd been rocking a longer-haired Bettie Page thing for a while. It amused me - all it takes to "get Bettie'd", as I used to call it, was having brown hair and cutting bangs. But after a while it bored me, so I decided to grow out my bangs.
In those days, I hung out at a blues bar a lot. Enough that I was apparently a fixture - perhaps more than I had realized. One of the resident drunks, a woman I was acquainted with, but not particularly friends with, commented on my hair one night, and I told her I was growing out the bangs. She *wigged out* on me. "But you're our Bettie!"
Needless to say, this rather cemented my resolve than made me trim the fringe.
The fact that I shortly thereafter met a guy online who literally wrote the (crappiest-reviewed-on-Amazon) book about Bettie didn't hurt, either. This was, by the way, pretty much a complete accident. We only dated for four months (four too long), but my divorce from Bettie-ness was complete.
...
Then there was the time I went as Clara Bow for Hallowe'en. I got a little wig, wore a drop-waist, hankie-hem satin dress, threw a couple strings of pearls down my back instead of down my front. I under-painted my lip line, over-painted my eyeshadow and liner, and tweezed my brows to nothing.
Some time later, when I had photos in costume, I happened to see one of my aunts. She peered at the pics, and SWORE that was not me.
...
One of the few moments from my middle and high school years that sticks with me was the time one of the more popular kids said to me that my hair looked different every single day. It's a throwaway thing to say, it doesn't have deep meaning, but it has always somehow informed my self-image. I liked being a human mood-ring, or whatever it is that meant to me - and maybe still means. Certainly, I don't want to be the same thing every day, even if that were a pretty thing - how drab, never changing.
...
For years now, my hair has been the same day in and day out, 95% of the time. Maybe for decades. This is "not a good look" as the kids really don't say these days.
Right now, I have a new hairstyle every five minutes. Short hair can be awful versatile, kids.
Amusingly, one of the first impressions I had of my new haircut, after the stylist made it sort of big and round, was that it resembled Clara Bow. I remembered my beloved late aunt and laughed a bit.
Then, after I'd emailed mom a few pics so she could have and share them, I heard that another of my aunts, and my uncle along with her, were saying, "That is NOT Diane!"
(I wonder - if I put on a pair of glasses, would they call me Diana Prince, maybe? It *was* my dream, lo these forty years ago ...)
Let it be said, none of them, including mom, seems to have noticed I got a second piercing in my right ear, the short side of the asymmetry. Observational skills, y'all. (SCIENCE! WOO!)
I was a long-haired person most of my life. After the initial tug-of-war (usually literally, with a hairbrush) with my mom over hair length, it just became a battle of wills, and I internalized long hair. Mind you, I've always loved it. I loved having a living cape, I loved playing with it, I loved the way it felt. I like long-haired men quite a lot, too.
It's been many years since I found my long hair to be pretty.
And I wasn't playing with it so much, and never had it down anymore, to feel it.
Hmmm, sed I.
But you know how that post goes.
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
A Poem of Sorts
Today, I wrote a poem of sorts to Mr. X in an email ...
The thing about cutting my hair ... it would be hard for anyone who has never met me to understand just how "big" a statement that is. My being long-haired is so much a part of who I am it's almost a point of stubbornness. Well, it IS stubbornness. Resistance of my mom's utter loathing for long hair. Resistance of What is Expected of me - of women. Resistance of making anybody happy but myself.
So it's weird, these thoughts - this near-obsession I've been nursing for a couple or three months now, of cutting my hair. I'm forty-nine, for goodness' sakes. I resisted cutting it when I reached A Certain Age - now I want to chop it all off?
But here's the thing.
I look around myself, and more and more women my age - and older - are long-haired, and what they seem to be resisting is their age.
Hmmm, sez I. Hmmm.
When I was very small, I had long hair and bangs for a very short time. Tangles and my sensitive headbone screwed that up for me. I was horrible for my mom to work with, brushing my hair - and so, in the seventies, when super long hair was in, when hippie chic was my equivalent to Disney Princess glamour, I lost my long hair and got a PIXIE cut.
I hated that cut. I hated the shags that followed, and every iteration of NOT LONG HAIR my mom dictated to every stylist she ever dragged me to. I managed longer hair in middle school, but somehow (still under maternal control as under the paternal roof) ended up yet again with Mackenzie Phillips's layers come high school. If you look at the old photos of me at the link above, though, you'll just manage to perceive - I also managed a sort of take on Cyndi Lauper's hair, senior year. The cut as produced by a stylist was as seen in the purple sweater, but as it grew out, I would razor it myself, and it was much shorter. I kept it this way for some time, but eventually I tired of maintaining the shaved-right-side.
(Side note - being My Brother's Little Sister, he of the punk rock and scariness: I did not know at all that shaving one side of my head was the least bit odd, for many years. It honestly was just easier for doing schoolwork - I didn't have to constantly throw my hair out of my own way.)
By my freshman year in college, it was plain old shaggy, and I had my eyes on the prize: out of mom's control, my hair could be under my own control. I grew it out. And grew it, and grew it.
I never got Crystal Gayle with the stuff, but it was long enough at times it'd get caught in my armpits sometimes. Heh. That grossed my sister-in-law out once, when I said that. I never could sit on it, but I've always sat BACK on it. Even today, if I didn't wear it up most of the time, it would be long enough to hang between my back and any seat-back.
But I wear it up most of the time.
Hmmm, sez I. Hmmm.
There was a time I didn't wear my hair up all the time. I liked to let it fly. I wore it differently all the time; one of the hallmarks of my style was the time in my teenage years when someone said to me my hair was different every day. I liked that.
These days, it is limited to knots, braids, and very rarely I'll do a barrette on top (and then I end up knotting the hanging length half the time) or a hair band (and then I end up knotting the hanging length more than half the time).
Even when I am alone at home, I twist it out of the way. The stuff is almost never down.
And these women - a lot of them even older than I - with long hair. I don't like their aesthetics. I don't like the sense they're clinging to youth gone by. The sameness. The sadness. I never had much problem with ageing, even though people do tell me I am relatively poor at it. Jamie Lee Curtis's story about Jessica Tandy has long stuck with me. JLC kicks copious amounts of bootay. And she has uber-short hair: undyed.
Hmm.
And the older I get, the more keeping up with my roots annoys me. I got to about an inch and a half of white showing last month, and my most recent dye job is already growing out. Not obvious to anyone but me - YET - but the point is, the upkeep is constant. And it takes two bottles for me to dye my hair.
Mind you - I LOVE my contrasts - the fair skin and dark hair. The light brown eyes and freckles. Playing with makeup and coming out Morticia.
Hmmmm.
I have said for maybe 15 years now, that when I get around 50 and I have "enough" white hair (my hair is WHITE-white, like my mom's and my grandmother's; not steel, not grey), I'd strip it and cut it. I had images of a 50s style and a body wave, something soft and sophisticated.
With the onset of the earliest symptoms, I think, of menopause, have come more concrete ideas in this direction. It began amorphously - jokes with my friends about using bright color in it, once I do go white. Random interest in certain haircuts. The realization of just how edgy it could be, even before I let it go white. A glossily dark bob, curled. A crunchy zhush of short, crispy layers, framing my face. Letting the bangs grow out. One long, soft dark wave.
And, frankly: the fun I would have, shocking the crap out of everyone I know. Not least of all: my sainted mother. She would love me to cut it, of course. She'll both hate and laugh with anything more subversive I do. She will never believe it. That's a fun mental game, right there - just showing up one day, shorn and super stylish. Crazy colors or spiky bits or no, she would DIE.
The thoughts: they have become more specific. More focused. And they're sticking with me.
The Gift of the Magi
I had a beautiful moment recently with my beloved friend Cute Shoes. She gave me an absolutely stunning hairpin; a vintage Deco piece, with grey rhinestones. Graceful. Meaningful. Gloriously beautiful. I had my hair down the day she gave it to me, and immediately put it up. I've worn it several times since.
I had all but set an appointment for a cut that very Thursday. Of course I could not bring myself to do it, suddenly.
A few days later, I researched ways to wear a hairpin in short hair. (This is, by the way, almost as tricky as researching ancient Carthaginian women's names.)
The cut I had in mind, I don't know how well it would work ... but hair grows, too. And I have many styles in mind; I plan to change things regularly.
It came over me again today - how exactly I want it to be, how I'd need to explain to a stylist about the inconvenient cowlick on the wrong side. Working out twice in a fitness room filled with wall-sized mirrors, I mentally pictured it. Looking at those high school pictures, I looked at that short-on-one-side thing.
Tonight, I'll let my hair down. And leave it.
And tomorrow, I'll be wearing a beautiful, gorgeous hairpin. And I love you, CS. And I'll figure this thing OUT.
http://dianelmajor.blogspot.com/2016/01/fractured-light.htmlYes, that wasn't written today. But it's my heart again today.
I want to cut my hair. I want another piercing in my right ear. I want a new tattoo.
I want you.
The thing about cutting my hair ... it would be hard for anyone who has never met me to understand just how "big" a statement that is. My being long-haired is so much a part of who I am it's almost a point of stubbornness. Well, it IS stubbornness. Resistance of my mom's utter loathing for long hair. Resistance of What is Expected of me - of women. Resistance of making anybody happy but myself.
So it's weird, these thoughts - this near-obsession I've been nursing for a couple or three months now, of cutting my hair. I'm forty-nine, for goodness' sakes. I resisted cutting it when I reached A Certain Age - now I want to chop it all off?
But here's the thing.
I look around myself, and more and more women my age - and older - are long-haired, and what they seem to be resisting is their age.
Hmmm, sez I. Hmmm.
When I was very small, I had long hair and bangs for a very short time. Tangles and my sensitive headbone screwed that up for me. I was horrible for my mom to work with, brushing my hair - and so, in the seventies, when super long hair was in, when hippie chic was my equivalent to Disney Princess glamour, I lost my long hair and got a PIXIE cut.
