what's good : connections
With a couple extra somethings because it's late, and Monday
This past weekend I was helping my now-grown[but always my baby] daughter move into a new space for the fifth time in her young life. My specialty skills in these situations are organizing, because Virgo; packing, because Tetris champion; and cleaning, because Virgo + anal retentive (which is maybe just Virgo also). So, the joy of getting to be with my girl was enhanced by having satisfying & useful tasks to complete. However, it left no room for writing & linking interesting things, and I didn’t plan far enough ahead to schedule a post for Sunday. File under Some Weeks Are Better Than Others. But I did include some bonus material today.
In poetry: This one has some things that remind me of my favorites, Emily Dickinson (those dashes, Nature) and Sylvia Plath (horses, darkness), and even blends their tones - droll realist/wry fatalist - with its sideways look at life and aging and death, pulling the emotionless landscape into our human feeling world. I especially love the touches of blue (a “collusion”) in an otherwise darkening day.
Meditation on Rain by Alessandra Lynch In a blue collusion of dusk and rain, the sky’s darkly shaking like horsetails flicking off bloodflies. As you’d try switching off half-truths that fed on your skin, their little bites distracting you from harder pain. Nothing a hoof could gallop from. Nothing to ride here but air coolly passing from stable to woods— each leaf a perforated heart— to the front porch of the blue house. As you ascend, the steps darken behind you, night has its own quiet stepping—it is not an abyss, not amorphous as once you felt—. How wavery the rain at the threshhold—
In shopping: I have feelings about my clothes and even though I try really hard not to care what other people think about them, it is pretty heartening when someone compliments a thing you’ve chosen and presumably look good in. Maybe it’s especially heartening when it doesn’t happen frequently, as in my daily not-a-fashion-maven life. So after finding this nearly perfect coat (it’s missing a button and is lined with something harvested from the surface of the sun) at a consignment shop in my daughter’s now-former neighborhood, I was simply excited to wear it and feel comfy in the rain. During my hot flash-free moments, that is.
Yet every time I have worn this coat in public, someone tells me how much they like it. Not just “Hey that’s a nice coat” but “OH MY GOD I LOVE YOUR COAT!” It’s usually fun because I spent most of my teenage life desperately wanting to be Cool, or at least Stylish/Not An Awkward Nerd, but it can be a little unnerving sometimes. Like when a woman bolted toward me outside a store with a pained look on her face then said gravely, “I just wanted to tell you how much I love your coat.” Or when this weekend as I walked through a parking garage, a lady drove by with her window down, staring at me, before announcing with a nod “THAT is a beautiful coat!” She was driving so slowly while approving it/me that I couldn’t go around her and had time to say I got it at Gather, the consignment store just up the road, and I also love it, thank you [now please keep going]! Or like when in line for the women’s bathroom, a group collectively admires the color/shape/pattern/fit/fabric and I say thanks! but am then not sure if, because we have time there together, I should point out the missing button or show off all its features or tell them it was only $60 or maybe mention how fucking warm it is sometimes because of my 14 year-long perimenopause….So we all just go back to waiting uncomfortably, silently loving the coat.
Regardless, I do still love wearing it, when it’s not roasting me alive. I wonder what Emily & Sylvia would do?
In music: Speaking of trying to be cool and/or stylish as a teen - The Linda Lindas achieved all of these things by the time they were in middle school, with the addition of being musically talented, too. They understand the patriarchy-fighting assignment and have been covering Bikini Kill & The Go-Go’s with laudable flair as well as writing their own kickass songs + creating spectacular videos. Here is one that rowdily sums up my old woman feelings; they must be paying attention to their moms. Or, grandmothers? Oof.
BONUS!
Because life is better with extra grrrl power.
EXTRA BONUS!
If you want a super deep dive, check out this blurb that explains The Linda Lindas name with links to the namesake movie, which in turn was based on an Asian punk band’s song (that the girls also covered).
Connections. Where are we without [noticing] them?
That is a really great coat.
That coat looks great on you.
I rarely wear coats because I will sweat profusely. I think it's now my permanent status.