Rule of threes

One of the pleasures of reading fashion blogs is seeing my own inchoate thoughts crystallized.  (Yes, that’s solipsistic.  Indulge me!)

I love this blouse (from LuckyBrand Jeans — their site isn’t working right now).

But I’m not going to buy it.   This post, from Putting Me Together, via Already Pretty (as always) helped me figure out why.

Many fashion blogs tell you not to buy something unless you can think of three things you already have that will go with it.  But most things will go with a black skirt, black pants, and jeans/jean skirt, and most women have those.  And a dress isn’t really supposed to “go” with anything — that’s the beauty of dresses, they are self-contained.

Audrey at Putting Me Together starts with the question “Can I wear this with three different things?” but the way she works it out shows that that’s not really the question.  The question is: can I wear this item in three different ways? Wearing something with black pants and a black skirt doesn’t really count as wearing it differently — at least not for me.

I can’t imagine wearing this top, lovely though it is, in different ways.  The top would always be the focal point of the outfit, and the look would be pretty much the same whether I wore it with something casual or something work-like on the bottom.   I think this is why I don’t have many print tops, and why I don’t wear the button-front blouses I do have — I lack the imagination to see them as versatile.  Strangely enough, I don’t have that problem with patterned skirts. If this were a skirt, I’d be pulling out my credit card now, which would be unwise, so it all works out for the best.

If I were to buy a skirt I’d buy this one.  Printed denim jeans don’t move me.  I had a pair of printed jeans in high school –dots AND flowers! Beat that!   But I am weak in the knees for that skirt.  I also quite like this one.  But I think that the latter skirt, despite its simplicity, would be much less versatile and harder to wear.  Is that incorrect?

“A frictionless existence”

Today I am thankful that I ate really good food, which I cooked for myself, and that I was happy.

I saw a beloved friend, Avi, and his wife on Thursday night.  I was traveling for business, and stayed in the beautiful university town in which they (both tenured professors in fields in which professors are quite well-paid) live with their two children — soon to be three, if my guess about Avi’s wife’s girth is correct.

My beloved friend was, for a few gorgeous months 18 years ago, my beloved.  We had the most delightful fling our last term in graduate school.  We were two very serious, very future-oriented, very “no mucking about” kids, and we did something radically uncharacteristic by becoming romantically involved even though there was clearly no future in it.  We had had no experience of living for the moment, and we did with each other, and it was glorious.  Why was there no future?  Because he would never marry someone who wasn’t Jewish, and — at that time — I would never marry someone who wasn’t Christian.  How could I know I would change my mind?

Avi was my last romantic involvement before I met Daniel, and I sometimes indulge in “What if I’d married Avi?” thoughts.  If I’d married Avi, it would have been disastrous.  I think Avi and Avi’s parents would never have accepted me as really Jewish.  I’m not sure I would ever have converted in the first place.  I was deeply intimidated by Avi’s unbelievable intelligence and cleverness — I still am, in fact.   I would have spent a lot of energy trying to prove I was Avi’s equal, without entirely believing it, and it would have exhausted and undermined both of us.  I am often in Daniel’s shadow, because he’s very prominent in his field and in our town, and I don’t like it but I accept it because Daniel was prominent long before I met him.  I would have been in Avi’s shadow, too, and it would have been almost impossible for me to accept.

At dessert Avi’s wife said, “In [university town] we lead a frictionless existence” (no traffic, no logistical hassles, nothing to interfere with their strictly adhered to date night).  The phrase stuck in my head, and stood for everything that Avi and his wife have that looks so gorgeous: all the children they want (so far), an abundant and carefully tended-to love (they are religious about date night.  Daniel and I might go out by ourselves once a month), a new house, flexible and well-paying jobs.  A frictionless existence.

I was bone-tired, having gotten up at 4:30 that morning to catch a flight.  I was wrung out over the giant work project I’ve been dealing with and blogging about for more than a year.  My work life for the past year has been characterized by an abundance of friction.  My home life is full of friction.  The city in which I live is  driven by friction, ambition, and anxiety, and I am susceptible to it, no matter how much yoga I do.  My work often takes me to smaller cities and university towns, and I always fall a bit in love with them — exactly because I can sense that it is possible to have a frictionless existence there — and I was feeling weak in the knees for the charm that surrounded me.  So I got a little sad.