I hated that cut. I hated the shags that followed, and every iteration of NOT LONG HAIR my mom dictated to every stylist she ever dragged me to. I managed longer hair in middle school, but somehow (still under maternal control as under the paternal roof) ended up yet again with Mackenzie Phillips's layers come high school. If you look at the old photos of me at the link above, though, you'll just manage to perceive - I also managed a sort of take on Cyndi Lauper's hair, senior year. The cut as produced by a stylist was as seen in the purple sweater, but as it grew out, I would razor it myself, and it was much shorter. I kept it this way for some time, but eventually I tired of maintaining the shaved-right-side.
(Side note - being My Brother's Little Sister, he of the punk rock and scariness: I did not know at all that shaving one side of my head was the least bit odd, for many years. It honestly was just easier for doing schoolwork - I didn't have to constantly throw my hair out of my own way.)
By my freshman year in college, it was plain old shaggy, and I had my eyes on the prize: out of mom's control, my hair could be under my own control. I grew it out. And grew it, and grew it.
I never got Crystal Gayle with the stuff, but it was long enough at times it'd get caught in my armpits sometimes. Heh. That grossed my sister-in-law out once, when I said that. I never could sit on it, but I've always sat BACK on it. Even today, if I didn't wear it up most of the time, it would be long enough to hang between my back and any seat-back.
But I wear it up most of the time.
Hmmm, sez I. Hmmm.
There was a time I didn't wear my hair up all the time. I liked to let it fly. I wore it differently all the time; one of the hallmarks of my style was the time in my teenage years when someone said to me my hair was different every day. I liked that.
These days, it is limited to knots, braids, and very rarely I'll do a barrette on top (and then I end up knotting the hanging length half the time) or a hair band (and then I end up knotting the hanging length more than half the time).
Even when I am alone at home, I twist it out of the way. The stuff is almost never down.
And these women - a lot of them even older than I - with long hair. I don't like their aesthetics. I don't like the sense they're clinging to youth gone by. The sameness. The sadness. I never had much problem with ageing, even though people do tell me I am relatively poor at it. Jamie Lee Curtis's story about Jessica Tandy has long stuck with me. JLC kicks copious amounts of bootay. And she has uber-short hair: undyed.
Hmm.
And the older I get, the more keeping up with my roots annoys me. I got to about an inch and a half of white showing last month, and my most recent dye job is already growing out. Not obvious to anyone but me - YET - but the point is, the upkeep is constant. And it takes two bottles for me to dye my hair.
Mind you - I LOVE my contrasts - the fair skin and dark hair. The light brown eyes and freckles. Playing with makeup and coming out Morticia.
Hmmmm.
I have said for maybe 15 years now, that when I get around 50 and I have "enough" white hair (my hair is WHITE-white, like my mom's and my grandmother's; not steel, not grey), I'd strip it and cut it. I had images of a 50s style and a body wave, something soft and sophisticated.
With the onset of the earliest symptoms, I think, of menopause, have come more concrete ideas in this direction. It began amorphously - jokes with my friends about using bright color in it, once I do go white. Random interest in certain haircuts. The realization of just how edgy it could be, even before I let it go white. A glossily dark bob, curled. A crunchy zhush of short, crispy layers, framing my face. Letting the bangs grow out. One long, soft dark wave.
And, frankly: the fun I would have, shocking the crap out of everyone I know. Not least of all: my sainted mother. She would love me to cut it, of course. She'll both hate and laugh with anything more subversive I do. She will never believe it. That's a fun mental game, right there - just showing up one day, shorn and super stylish. Crazy colors or spiky bits or no, she would DIE.
The thoughts: they have become more specific. More focused. And they're sticking with me.
The Gift of the Magi
I had a beautiful moment recently with my beloved friend Cute Shoes. She gave me an absolutely stunning hairpin; a vintage Deco piece, with grey rhinestones. Graceful. Meaningful. Gloriously beautiful. I had my hair down the day she gave it to me, and immediately put it up. I've worn it several times since.
I had all but set an appointment for a cut that very Thursday. Of course I could not bring myself to do it, suddenly.
A few days later, I researched ways to wear a hairpin in short hair. (This is, by the way, almost as tricky as researching ancient Carthaginian women's names.)
The cut I had in mind, I don't know how well it would work ... but hair grows, too. And I have many styles in mind; I plan to change things regularly.
It came over me again today - how exactly I want it to be, how I'd need to explain to a stylist about the inconvenient cowlick on the wrong side. Working out twice in a fitness room filled with wall-sized mirrors, I mentally pictured it. Looking at those high school pictures, I looked at that short-on-one-side thing.
Tonight, I'll let my hair down. And leave it.
And tomorrow, I'll be wearing a beautiful, gorgeous hairpin. And I love you, CS. And I'll figure this thing OUT.
Friday, December 19, 2014
Good Friday
The holiday with this post's title is at another point in the year, but this Friday before Christmas was pretty dadgum good. For one, the end of my last full week of work for the year. For two, pay day. For three: my job, which I love. Two of my managers came to me with a gift bag: a pen and pencil set in polished graphite-grey metal, with my name engraved on each. Very nice, and so thoughtful! I was a bit blown away.
I've been working with on an IT migration for which my status is neck-in-neck with IT itself, matched by no other area in the company. So that's good, too - but I'm also working with smart and supportive folks who seem to think I'm coming up with good ideas and doing really well. One of them is a woman of about thirty; and today she asked me what skin care or moisturizer I use, because some giveaway of my age astonished her. Hee. Aww!
When I got home, the bank who held a credit card I closed out a few months ago had sent me a check, following a fraud investigation - so, sixty bucks for me.
This is one of those days when the cumulative effect of events was pretty spiff.
So how was your Friday?
I've been working with on an IT migration for which my status is neck-in-neck with IT itself, matched by no other area in the company. So that's good, too - but I'm also working with smart and supportive folks who seem to think I'm coming up with good ideas and doing really well. One of them is a woman of about thirty; and today she asked me what skin care or moisturizer I use, because some giveaway of my age astonished her. Hee. Aww!
When I got home, the bank who held a credit card I closed out a few months ago had sent me a check, following a fraud investigation - so, sixty bucks for me.
This is one of those days when the cumulative effect of events was pretty spiff.
So how was your Friday?
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Mighty Hot Wind
Years ago, watching “A Mighty Wind” with Mr. X, he had a head-shaker moment, in the midst of one of the more breathless faux-interviews about folk music’s supposed sweeping importance, when he was so inside the film he actually said, “I don’t remember it being this big a deal” basically.
Which, of course, was pretty much the point.
Mighty Wind is such a good mockumentary, you fall in like that, you forget it IS a joke at times – as with Spinal Tap actually selling albums in the real world, as with dog shows actually capturing the national attention every Thanksgiving now. It’s completely sunk into one of those things most people are aware of, but few people are quite as breathless (or windy …) about as those who dedicate themselves to X or Y or Z with the fervor of a calling.
And that breathlessness … I think there are times we all pick and choose those things we accept as epochal, and those we ignore or even frankly deride. I don’t get baseball, but there are those who would explode with testimonial passion if they heard me say it. Few people understand how ancient Frankish history could possibly be conceived of as interesting, but for me it’s a rabbit hole well worth the burrowing into, and I can curl up in it all warm and contented.
We all have our fan-child obsessions. If we didn’t, how would the perfectly astounding world library of documentaries survive – hagiographies of comedians, politicians, birds, towns, pieces of interesting infrastructure … ? Some are unintentionally hilarious (have you ever seen the “Pursuit of Excellence” series? The ferrets one is glorious), some you get into (American Experience and Ken Burns are terrifyingly good at this), some teach, some just provide slathering tongue jobs to celebrities. But they are everywhere, and an awful lot of people have begun to live lives unconsciously dedicated to inspiring this kind of breathless adoration in others.
See also: this blog. Not only do I get a bit wheezy myself on certain exciting subjects like Carolina dogs, pattern welded steel, and “Barbarians”, but I write the whole thing (as an unpublished one) as my “authorial platform” – which we’re actually *supposed* to do. When I’m dead, this blog will be the precious, precious snoflake in the internet’s blizzard of silliness and verbiage, paying homage to my own silliness and verbiage. My testament!
I’m not done with vanity yet, clearly.
If there are times “real” documentary such as the ferrets outing, and mockumentary like “A Mighty Wind” are indistinguishable, it’s hard not to think all of us veer into parody. For me, that’s dandy and amusing. I enthuse, but have never expected my blather to actually matter to any but the most particular, kind, and probably acquainted-with-me audience. I’ve worked to build readership, and had fun with it – and I do take seriously the fact that this is a major facet of my public face, even if it’s difficult to take seriously the notion that my public’s ever going to make documentaries about me, treasure the marginalia scrawled in my personal collection of books, or remember me when I’m dead longer than my nieces live.
My enduring aspiration, even with my work, which I honestly want to support, is to become that dusty book on a shelf which some desultory kid will discover on a disused relative’s bookshelf (and, yes, I mean that adjective to modify “relative” there), and accidentally fall into and unwittingly love, someday. All the rest is business. Worthwhile, hopefully rewarding in a real and financial way, gratifying in ways I can’t even imagine from where I sit. But beside the point of storytelling.
We can get breathless again tomorrow (or, perhaps, in January, when the agents say it’s okay!). For now. Just breathe. Maybe smile, too.
Chappy Channukah, Merry Holidays, Sweet Kwanzaa, Hippo New Year, and a blessed Christmas (and all the rest) to all. I’m so in this season. Hoping it is wondrous for all of you, too.
Which, of course, was pretty much the point.
Mighty Wind is such a good mockumentary, you fall in like that, you forget it IS a joke at times – as with Spinal Tap actually selling albums in the real world, as with dog shows actually capturing the national attention every Thanksgiving now. It’s completely sunk into one of those things most people are aware of, but few people are quite as breathless (or windy …) about as those who dedicate themselves to X or Y or Z with the fervor of a calling.
And that breathlessness … I think there are times we all pick and choose those things we accept as epochal, and those we ignore or even frankly deride. I don’t get baseball, but there are those who would explode with testimonial passion if they heard me say it. Few people understand how ancient Frankish history could possibly be conceived of as interesting, but for me it’s a rabbit hole well worth the burrowing into, and I can curl up in it all warm and contented.
We all have our fan-child obsessions. If we didn’t, how would the perfectly astounding world library of documentaries survive – hagiographies of comedians, politicians, birds, towns, pieces of interesting infrastructure … ? Some are unintentionally hilarious (have you ever seen the “Pursuit of Excellence” series? The ferrets one is glorious), some you get into (American Experience and Ken Burns are terrifyingly good at this), some teach, some just provide slathering tongue jobs to celebrities. But they are everywhere, and an awful lot of people have begun to live lives unconsciously dedicated to inspiring this kind of breathless adoration in others.
See also: this blog. Not only do I get a bit wheezy myself on certain exciting subjects like Carolina dogs, pattern welded steel, and “Barbarians”, but I write the whole thing (as an unpublished one) as my “authorial platform” – which we’re actually *supposed* to do. When I’m dead, this blog will be the precious, precious snoflake in the internet’s blizzard of silliness and verbiage, paying homage to my own silliness and verbiage. My testament!
I’m not done with vanity yet, clearly.
If there are times “real” documentary such as the ferrets outing, and mockumentary like “A Mighty Wind” are indistinguishable, it’s hard not to think all of us veer into parody. For me, that’s dandy and amusing. I enthuse, but have never expected my blather to actually matter to any but the most particular, kind, and probably acquainted-with-me audience. I’ve worked to build readership, and had fun with it – and I do take seriously the fact that this is a major facet of my public face, even if it’s difficult to take seriously the notion that my public’s ever going to make documentaries about me, treasure the marginalia scrawled in my personal collection of books, or remember me when I’m dead longer than my nieces live.
My enduring aspiration, even with my work, which I honestly want to support, is to become that dusty book on a shelf which some desultory kid will discover on a disused relative’s bookshelf (and, yes, I mean that adjective to modify “relative” there), and accidentally fall into and unwittingly love, someday. All the rest is business. Worthwhile, hopefully rewarding in a real and financial way, gratifying in ways I can’t even imagine from where I sit. But beside the point of storytelling.
We can get breathless again tomorrow (or, perhaps, in January, when the agents say it’s okay!). For now. Just breathe. Maybe smile, too.
Chappy Channukah, Merry Holidays, Sweet Kwanzaa, Hippo New Year, and a blessed Christmas (and all the rest) to all. I’m so in this season. Hoping it is wondrous for all of you, too.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Thin White Duke, Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust ...
... and the best dressed person in the history of Britain. Figures. That David Jones Bowie for ya.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Hygeine in History Again
Elizabeth Chadwick has illuminated in more depth the particulars of depilation in medieval history, a subject I have touched on (heh) before. Not recipes I'm eager to try!
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Special Effects
The continuing themes at this blog, touching on the history of hygiene, beauty, and costume, get me to thinking specifically about the use of cosmetics in the human pursuit of self-beautification. I haven't posted a great deal specifically about makeup and paint, but the fact is that as I have long said, "Makeup is one of my favorite toys."
Still - bit of a surprise that someone who'd known me all my life could not see *me* underneath a very simple layer of paint.
I contain multitudes.
It is also a frank indulgence - to spend decidedly un-counted time physically pampering myself, to bathe, to scent, to primp, to dress, to pick out overstated earrings, to take care of myself. Cosmetic application is fun - which way will I do my eyes today, how well will this method of blending, this color, this painting of my mood or attitude work. It's my theory that some part of the reason people say I don't look as old as I am is that my mask is not set - indeed, was not set in 1986 - because I am always trying some new thing, never allowing myself to petrify visually. I don't have clue-catcher bangs and a spiral perm - and I don't tan and wear frosted lipstick either. Nerdliness is next to youthfulness, after all. Heh.
Several months ago, I was sitting with a friendly acquaintance, out on a Saturday night having fun, and schmanzied up per my usual going-out excess.
He is someone who has on occasion flirted a bit, and without being judgy it may be said I believe he had enjoyed a couple of cocktails. By way of compliment, he said to me, "You don't need all that makeup."
Never minding the way we train men to relate to women in our culture, nor the presumption of judging someone to her face, I realized what an odd compliment it really is.
"Hon. This paint is not remediation. This is special effects."
My favorite aunt once saw a picture of me dressed as Clara Bow for Hallowe'en, and she swore to me for half an hour "That is not a picture of *you*."
I had put on a wig, altered my eyebrows, under-drawn my lips, even goosed my actual expression for photos. The point had been to achieve a period effect, to look more like Miss Bow - to be in a costume, not to look like myself.
Still - bit of a surprise that someone who'd known me all my life could not see *me* underneath a very simple layer of paint.
The makeup and wig above, the makeup my pal was trying to pooh-pooh out of necessity - not about being fixing any kind of ugly. And not, indeed, about hiding who I am, either. I was wearing a fabulous dress, fabulous shoes. Gotta give fabulous face, it's all drag. It would look weird to wander around dressed up and sporting my freckles, which I love but which I get to wear ALL the time.
For me, there can be no interest in looking the same way all the time. I revel in what I am today, a makeup-naked hausfrau playing with my pets in sneaks and comfy pants. I also revel in impeccable shoes for work, or a great jacket to go with jeans for an outing with friends, and - yep - long, soft dresses and impractical heels for a night out. It is fun for me to change from situation to situation, to shift, even to surprise sometimes. As far back as high school, I was told "you never look the same way one day to the next" - and this has turned out to be one of the formative compliments I've ever heard.
I contain multitudes.
I look at people who are always "on" and don't understand the appeal - but, then again, for me to never *ever* be "on" would be a bit of a drag too. My personality isn't suited to stagnation, and playing with the way I look stimulates some creativity.
And so ... painting my face is not about fixing something (I think/anyone else might think is) wrong. I go around without any makeup at all, and I go around with a lot less than in this photo, MOST of the time. Something like this shot is about, if anything, heightening and emphasizing what I might feel is right with my face. Or just having some darn fun (yeah, wigs itch, but getting told I look like Barbara Feldman is enjoyable indeed).
Special effects can also be about capturing something other than beauty - period authenticity in a costume, for instance, or simply creating a look which evokes a certain reaction. Makeup can be used for a sense of personal change, too; the way some people get haircuts - or *surgery* - or redecorate ... I can make a change in my face (and still wash it off later, no damage done). For me, this is not about a lack of self-esteem, or denial of self, but the simple diversion of change.
It is also a frank indulgence - to spend decidedly un-counted time physically pampering myself, to bathe, to scent, to primp, to dress, to pick out overstated earrings, to take care of myself. Cosmetic application is fun - which way will I do my eyes today, how well will this method of blending, this color, this painting of my mood or attitude work. It's my theory that some part of the reason people say I don't look as old as I am is that my mask is not set - indeed, was not set in 1986 - because I am always trying some new thing, never allowing myself to petrify visually. I don't have clue-catcher bangs and a spiral perm - and I don't tan and wear frosted lipstick either. Nerdliness is next to youthfulness, after all. Heh.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
The Essential
Giving full faith and credit to the artist, Donnie Green, I feel a certain right to post this image - as I happen to own the original painting myself.
Donnie's reason for calling this The Essential was that it included all the elements which, at the time of its creation (2000) he needed in his art. The boy whose face peers out from the sun, not precisely sunny, but certainly a representation of innocence (oft-repeated by a man and a muse with little innocence intact). The small, elongated rabbits - an early-ish appearance, which in later paintings reached almost Harvey-like (Donnie Darko-like?) proportions. The bats, the foetuses ... and centrally, enduringly ... The Creepy Old Lady.
COL came to a new level of refinement at the time of this painting; I had seen her before in Donnie's astonishing output, but she had always been nothing but a head, always been a putty grey-green, incomplete and disembodied. Here she steps forth fully formed (but for that heart-shaped - mangled? or unfinished? - cranium and the minimal number of digits), dressed in a print which always reminds me of the guy in the Bugs Bunny cartoon who walks up a set of stairs and the pattern of his loud check jacket scrolls by, unmoving, as the man moves up the stairs. Her Chuckie Taylors are astonishingly rendered, as is the mouse. The cats' nose piercings are gleaming and actually creepier by far than the bats and the foetuses.
The Essential is basically a koan, a blacklight poster, the sort of thing you can stare at and either lose yourself in it, or lose it in yourself. Its meticulously colored and twisted knotwork owes as much to Persia as the Celts, Donnie studying these designs assiduously and incorporating them in his - essential - playing-card inspired proportions and compositions. Nothing about it seems strange nor even creepy to me, much as I refer to it as I do (the epithet COL above), and from the first time I saw it I wanted it. It took me years to pay Donnie for it, even at the wildly generous discount he gave me on its price, and I will never forget the gallery showing where I gave him the last money, and took it away with me. When she became mine.
I actually posed for Donnie two times, and he painted me thrice. I have all three - he used me for practice in capturing realistic skin tones at that time he was shifting from painting strictly unrealistic monsters to portraiture and more intimate, but still strange, works. If I could take a good photo of two of these portraits, I may post them some time; one is in black-and-white, and maintains some of the extreme austerity of his pieces before focusing on people and their faces. The second he painted from a polaroid, and though some aspect of the nose and perhaps a somewhat rosebud-ish mouth remind me of "Kelly from (the original) 90210", there's also ... something. Something he definitely captured, of me - at least, at that time (1997 or so I think). The second is my favorite, and is in color, and is the real experimentation with skin tone - and was painted at lightning speed, with no model but one of the photos he'd taken of me when I was actually there. One day he painted the black and white - the next day I came back and he'd painted the color portrait, without my even posing nor being available.