But then I decided not to be.  I redoubled my efforts on the first half (the most relevant half) of intention #3.  When I came home the next day, I took a hot shower and cooked a delicious meal (caramelized onions with pasta from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, by Mark Bittman).  I hugged the dog.  This morning I stared long and hard at the pink tulips on the side table in the living room, and realized they were beautiful.  I went to synagogue and talked to a friend about how our congregation is the Jewish equivalent of the island of misfit toys, and we love it for that.  Tonight, my little family had pizza in bed and watched Chicken Run.

And, as I went downstairs to see if my brand-new washing machine was indeed leaking (friction!!), I realized that I am not capable of a frictionless existence — in university town or anywhere else.  It’s not who I am.  I wish I could create such an existence — I would love to take the energy that I lose through friction and apply it to other things (like writing my book).  But I think I need a little in the background to absorb what would otherwise become anxiety.  I can only explain by analogy: In high school and college, I was on the threshold of an eating disorder.  After I got a bit of therapy and told friends about it as a way of fortifying myself against my own impulses towards binging and purging, I became a vegetarian.  The relationship is chronological, not causal — except that, being a vegetarian (and now being kosher as well) is a very good way to absorb and defuse my bad energy and obsession about food and weight and being “good” or “bad” with food.  Daniel jokes that keeping kosher is a religiously sanctified eating disorder, and he’s not wrong.

Friction is like being a vegetarian (!?).  It’s doing something for me that I need done.  I can experiment with, and set intentions for, less.  But I might be miserable leading a frictionless existence in university town, despite exquisite coffee and regular date nights.  I am glad to realize that about myself.

 

This is wonderfully reassuring

Exactly one year ago I wrote:

My working theory about 40, or one’s 40s, is that in terms of physical presentation they are adolescence all over again.

The face:  I look hard and, I hope, generously at women in their 40s.  We’re not as beautiful and fresh as we were, and not as extraordinary and handsome as we will be…. Women in their 20s are beautiful in the way that bright colors, confetti, and cake decorations are beautiful — there’s all that energy and life just exploding out of their sweet faces.  Women in their 30s (sigh) are beautiful in the way that flowers are beautiful — it’s youth tempered with wit and knowledge and and therefore completely compelling.  Women in their 50s are beautiful in the way that landscapes are beautiful — they are themselves, unique, and rich.  Women in their 60s are beautiful in the way that mountains and the sea are beautiful — they are strong and commanding and change in the light.  And I’ve run out of metaphors for women in their 70s and 80s, but see the best of them here.   But in my tired, pressed, 40s, I’m in between.

And lo and behold, at That’s Not My Age (love her!) today I read:

‘Your 40s are neither one thing nor the other – you’re not young, you’re not old. Being in your 50s is good, but 60s are even better.’

My ruddy, dehydrated, splotchy face is wreathed in smiles.

 

‘Bout half better

I have one draft post from about six weeks ago, just at the start of the year, that says: “creativity, time, rest, physical self care& change of scenery — so much better able to deal now, even after two days that felt stressful, because i let work go.”

When I came back from a week at my parents’ house, I was amazed at the surge of creativity that I brought back with me.  When I am at my parents’ I remember and (try to) re-inhabit the tremendously, fearlessly, creative  child I was.  I was a volcano of creativity.  I followed all the rules and was quite well behaved, but my mind was boundless.  I wasn’t curious, exactly, I didn’t want to know why X was so, I wanted to imagine Y, Z, purple, and sky.

But much of it was simple rest.  At my parents’, I sleep 9 hours a night.  I did good yoga every day or almost every day.  And I don’t work.

It pays off every time.  I know that.  I’ve seen it.  Creativity depends on sleep and peace and space, at least for me.

And even knowing that, it was so hard for me to decide to stay home from work today because I’m sick.  One of my colleagues was hospitalized — twice!– last winter with a vicious bacterial infection, but stayed on email the whole time, telling us that the hospital was a great place to get work done.

I made myself some soup for lunch.  I took some black beans out of the freezer, and while they thawed I sautéed onion, grated ginger, grated tomatoes (a trick I learned from the Madhur Jaffrey vegetarian cookbook) and spices.  I felt torn — if I was too sick to go in to the office, wasn’t I too sick to cook?  But I needed the practice of cooking myself something hot and special and delicious.  I needed to be taken care of like that.  So I ate my soup, and took a nap, and spent about half the day on email responding the erratic whims of my boss and his anxiety about this big project that I’m just finishing (before I can really dive into the book).