The third portrait, the second I actually sat for, wasn't a sitting but a standing, if I am honest. It is the weakest, and was the one he did "for me" - the one which was a realization of my ideas, not Donnie's own. Its face looks like an ex girlfriend of his, not like me, and its theme is so pompously embarrassing to me now I dare not even repeat it, though I had him spell it out pointblank on the canvas. Poor guy - but he was generous to offer to paint for me to order.
I've had these four works of his for so many years, and three of them may never ever be displayed. For me to hang them would be vain even by my standards, and it is beyond comprehension anyone else on the planet would ever want to. I can't even imagine any time in all the years of our long separation(s) Mr. X. even would want to have them around. And so this artist's work, even if it is "only" practice work, lies hidden in my guest room, not even seen nor remembered for I can't even say how many years.
I used to look at those portraits sometimes, wonder what their fate could be - how they could be seen. And yet, then, what they had to show was only what I was, every day. Dorian Grey's contrarian cousin am I - now that they might show a face nobody can hope to see anymore ... the youth and beauty lie hidden, and the middle-aged broad with decayed vanity issues goes out into the world.
Donnie's reason for calling this The Essential was that it included all the elements which, at the time of its creation (2000) he needed in his art. The boy whose face peers out from the sun, not precisely sunny, but certainly a representation of innocence (oft-repeated by a man and a muse with little innocence intact). The small, elongated rabbits - an early-ish appearance, which in later paintings reached almost Harvey-like (Donnie Darko-like?) proportions. The bats, the foetuses ... and centrally, enduringly ... The Creepy Old Lady.
COL came to a new level of refinement at the time of this painting; I had seen her before in Donnie's astonishing output, but she had always been nothing but a head, always been a putty grey-green, incomplete and disembodied. Here she steps forth fully formed (but for that heart-shaped - mangled? or unfinished? - cranium and the minimal number of digits), dressed in a print which always reminds me of the guy in the Bugs Bunny cartoon who walks up a set of stairs and the pattern of his loud check jacket scrolls by, unmoving, as the man moves up the stairs. Her Chuckie Taylors are astonishingly rendered, as is the mouse. The cats' nose piercings are gleaming and actually creepier by far than the bats and the foetuses.
The Essential is basically a koan, a blacklight poster, the sort of thing you can stare at and either lose yourself in it, or lose it in yourself. Its meticulously colored and twisted knotwork owes as much to Persia as the Celts, Donnie studying these designs assiduously and incorporating them in his - essential - playing-card inspired proportions and compositions. Nothing about it seems strange nor even creepy to me, much as I refer to it as I do (the epithet COL above), and from the first time I saw it I wanted it. It took me years to pay Donnie for it, even at the wildly generous discount he gave me on its price, and I will never forget the gallery showing where I gave him the last money, and took it away with me. When she became mine.
I actually posed for Donnie two times, and he painted me thrice. I have all three - he used me for practice in capturing realistic skin tones at that time he was shifting from painting strictly unrealistic monsters to portraiture and more intimate, but still strange, works. If I could take a good photo of two of these portraits, I may post them some time; one is in black-and-white, and maintains some of the extreme austerity of his pieces before focusing on people and their faces. The second he painted from a polaroid, and though some aspect of the nose and perhaps a somewhat rosebud-ish mouth remind me of "Kelly from (the original) 90210", there's also ... something. Something he definitely captured, of me - at least, at that time (1997 or so I think). The second is my favorite, and is in color, and is the real experimentation with skin tone - and was painted at lightning speed, with no model but one of the photos he'd taken of me when I was actually there. One day he painted the black and white - the next day I came back and he'd painted the color portrait, without my even posing nor being available.
The third portrait, the second I actually sat for, wasn't a sitting but a standing, if I am honest. It is the weakest, and was the one he did "for me" - the one which was a realization of my ideas, not Donnie's own. Its face looks like an ex girlfriend of his, not like me, and its theme is so pompously embarrassing to me now I dare not even repeat it, though I had him spell it out pointblank on the canvas. Poor guy - but he was generous to offer to paint for me to order.
I've had these four works of his for so many years, and three of them may never ever be displayed. For me to hang them would be vain even by my standards, and it is beyond comprehension anyone else on the planet would ever want to. I can't even imagine any time in all the years of our long separation(s) Mr. X. even would want to have them around. And so this artist's work, even if it is "only" practice work, lies hidden in my guest room, not even seen nor remembered for I can't even say how many years.
I used to look at those portraits sometimes, wonder what their fate could be - how they could be seen. And yet, then, what they had to show was only what I was, every day. Dorian Grey's contrarian cousin am I - now that they might show a face nobody can hope to see anymore ... the youth and beauty lie hidden, and the middle-aged broad with decayed vanity issues goes out into the world.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
When Self Esteem = Cosmetic Surgery
This makes me heartsick for our "culture" and the children we inflict it upon.
I can't even add further comment. Just read the link, it says what it sets out to.
“Beautiful” is bullshit, a standard created to make women into good consumers, too busy wallowing in self-loathing to notice that we’re second class citizens.
I can't even add further comment. Just read the link, it says what it sets out to.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
This is More Than a Comment
I started to respond to Mojourner in the comments, but - no - this goes right up in a post.
**
Wasn't on. I've actually been contemplating the precipitous backslide of feminism for a while now, and I'm not the only one who sees it.
Sure, Free to Be You & Me is a weak example - but the point is, when I was coming up, even way back in the dark ages of the 1970s, in a Southern Baptist home, in the morass of beautiful downtown White Flight suburbia, the stone-age exposures I had to pop culture were FAR more enlightened than "The Bachelorette" and rather terrifying swaths of the YA urban fantasy lit now utterly saturating the populace. As an agent I really like said a year and a half ago, "the boobs are getting smaller" ... but female characters in the vast majority of entertainment today are NOT what they used to be.
Even as recently as the 1990s, women - actual, human women (and not even all of them milky white) - were allowed to make money making music. Now even the supposedly "edgy" ones (Gaga) conform to the blond, radically thin, porcelain-skinned model pioneered by Britney when she was a pedophile's delight.
Look at a movie made in the 1970s and just the physical appearance of the women alone is a revelation - but the characters written back then are almost alien today. Sex was something they participated in - it wasn't imposed upon them - and it wasn't something they imposed upon those around them, either. These days, there isn't a female character in television, movies, or "reality" TV who isn't using sex in one way or another - to that exhausting, inevitable end: proving that women are either evil sexbots - or useless, decaying flesh. The evil sexbot might well be appealingly drawn. But it's a detestable and seriously tiresome cliche' I frankly didn't have to grow up with.
Yes, female characters have been "drawn that way" for millenia now. Even the early Church's hysteria about feminine sexuality and its resultant He Man Women Hater's (and rather drawn out; it took centuries) decision to refuse priests the right to wives was a reactionary stance strictly by gender. BUT. When I was growing up, that was not the ONLY available model of femininity. Love her or hate her, even "Maude" was an option once upon a time.
Now, though, there's Sullen Teenage Girl, the character whose life is utterly empty but for the empty veins of her chilly and much-aged vampire/boyfriend. There are the "boobs getting a bit smaller" heroines of games, none of whom presents as a human woman ever really could. There's "The Bachelorette" and every pneumatic, "perfect" girl hawking her body (erm, music) and a culture glorifying adolescent cat-fighting and vanity the likes of which even I can't hold a candle to.
I have never cared for Madonna - and she's become the very icon of everything I'm complaining about, as well as a hilarious travesty to boot - but in 1983, that girl had a gap in her teeth, armpit hair, and a belly on her. At least she looked like a *person* - and still approximated that financial bonanza people equate with success. Belinda Carlisle got a lot of flack 25 years ago for not being a stick - but she had a career (and, I doubt, ever got a boob job either). Beautiful, talented women who weren't peroxided nor stamped with makeup straight out of Playboy magazine, standardized, sanitized, all vestige of talent rendered irrelevant before the almighty corporate trends of "sexy" and "perfect". Melissa Etheridge could not get a break today, period. And those years I was talking about, in the 90s? - when PJ Harvey and all those alterna-GRRLS who had something to say beyond "please observe my appearance" - are over. I don't know when I've caught sight of an American performer whose own raw gifts could really overcome anything so important as the package she's served in. (Yeah, yeah, Adele is doing well - and she has a curve, yes. But Adele is already pissing people off due to oversaturation, and those curves of hers still come packaged in highly calculated vintage style, perfect false eyelashes, and a creamy envelope of beautiful skin so luminous a camera still adores her. Holler at me when a woman comes on the scene who is homely by current telegenic standards, but whose assets and training are more luminous than that skin. Particularly if she is not extremely pale, no matter her race.)
Holler at me, for that matter, when you see a female police officer, attorney, or actual romantic lead who has a waistline above 24 inches ... or an ID indicating she was born before the 80s. Who has something more to say than platitudes or pining admiration for some man, or (worst of all) self sacrificing paeans of martyrdom which mouth a writer's cause, not a character's. I have grown pretty sick of the self-martyring female character.
Gaaaahhhh.
I need to go mow the grass, so I"m posting this while my thoughts are still roiling. But still. Keep on thinking for me. And I'm not stopping either.
**
Wasn't on. I've actually been contemplating the precipitous backslide of feminism for a while now, and I'm not the only one who sees it.
Sure, Free to Be You & Me is a weak example - but the point is, when I was coming up, even way back in the dark ages of the 1970s, in a Southern Baptist home, in the morass of beautiful downtown White Flight suburbia, the stone-age exposures I had to pop culture were FAR more enlightened than "The Bachelorette" and rather terrifying swaths of the YA urban fantasy lit now utterly saturating the populace. As an agent I really like said a year and a half ago, "the boobs are getting smaller" ... but female characters in the vast majority of entertainment today are NOT what they used to be.
Even as recently as the 1990s, women - actual, human women (and not even all of them milky white) - were allowed to make money making music. Now even the supposedly "edgy" ones (Gaga) conform to the blond, radically thin, porcelain-skinned model pioneered by Britney when she was a pedophile's delight.
Look at a movie made in the 1970s and just the physical appearance of the women alone is a revelation - but the characters written back then are almost alien today. Sex was something they participated in - it wasn't imposed upon them - and it wasn't something they imposed upon those around them, either. These days, there isn't a female character in television, movies, or "reality" TV who isn't using sex in one way or another - to that exhausting, inevitable end: proving that women are either evil sexbots - or useless, decaying flesh. The evil sexbot might well be appealingly drawn. But it's a detestable and seriously tiresome cliche' I frankly didn't have to grow up with.
Yes, female characters have been "drawn that way" for millenia now. Even the early Church's hysteria about feminine sexuality and its resultant He Man Women Hater's (and rather drawn out; it took centuries) decision to refuse priests the right to wives was a reactionary stance strictly by gender. BUT. When I was growing up, that was not the ONLY available model of femininity. Love her or hate her, even "Maude" was an option once upon a time.
Now, though, there's Sullen Teenage Girl, the character whose life is utterly empty but for the empty veins of her chilly and much-aged vampire/boyfriend. There are the "boobs getting a bit smaller" heroines of games, none of whom presents as a human woman ever really could. There's "The Bachelorette" and every pneumatic, "perfect" girl hawking her body (erm, music) and a culture glorifying adolescent cat-fighting and vanity the likes of which even I can't hold a candle to.
I have never cared for Madonna - and she's become the very icon of everything I'm complaining about, as well as a hilarious travesty to boot - but in 1983, that girl had a gap in her teeth, armpit hair, and a belly on her. At least she looked like a *person* - and still approximated that financial bonanza people equate with success. Belinda Carlisle got a lot of flack 25 years ago for not being a stick - but she had a career (and, I doubt, ever got a boob job either). Beautiful, talented women who weren't peroxided nor stamped with makeup straight out of Playboy magazine, standardized, sanitized, all vestige of talent rendered irrelevant before the almighty corporate trends of "sexy" and "perfect". Melissa Etheridge could not get a break today, period. And those years I was talking about, in the 90s? - when PJ Harvey and all those alterna-GRRLS who had something to say beyond "please observe my appearance" - are over. I don't know when I've caught sight of an American performer whose own raw gifts could really overcome anything so important as the package she's served in. (Yeah, yeah, Adele is doing well - and she has a curve, yes. But Adele is already pissing people off due to oversaturation, and those curves of hers still come packaged in highly calculated vintage style, perfect false eyelashes, and a creamy envelope of beautiful skin so luminous a camera still adores her. Holler at me when a woman comes on the scene who is homely by current telegenic standards, but whose assets and training are more luminous than that skin. Particularly if she is not extremely pale, no matter her race.)
Holler at me, for that matter, when you see a female police officer, attorney, or actual romantic lead who has a waistline above 24 inches ... or an ID indicating she was born before the 80s. Who has something more to say than platitudes or pining admiration for some man, or (worst of all) self sacrificing paeans of martyrdom which mouth a writer's cause, not a character's. I have grown pretty sick of the self-martyring female character.
Gaaaahhhh.
I need to go mow the grass, so I"m posting this while my thoughts are still roiling. But still. Keep on thinking for me. And I'm not stopping either.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Profile Pic
I don't actually like this new photo, but unlike the previous Laughing Diane, at least this one is not two years old. Call it a certain brand of truth in advertising.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Yeah. I Have Them.
Mom found them somewhere several years ago, and gave me my orthopedic little red shoes. As low as my pigeon-toed-ness looms in my life (it's something X may not even *know* about me - and X knows almost every possible thing anybody could know about me), I remember these shoes very clearly. I hated them - of course ... vanity is hardly a new thing for me, and when you are six and stuck in conspicuously hideous, 1940s style red leather brogans when it's the 1970s and ALL the other girls are cute, clopping, stiff brogans are unnecessary to a tantrum-throwing extent.
And so, when they reappeared after thirty-five years of oblivion, I kept them. They probably mean more to and about me than the little patent leather baby shoes my uncle bought me when I was an infant. (And yep - I have those too.) They have the character of wear - and are no less stiff with age than they felt when they were fresh, if never fresh looking, out of the hideous shoe store. I have an ambivalence to them, now, deeper with age and physical pain, even than the loathing I felt as an unpopular and unfashionable little girl.
My mom didn't understand - they never do, of course. She was pretty (I didn't know it explicitly, but I sensed she had never been the ugly kid I was). She was sociable and got to wear good shoes. I used to play in the shoes she had worn as a young professional lady, working at a bank (shoes I frankly emulate today, and thank goodness for the popularity of vintage styles right now). She was everything I could not even conceive of hoping to be. And she was mean, and tried to make me wear ugly shoes - all just because my TOE turned in. Bitter life.
It's predictable beyond wasting a short story on it, but the shoes above probably contributed powerfully to my obsession with osteo-punishers - and I am unrepentant.
Ahh, but Guess is a pretty well made (amazingly comfortable!) punisher. I can't call myself a sinner - and they were on sale.
***
I have downshifted in my workaday shoes. 1930s styles being good to go right now, I am loving a pair of Aerosoles with adorable, short, sturdy heels, good toe boxes, and generous insole cushioning. And the red Rampage ones with the band across the upper. And the beautiful sculpted-heel navy Circa Joan and Davids with, again, space for actual toes in the toe boxes - and practically ripped from my mom's single-days stylebook.
Saturday night? Still goes to things like the Guess pretties above. But I can't pretend age, taste, fashion, and de-escalating heel heights make an unpalatable style cocktail at this point.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Mary Sue and Me
For those who may not have heard the term, a Mary Sue is a character possessed of a bit more virtue, charisma, and magic than is entirely fair to impute to anybody. Most often female, MS will always be magnificently beautiful, possessed of preternatural intellect and ability, and charismatic above and beyond the call of her role in any story. Written by a male *or* a female author, even if it isn't a personal projection, I think the phenomenon of the Mary Sue is an exercise of wish-fulfilment; either that of vicariously seeing oneself, or seeing womanhood, by ths standard of our culture's current epectation of The Ideal.
As a feminist, I could speak volumes to the preponderance of the gender of these characters (you can find "Gary Sue's", but Marys seem to dominate the species), but this will not be my text today.
In writing about Clovis, I offered few physical descriptions of my characters. It's something X and I have talked about often, and I've been on record before as to why I didn't spend time on it. For one, I believe readers tend to create their own mental pictures - and I believe, honestly, this is actually central to the point and the very joy of books - so it seems silly to go much beyond "big guy, blond, long hair, healthy" or "she was small and had a mobile mouth and slim, nervous, nimble fingers" to my mind. For two, detailed description is sometimes all too likely to be hagiography. The historical romances I grew up with were fulsome in descritption, and unvarying in their praise and flattery, so - being a contrarian - I shied back from that. And finally, given that I wrote in first person, and given my character, any lingeringly doting detail about Clovis' cousins, or even his wives, seemed disingenuous and out of place. This was a man concerned with much in life, but the tender charms of those around him would not have been paramount.
But I have realized, there is another reason - and it is related to the Mary Sue idea. I snobbishly believe Mary Sues are often avatars for authors, and serve the function of vanity. One can be wildly magnetic, successful, gorgeous ... and, of course, unnecessarily persecuted for it ... by living through, and creating, a character with all these attributes. It doesn't matter whether the author IS or has any of these things - or doesn't. The point is to fantasize, and everyone does that in one way or another.
Me, I don't need this particular fantasy.
I'm that rare bird of a woman who's too confident (too vain) to wish I were more - or much less - than I am. I'm the foolhardy and overweening thing who can pick up a fashion magazine, and - far from developing an instant eating disorder, and complex about my inadequacy - puts it down with a sense of superiority regarding my abilities and personality, my sense of style, and my maturity and curves.
But even more important, for my writing ...
I don't want to live through my characters.
This is core, this is key. This is the deepest and most important thing.
Just as I don't want to be the Next Great Southern Novelist, because I want OUT of my familiar world, and that is why I am a storyteller: I don't want to re-envision the people I know and spend time with them in the virtual space of my writing. I love my friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances ... but if the act of writing is "creative" ... then stealing those people and regurgitating them into my imaginary worlds defeats that purpose, for me.
There is not one soul in my life who could have modeled for Clovis. I took my best friend's hands to use for Clotilde, but not so much her face, her personality. There is one minor character some might recognize as my avatar, but that one has little to do with the action overall, and the insertion doesn't affect very much. Though I have an uncommitted idea that one guy herein could look like Shaun White, it wouldn't break my mental deal for my readers to cast him more Teutonic in their minds. As much pride as I take in my work, my sense of ownership and control over it is not that pronounced.
In any case, I'm unsure I would like to know people like this. Clovis speaks with my voice, and I hope his charisma is as powerful to others as it was to me. The character is wildly fascinating, and arrests attention ... But, as many assets as he has, I'm not sure I would much like the person if he existed. Even his ghost, prompting me to write, and I never had a close relationship. I was steward and servant to this king, while I wrote him; not a beloved comrade, or even a counselor. I owed him something - I owe all my works my best - but an affectionate relationship, I don't have, intimate with this creature of such powerful charisma. One might sooner pull an angel down by the ankle than claim community with certain characters!
With the second work in progress, it may be possible to develop more closely with my characters; yet even in this case, I don't feel "friendship" nor love for the women under construction. For me, perhaps, being too involved would make the writing harder; I don't know. When I was in high school, writing was a personal exercise, and I was incestuously tied up with what I wanted to write about (often historical, somewhat, even then; and yet always very much bound to whatever concerned me then ... generally, that being one boy or another). Now that I am older, I have a view of storytelling that it is a venture out of mysef, and that it is an ADventure to give to readers. Maybe I don't count myself much of an offering, or am just too private to be interested in stripping myself bare before an audience - whatever the cause, I just don't write so personally anymore.
Given the problems I have with my ego, I feel this is only considerate to an audience; a work mired down in my self indulgence would be no favor for any reader to endure. (And yes, I do recognize the irony here ... in BLOGGING - and what could be more self-indulgent, really - about how kind I am, not to subject OTHER readers to exactly what I do here ...)
Of course, nobody's paid to read this site-ful of blather - and few people come here but those friends loved ones already willing to put up with such nonsense. When paid to publish, my memoir will be no part of the product on offer for sale. I have a responsibility to produce something better.
***
I said above Clovis speaks with my voice, and that is true. He made me his mouthpiece, and in doing so I came to speak for his queen, his commanders, his sons, even his enemies at times. All of them recognizeably share some aspect of the way I communicate, but each one is distinct, each one just as much distinct *from me* as the king himself.
My job as an author is to develop my own ability to use the language - yet also to use it to synthesize many people who are not (recognizeably?) myself. I have to simultaneously command and divorce myself from those I create. X and I had a long exchange this week about creativity and art, and I have said many times I claim little authority to call myself an artist - but I am an entertainer and I am a creative craftsman. I take to my work with all the spirit and inspiration I think some people consider to give rise to art, but I hesitate to take so much credit - and I know I don't even aspire to anything to subjective.
I want to divert you, I want to transport you. I want you given over, as much a I was, to my story, to the characters and what they do - to be in the setting I tried to build for you. I want to take you where I went, and yet will be proud if what your eyes see is completely unlike what I had in my mind's eye - will be proud, if my words allow that much freedom, and yet manage enough clarity to fix a picture for you at all.
I want you to become my reader. All I know about writing ... is how to invite you to join in that contract with me ...
As a feminist, I could speak volumes to the preponderance of the gender of these characters (you can find "Gary Sue's", but Marys seem to dominate the species), but this will not be my text today.
In writing about Clovis, I offered few physical descriptions of my characters. It's something X and I have talked about often, and I've been on record before as to why I didn't spend time on it. For one, I believe readers tend to create their own mental pictures - and I believe, honestly, this is actually central to the point and the very joy of books - so it seems silly to go much beyond "big guy, blond, long hair, healthy" or "she was small and had a mobile mouth and slim, nervous, nimble fingers" to my mind. For two, detailed description is sometimes all too likely to be hagiography. The historical romances I grew up with were fulsome in descritption, and unvarying in their praise and flattery, so - being a contrarian - I shied back from that. And finally, given that I wrote in first person, and given my character, any lingeringly doting detail about Clovis' cousins, or even his wives, seemed disingenuous and out of place. This was a man concerned with much in life, but the tender charms of those around him would not have been paramount.
But I have realized, there is another reason - and it is related to the Mary Sue idea. I snobbishly believe Mary Sues are often avatars for authors, and serve the function of vanity. One can be wildly magnetic, successful, gorgeous ... and, of course, unnecessarily persecuted for it ... by living through, and creating, a character with all these attributes. It doesn't matter whether the author IS or has any of these things - or doesn't. The point is to fantasize, and everyone does that in one way or another.
Me, I don't need this particular fantasy.
I'm that rare bird of a woman who's too confident (too vain) to wish I were more - or much less - than I am. I'm the foolhardy and overweening thing who can pick up a fashion magazine, and - far from developing an instant eating disorder, and complex about my inadequacy - puts it down with a sense of superiority regarding my abilities and personality, my sense of style, and my maturity and curves.
But even more important, for my writing ...
I don't want to live through my characters.
This is core, this is key. This is the deepest and most important thing.
Just as I don't want to be the Next Great Southern Novelist, because I want OUT of my familiar world, and that is why I am a storyteller: I don't want to re-envision the people I know and spend time with them in the virtual space of my writing. I love my friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances ... but if the act of writing is "creative" ... then stealing those people and regurgitating them into my imaginary worlds defeats that purpose, for me.
There is not one soul in my life who could have modeled for Clovis. I took my best friend's hands to use for Clotilde, but not so much her face, her personality. There is one minor character some might recognize as my avatar, but that one has little to do with the action overall, and the insertion doesn't affect very much. Though I have an uncommitted idea that one guy herein could look like Shaun White, it wouldn't break my mental deal for my readers to cast him more Teutonic in their minds. As much pride as I take in my work, my sense of ownership and control over it is not that pronounced.
In any case, I'm unsure I would like to know people like this. Clovis speaks with my voice, and I hope his charisma is as powerful to others as it was to me. The character is wildly fascinating, and arrests attention ... But, as many assets as he has, I'm not sure I would much like the person if he existed. Even his ghost, prompting me to write, and I never had a close relationship. I was steward and servant to this king, while I wrote him; not a beloved comrade, or even a counselor. I owed him something - I owe all my works my best - but an affectionate relationship, I don't have, intimate with this creature of such powerful charisma. One might sooner pull an angel down by the ankle than claim community with certain characters!
With the second work in progress, it may be possible to develop more closely with my characters; yet even in this case, I don't feel "friendship" nor love for the women under construction. For me, perhaps, being too involved would make the writing harder; I don't know. When I was in high school, writing was a personal exercise, and I was incestuously tied up with what I wanted to write about (often historical, somewhat, even then; and yet always very much bound to whatever concerned me then ... generally, that being one boy or another). Now that I am older, I have a view of storytelling that it is a venture out of mysef, and that it is an ADventure to give to readers. Maybe I don't count myself much of an offering, or am just too private to be interested in stripping myself bare before an audience - whatever the cause, I just don't write so personally anymore.
Given the problems I have with my ego, I feel this is only considerate to an audience; a work mired down in my self indulgence would be no favor for any reader to endure. (And yes, I do recognize the irony here ... in BLOGGING - and what could be more self-indulgent, really - about how kind I am, not to subject OTHER readers to exactly what I do here ...)
Of course, nobody's paid to read this site-ful of blather - and few people come here but those friends loved ones already willing to put up with such nonsense. When paid to publish, my memoir will be no part of the product on offer for sale. I have a responsibility to produce something better.
***
I said above Clovis speaks with my voice, and that is true. He made me his mouthpiece, and in doing so I came to speak for his queen, his commanders, his sons, even his enemies at times. All of them recognizeably share some aspect of the way I communicate, but each one is distinct, each one just as much distinct *from me* as the king himself.
My job as an author is to develop my own ability to use the language - yet also to use it to synthesize many people who are not (recognizeably?) myself. I have to simultaneously command and divorce myself from those I create. X and I had a long exchange this week about creativity and art, and I have said many times I claim little authority to call myself an artist - but I am an entertainer and I am a creative craftsman. I take to my work with all the spirit and inspiration I think some people consider to give rise to art, but I hesitate to take so much credit - and I know I don't even aspire to anything to subjective.
I want to divert you, I want to transport you. I want you given over, as much a I was, to my story, to the characters and what they do - to be in the setting I tried to build for you. I want to take you where I went, and yet will be proud if what your eyes see is completely unlike what I had in my mind's eye - will be proud, if my words allow that much freedom, and yet manage enough clarity to fix a picture for you at all.
I want you to become my reader. All I know about writing ... is how to invite you to join in that contract with me ...
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Scattershot
Being a bit lazy and obvious in my tastes, I sometimes forget that the breadth of my musical tastes is not merely an amusing oddity, but actually makes me a little smarter about music than I like to give myself credit for. My radio station at work this morning took hits at Cameo, Dre, TSOL, John Denver, and Anthrax right in a row, and for me it didn't really skip a beat, though I did hit skip on JD, not being in the mood for the country road just after TSOL's wildly indulgent vocal style. Probably the strongest songs for my mood today were Keep Their Heads Ringin', a fantastically seductive California gangsta track, and Anthrax's Joe Jackson cover, "Got the Time" - not exactly a similar pairing, but somehow harmonizing for my tastes.
Anthrax has always been an odd one for me. On the one hand, if I'm not listening, I always seem to dig their sound - but, sometimes, paying attention to what they have to say (and this is a metal band that indulges in Having Something to Say) can be detrimental, because I actually find myself a little embarrassed by the music, looked at for its component makeup. I have this problem OFTEN, which is interesting, considering how much I am able to enjoy some artists whose components I find downright silly - and yet, there's an awful lot I prefer not to look at critically, and just listen to without allowing myself consideration or a technical view.
This probably explains the fact that I can enjoy Type O Negative so much, and appreciate the satire more than I worry about the violence or misogyny.
It doesn't explain why I cannot hear a note of Toni Braxton's strange nasal-grunt-as-emotional and hollow head voice singing without being mortified - but so it goes. I guess having certain taste excuses us from maintaining too much integrity (it's not as if Peedah Steele was prone to naturalistic singing - and if you watch that clip, it's obvious I don't require "pretty" amongst my musical predilections as a baseline requirement ...).
The thing about all this is that I usually plead musical ignorance if the topic of any particular style ever comes up in conversation - and I make a lot of fun of myself for being a middle-aged suburban woman dancing in the office to g-funk ... but the fact is, as oddly composed as I seem to be, and as incongruous ... I'm no less valid a consumer than anybody else.
At the end of the day, though, I may fit in a more predictable-box than all this likes to defy. I married a hair metal musician once, and that wasn't an accident; I like it loud, I like hair, I like things that make me want to bang my middle-aged suburban head - and I like cranking it in my car.
It may not seem a lot less incongruous, from the outside, for a woman dressed for a drone-job, outside the 80s and significantly far past 30, to be as interested in thrash as in Ice T (and T had a metal band of his own, after all), but contextualizing the age and everything, it probably at least fits *better* anyway.
It wouldn't surprise anyone to admit that as self-effacting as I am about my musical taste and its weirdness - it is of course a source of self-appreciation, if not actual pride or vanity per se. My blog even says, "I contain multitudes" and it's no small part of my satisfaction in my own skin ... that I shed certain "skins" from time to time, wearing one or another - and that I can do that. The facets of my taste reflect the facets of my tendencies, and I am a bit insufferable on the point of my own multiplicity.
But really, at bottom, beyond all my egotism about being a nonconformist, or at least being weird, I genuinely enjoy variety. The limits we choose for ourselves seem in many ways so constricting, and I revel in creativity, surprise, and certainly in unpredictability in certain aspects. I'm not a mercurial, elusive, arresting archetype of the Strange, Unattainable/Maddening Ideal our culture has created - but it would be a job to pigeonhole me with any success. It would be too unspeakably boring to be ANY one thing all the time - the object of romance, the doting aunt, the competent professional, the silly girl, the hard working homeowner, the author, the six-ways-to-Sunday nerd, the devoted friend, the lazy, entitled, middle-aged, well-off American. I have to be all those things, and I have to try other things too, and sometimes I have to think about some of them and wonder even about myself.
Then again ... sometimes I have to walk the dog.
And from everything I am hearing: now is getting to be one of those times.
Anthrax has always been an odd one for me. On the one hand, if I'm not listening, I always seem to dig their sound - but, sometimes, paying attention to what they have to say (and this is a metal band that indulges in Having Something to Say) can be detrimental, because I actually find myself a little embarrassed by the music, looked at for its component makeup. I have this problem OFTEN, which is interesting, considering how much I am able to enjoy some artists whose components I find downright silly - and yet, there's an awful lot I prefer not to look at critically, and just listen to without allowing myself consideration or a technical view.
This probably explains the fact that I can enjoy Type O Negative so much, and appreciate the satire more than I worry about the violence or misogyny.
It doesn't explain why I cannot hear a note of Toni Braxton's strange nasal-grunt-as-emotional and hollow head voice singing without being mortified - but so it goes. I guess having certain taste excuses us from maintaining too much integrity (it's not as if Peedah Steele was prone to naturalistic singing - and if you watch that clip, it's obvious I don't require "pretty" amongst my musical predilections as a baseline requirement ...).
The thing about all this is that I usually plead musical ignorance if the topic of any particular style ever comes up in conversation - and I make a lot of fun of myself for being a middle-aged suburban woman dancing in the office to g-funk ... but the fact is, as oddly composed as I seem to be, and as incongruous ... I'm no less valid a consumer than anybody else.
At the end of the day, though, I may fit in a more predictable-box than all this likes to defy. I married a hair metal musician once, and that wasn't an accident; I like it loud, I like hair, I like things that make me want to bang my middle-aged suburban head - and I like cranking it in my car.
It may not seem a lot less incongruous, from the outside, for a woman dressed for a drone-job, outside the 80s and significantly far past 30, to be as interested in thrash as in Ice T (and T had a metal band of his own, after all), but contextualizing the age and everything, it probably at least fits *better* anyway.
It wouldn't surprise anyone to admit that as self-effacting as I am about my musical taste and its weirdness - it is of course a source of self-appreciation, if not actual pride or vanity per se. My blog even says, "I contain multitudes" and it's no small part of my satisfaction in my own skin ... that I shed certain "skins" from time to time, wearing one or another - and that I can do that. The facets of my taste reflect the facets of my tendencies, and I am a bit insufferable on the point of my own multiplicity.
But really, at bottom, beyond all my egotism about being a nonconformist, or at least being weird, I genuinely enjoy variety. The limits we choose for ourselves seem in many ways so constricting, and I revel in creativity, surprise, and certainly in unpredictability in certain aspects. I'm not a mercurial, elusive, arresting archetype of the Strange, Unattainable/Maddening Ideal our culture has created - but it would be a job to pigeonhole me with any success. It would be too unspeakably boring to be ANY one thing all the time - the object of romance, the doting aunt, the competent professional, the silly girl, the hard working homeowner, the author, the six-ways-to-Sunday nerd, the devoted friend, the lazy, entitled, middle-aged, well-off American. I have to be all those things, and I have to try other things too, and sometimes I have to think about some of them and wonder even about myself.
Then again ... sometimes I have to walk the dog.
And from everything I am hearing: now is getting to be one of those times.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Vidiot, Vanitas, Verbal Diarrhea
As much as I enjoy TV and movies, especially in the case of television, I know it's nothing but bread to go with my circus. When I was little, I wanted passionately to become famous. I wanted to grow up and be on M*A*S*H, to have the fun-loving, family cast feeling I thought from the minimalist exposure we had to entertainment news back in the 70s was their fantasy world. And I wanted to be famous. More than anything, as the remarkably unpopular girl I was (I don't mean that it is remarkable that I wasn't popular; I mean that it is remarkable to me now HOW unpopular I was - it's hard for me to find anything all that awful about being shy or odd or slam full of daydreams), I wanted to become famous. There was a lot of money in fame, that much I knew, and I wanted that. There was also some sort of vindication in it.
I got older, I became a theater geek.
I got older still, I started watching all the loud little eighties bimbos on Sally Jessy Raphael and that sort of thing, and I wanted to be the rock star's hot wife. I always wanted all the better looking women to stop sneering about how jealous everyone was.
Then I started to lose my jealousy. When Beloved Ex and I split, I put a lot of time into letting go of my horrible behavior toward him - the expectation that everything he did was about, and reflected on, me, and therefore had to come under my control or risk my censure. And, in letting go of the idea that ANYONE who loves me has ANYTHING to apologize for in spite of (or because of) that love - in letting go of the idea that my own good behavior toward anyone is a privilege which had to be earned - I began to learn a lot about my own vanity.
I've never lost it.
But I do realize that at some point, slowly, and on silken-smooth gimbals, a shift rotated my perspective, and I'm able to see jealousy, and overinvestment in the way other people see me, with a lot less of that "investment" (... see also: cruelty).
My vanity has turned from valuing the externality of my assets: "I am so amazing, I'm with the rock star, and he is CRAZY in love with me - oh, and a nice guy too, yeah" - to actual confidence. I gave my ex short shrift as a person; I valued him in relation to myself, and in relation to him, I was just not a nice girl.
Viciously, it took separating from him for me to overcome that nastiness inside myself. What a terrible thing. And I still feel like he had to pay for something for me. Not fair.
And even still I value what I have become. Gratitude is central to my life, and that life is loaded with blessings. I can never give back to the world - and to those who love me - enough to come close to matching what has been given me.
(And so: I strive to be a good enough person to deserve my dog. Figure that is an excellent standard to aspire to; and impossible enough to achieve that I can't get too complacent.)
X once said of me, "You use your wit and your intelligence as if your appearance had no power, and the effect is devastating."
I told mom that once, and she remains pretty green about a compliment like that to this day. But it's the man who loved HER that way - and she herself - who taught me how to be the person who could attain that admiration. And it's a whole lot of compliment. It delves into so much; I'm amusing. I'm smart (savagely, he always said). And not that it's exactly buried in there, but I'm also a kind of beautiful that has power of its own ... and even so I don't depend on it. Thank mom and dad for that last part. And thank X for explaining the overdrive into which the package of me can put the right person's feeling. No other person has ever known me so entirely, and even with exposure he found me compelling.
That's me. That's not my 25-year-old's hottie attitude. (I was far more appealing by 30 anyway - hah.) That's not the clothes I wear, the friends I choose to accessorize myself with, the trends I suck, the influence I surf. That's. ME. My vanity isn't centered on mascara anymore. It's the power behind the paint. The thing that MATTERS. The wit and the intelligence that make the pretty-pretty irrelevant - and also animate whatever physical beauty I once had, and which still hasn't abandoned me completely.
I've blogged many times about courage. "Who needs strength, I want courage." The older I get, the more I feel the staggering power that lives in the blessings I have been given. Not the power of my features, either. The power of the facts of my birth - where I am in time and the world. The power of my intelligence, which fuels my livelihood in incalculable ways. The power of my family, who gave to me formidable tools, to be ambitious, to be independent in a world where women not so long ago could not hope for so much. To love formidably, and to pledge indelibly.
If you are loved by me, I think it's ever less likely that the woman I am will EVER take that away from you. If you are my blood, if you are my friend, if you are important today: tomorrow is not going to be able to change that. In my life, I have allowed relationships to go, in the past. But I have never found the alchemy to turn love into hatred. I've been bad, and even betrayed, but I've never truly *turned* on anyone. I find that less and less conceivable, the older I get. The more important I realize "love" to be. The more I realize its power, and find myself addicted to its rewards. It is beyond me - the ability to even understand loathing where I have loved. The ability to *do* that.
You're all hidden in the weeds; Blogger's stats can't tell me who reads this. I can know ye by your follow-ation, but only in a general sense. I can hope, but I don't really know. But YOU know - who you are - whom I love, and will never stop. Those girls. That man with my father's boots and a laugh I can hear right now. The tall woman so smack full of charisma I can never forget the first time I laid eyes on her. The Manly Man, whom I love for himself, and not just because of her. The Elfin One, and her family, all of them. My dear V, who has become part of my grain. And her man too. And his son. And K and T, just thinking of whom makes me smile. A, who will never be a "B" and will probably never read here. My mother, my cousins, my cousin-lets, my adopted family, my seldom-seen friends, who still mean so much to me. X himself. I love you.
I can't know. But I hope you can. Can feel what has become of me - the girl who knew nothing but that fame was my only hope, even someone else's.
And add to my blessings: that I never touched fame, and it never came for me either.
I turn my eyes to my father, and ask him what he thinks.
And he says to me: "It is to be expected."
And I can feel his arms holding on to me.
I am blessed the most to know what kind of people love me. Me! And grateful for nothing so much as for that bounty.
"I have come, that they may have life; and have it in abundance."
How can it be possible to know Christ had that to give ... and not to take it - and not to be thankful for it?
I got older, I became a theater geek.
I got older still, I started watching all the loud little eighties bimbos on Sally Jessy Raphael and that sort of thing, and I wanted to be the rock star's hot wife. I always wanted all the better looking women to stop sneering about how jealous everyone was.
Then I started to lose my jealousy. When Beloved Ex and I split, I put a lot of time into letting go of my horrible behavior toward him - the expectation that everything he did was about, and reflected on, me, and therefore had to come under my control or risk my censure. And, in letting go of the idea that ANYONE who loves me has ANYTHING to apologize for in spite of (or because of) that love - in letting go of the idea that my own good behavior toward anyone is a privilege which had to be earned - I began to learn a lot about my own vanity.
I've never lost it.
But I do realize that at some point, slowly, and on silken-smooth gimbals, a shift rotated my perspective, and I'm able to see jealousy, and overinvestment in the way other people see me, with a lot less of that "investment" (... see also: cruelty).
My vanity has turned from valuing the externality of my assets: "I am so amazing, I'm with the rock star, and he is CRAZY in love with me - oh, and a nice guy too, yeah" - to actual confidence. I gave my ex short shrift as a person; I valued him in relation to myself, and in relation to him, I was just not a nice girl.
Viciously, it took separating from him for me to overcome that nastiness inside myself. What a terrible thing. And I still feel like he had to pay for something for me. Not fair.
And even still I value what I have become. Gratitude is central to my life, and that life is loaded with blessings. I can never give back to the world - and to those who love me - enough to come close to matching what has been given me.
(And so: I strive to be a good enough person to deserve my dog. Figure that is an excellent standard to aspire to; and impossible enough to achieve that I can't get too complacent.)
X once said of me, "You use your wit and your intelligence as if your appearance had no power, and the effect is devastating."
I told mom that once, and she remains pretty green about a compliment like that to this day. But it's the man who loved HER that way - and she herself - who taught me how to be the person who could attain that admiration. And it's a whole lot of compliment. It delves into so much; I'm amusing. I'm smart (savagely, he always said). And not that it's exactly buried in there, but I'm also a kind of beautiful that has power of its own ... and even so I don't depend on it. Thank mom and dad for that last part. And thank X for explaining the overdrive into which the package of me can put the right person's feeling. No other person has ever known me so entirely, and even with exposure he found me compelling.
That's me. That's not my 25-year-old's hottie attitude. (I was far more appealing by 30 anyway - hah.) That's not the clothes I wear, the friends I choose to accessorize myself with, the trends I suck, the influence I surf. That's. ME. My vanity isn't centered on mascara anymore. It's the power behind the paint. The thing that MATTERS. The wit and the intelligence that make the pretty-pretty irrelevant - and also animate whatever physical beauty I once had, and which still hasn't abandoned me completely.
I've blogged many times about courage. "Who needs strength, I want courage." The older I get, the more I feel the staggering power that lives in the blessings I have been given. Not the power of my features, either. The power of the facts of my birth - where I am in time and the world. The power of my intelligence, which fuels my livelihood in incalculable ways. The power of my family, who gave to me formidable tools, to be ambitious, to be independent in a world where women not so long ago could not hope for so much. To love formidably, and to pledge indelibly.
If you are loved by me, I think it's ever less likely that the woman I am will EVER take that away from you. If you are my blood, if you are my friend, if you are important today: tomorrow is not going to be able to change that. In my life, I have allowed relationships to go, in the past. But I have never found the alchemy to turn love into hatred. I've been bad, and even betrayed, but I've never truly *turned* on anyone. I find that less and less conceivable, the older I get. The more important I realize "love" to be. The more I realize its power, and find myself addicted to its rewards. It is beyond me - the ability to even understand loathing where I have loved. The ability to *do* that.
You're all hidden in the weeds; Blogger's stats can't tell me who reads this. I can know ye by your follow-ation, but only in a general sense. I can hope, but I don't really know. But YOU know - who you are - whom I love, and will never stop. Those girls. That man with my father's boots and a laugh I can hear right now. The tall woman so smack full of charisma I can never forget the first time I laid eyes on her. The Manly Man, whom I love for himself, and not just because of her. The Elfin One, and her family, all of them. My dear V, who has become part of my grain. And her man too. And his son. And K and T, just thinking of whom makes me smile. A, who will never be a "B" and will probably never read here. My mother, my cousins, my cousin-lets, my adopted family, my seldom-seen friends, who still mean so much to me. X himself. I love you.
I can't know. But I hope you can. Can feel what has become of me - the girl who knew nothing but that fame was my only hope, even someone else's.
And add to my blessings: that I never touched fame, and it never came for me either.
I turn my eyes to my father, and ask him what he thinks.
And he says to me: "It is to be expected."
And I can feel his arms holding on to me.
I am blessed the most to know what kind of people love me. Me! And grateful for nothing so much as for that bounty.
"I have come, that they may have life; and have it in abundance."
How can it be possible to know Christ had that to give ... and not to take it - and not to be thankful for it?
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Hilarity du Jour
The only search string showing in my stats today?
"Charlie Sheen off his nut"
I am so happy.
"Charlie Sheen off his nut"
I am so happy.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Curvatus en Se
I have probably misspelled and/or misremembered the Latin, but so it goeth.
Vanity and honesty can be compatible. This week, for they many-th time, E and I had a debate about my attributes, and as he often does he took my candour about what I really am as being in a way "down" on myself. Thing is, in me, I think vanity is a mechanical action more than an innate state of being. I am far too fascinated with my person, both internally and externally, and have little other life in the house to distract me from it. If I had a partner, or if I had children, there would perhaps be less time to lavish on considering my appearances, my abilities, blah blah whatever. This is both the result of choices and circumstances.
Growing up I was not raised on my cuteness. As far as I am aware, I wasn't exceptionally adorable nor talented, but I was extraordinarily well LOVED, and that is most important. I was safe, and that's worth everything.
So I spent no time considering my assets until I was much older. This is what I mean by my conceitedness being mechanical, rather than some inborn manifestation of selfishness.
I *am* terribly selfish, but mechanics attempt to compensate for that too.
Anyway, so E thinks I'm pretty great, and when I correct that with clinical observations to specific contraries, he finds me baffling and can't argue with me. I think I am a very, very fortunate person, but I take NO credit for that. I know my venalities, and I know that most of what people think of in me as varying forms of niceness - and even generosity - are usually attributable to those mechanics of compensation.
I do care for people, I care very much. But believing in THEIR estimations of me is worse than my stupid obsession with how nice my hair is or is not looking. The people around me think I am rather a lovely person, and I do try to be - but I have to *try* to be. It's nothing I actually am, and so I can't take credit for what is likeable about me. Just keep trying.
There are, to be sure, areas in which my arrogance knows no bounds. I am fairly smart, and I do take a little bit of the honor for that. My folks had to beat it into me - but it got in. And I like to acknowledge I am indeed above-average in certain mental pursuits.
I'm also a heck of a storyteller and writer.
Occasionally, I can be really funny. I love this, and get more out of sharing it (and get better at it) the older I get. Making someone I respect *laugh* ... ? Holy smokes, that is up there with making my dog wag her tail. It hardly getst better.
The problem regarding my interest in my looks is of far less interest to me than these things. It interests me, which makes for a funny sort of cartoon circle. I love to play with my face and clothes, too. Vanity, vanity.
And so I say to E, whatever my appeal is, it's applied artificially. I can (and, more often than not, DO) leave my appeal in a box, and while what's left isn't bad in any way, it proves that whatever charisma I have is just self-decoration. And that's not strictly a visual case. Whatever about me ANYone might like, is generated by effort and artifice.
At bottom, I am a lump of fortunate clay. That fortune was given me, it's nothing I earned nor engendered.
I'm the reflection of what has been given me. I'm intrigued by what this results in. I guess that is the nature of my conceitedness. How it all adds up - the alchemy - to turn a little brown-haired kid into anything that can be loved by such amazing people.
Vanity and honesty can be compatible. This week, for they many-th time, E and I had a debate about my attributes, and as he often does he took my candour about what I really am as being in a way "down" on myself. Thing is, in me, I think vanity is a mechanical action more than an innate state of being. I am far too fascinated with my person, both internally and externally, and have little other life in the house to distract me from it. If I had a partner, or if I had children, there would perhaps be less time to lavish on considering my appearances, my abilities, blah blah whatever. This is both the result of choices and circumstances.
Growing up I was not raised on my cuteness. As far as I am aware, I wasn't exceptionally adorable nor talented, but I was extraordinarily well LOVED, and that is most important. I was safe, and that's worth everything.
So I spent no time considering my assets until I was much older. This is what I mean by my conceitedness being mechanical, rather than some inborn manifestation of selfishness.
I *am* terribly selfish, but mechanics attempt to compensate for that too.
Anyway, so E thinks I'm pretty great, and when I correct that with clinical observations to specific contraries, he finds me baffling and can't argue with me. I think I am a very, very fortunate person, but I take NO credit for that. I know my venalities, and I know that most of what people think of in me as varying forms of niceness - and even generosity - are usually attributable to those mechanics of compensation.
I do care for people, I care very much. But believing in THEIR estimations of me is worse than my stupid obsession with how nice my hair is or is not looking. The people around me think I am rather a lovely person, and I do try to be - but I have to *try* to be. It's nothing I actually am, and so I can't take credit for what is likeable about me. Just keep trying.
There are, to be sure, areas in which my arrogance knows no bounds. I am fairly smart, and I do take a little bit of the honor for that. My folks had to beat it into me - but it got in. And I like to acknowledge I am indeed above-average in certain mental pursuits.
I'm also a heck of a storyteller and writer.
Occasionally, I can be really funny. I love this, and get more out of sharing it (and get better at it) the older I get. Making someone I respect *laugh* ... ? Holy smokes, that is up there with making my dog wag her tail. It hardly getst better.
The problem regarding my interest in my looks is of far less interest to me than these things. It interests me, which makes for a funny sort of cartoon circle. I love to play with my face and clothes, too. Vanity, vanity.
And so I say to E, whatever my appeal is, it's applied artificially. I can (and, more often than not, DO) leave my appeal in a box, and while what's left isn't bad in any way, it proves that whatever charisma I have is just self-decoration. And that's not strictly a visual case. Whatever about me ANYone might like, is generated by effort and artifice.
At bottom, I am a lump of fortunate clay. That fortune was given me, it's nothing I earned nor engendered.
I'm the reflection of what has been given me. I'm intrigued by what this results in. I guess that is the nature of my conceitedness. How it all adds up - the alchemy - to turn a little brown-haired kid into anything that can be loved by such amazing people.
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