This is one of those posts that I’m writing mostly for me, so I remember it.  The only way that I’m going to succeed and find a new and great space for myself at work is to be creative and work on my own terms.  That is deeply, deeply counterintuitive to me.  But following the rules for the past almost four years has not gotten me where I want to go.  It’s prepared me for this step, but it won’t work to propel me forward.  My best, unique, and most valuable contribution comes when I do the things that only I can do, not when I’m doing my version of what others have done.  I will never succeed by saying “me, too.”  My huge bet, my wild hypothesis, for the next three months is this: What will get me where I want to go is, occasionally, staying home and making some soup.

 

Poem for Wednesday, revivified

Today am I thankful that Daniel is being an absolute dear.  I can write thousands of words about him when he’s being a pill, but I enjoy his solicitude and tenderness without sharing.  I’ve been dragging since last week, and, as my father would say, “I’m ’bout half-sick.”  I feel like my face is melting off my skull.  I am beset by sneezes that refuse to happen.  This morning, I had no interest in walking to work, and walking to work is one of my great pleasures.  And Daniel is being just especially lovely, even when I am sniffly, deeply boring, and falling asleep at 10:30.

And in my present state, I swoon over this poem.  “What would life be if we could not buy objects to care for us?”  Indeed:

Humidifier

BY LOUISE GLÜCK

—After Robert Pinsky

Defier of closed space, such as the head, opener

Of the sealed passageways, so that

Sunlight entering the nose can once again

Exit the ear, vaporizer, mist machine, whose

Soft hiss sounds like another human being

But less erratic, more stable, or, if not like a human being,

Carried by one, by my mother to the sick chamber

Of my childhood — as Freud said,

Why are you always sick, Louise? his cigar

Confusing mist with smoke, interfering

With healing—Embodied

Summoner of these ghosts, white plastic tub with your elegant

Clear tub, the water sanitized by boiling,

Sterile, odorless,

In my mother’s absence

Run by me, the one machine

I understand: what

Would life be if we could not buy

Objects to care for us

And bear them home, away from the druggists’ pity,

If we could not carry in our own arms

Alms, alchemy, to the safety of our bedrooms,

If there were no more

Sounds in the night, continuous

Hush, hush of warm steam, not

Like human breath though regular, if there were nothing in the world

More hopeful than the self,

Soothing it, wishing it well.

Source: Poetry (July 2005).

 

Intentions, day 37

Today I am thankful that I have discovered that I don’t like Pilates mat classes.  I tried them, to implement one of my 2012 intentions, and I don’t like them.  They bore me.  They annoy me.  I am too old and too accomplished to do leg lifts of any description, or “little pulses.”  I think my body would respond very well to these classes and I would look more lithe and sculpted.  And I don’t give a fig.  I’d rather be a little dumpier and move my body in a way that’s more enjoyable and more meaningful to me.  That is what I am thankful for.

So what about my other 11 intentions for the year?

Well, 1-3 are hard to quantify and in some ways a daily challenge and in some ways ever-present background noise.  My tumult over an acquaintance’s lucky pregnancy isn’t really in line with #1 Don’t Fight Lucky Strangers, but I rebounded rather more quickly than I thought.  I’ll be fine as long as I avoid her in thought and in life, and happily it’s pretty easy to do that.

#2 Be Brave, #4 Write a book, #7 Take up Space:  I think of those together, because I am having to be very brave to write this book I’m working on.  I have spent a lot of time and energy not being a writer, and running far and fast away from this thing I love and am better at than most people (I mean my professional writing, not my blogging).   And, on Feb. 1, I put down the first words for this book — 567 of them.  This book is 3/4ths a collection of things that have already been written, by me, my co-author, or our colleagues have written.  I’m as much a curator as a co-author.  But you know what?  Those words aren’t going to arrange themselves.  And usually what’s already been written is 100 words when 1000 are needed.  So what I’m doing is hard.  And I’m doing it.  Every morning I spent between two and four hours writing new things or finding the right things that are already composed, and figuring out what else I need to know and how I’m going to learn it.  And I’m loving it.  I am being brave about it.  I’m not going to stop till the damn thing is done, either.  I’m not daunted at the moment by how far I am from  the ending, or the fact that I have no idea how the last two chapters are going to come together or when.  I’ll know when I get there.

One of my bosses — the one who frustrates the hell out of me — seems to have a very narrow idea of what I can do, and always seems to want to keep me in my place.  I heard someone at a meeting use the phrase “everyone needs to swim in their own lane,” and I thought, “Yes, she just wants me to swim in my own lane, but the nature of my job is to be all over the pool.”  But this book demands a lot of focus and determination.  So I found photos of Michael Phelps and Dara Torres and hung them next to my desk.  If I have to swim in my own lane, I’m going to swim like they do.  They stay in their own lanes, but own that damn lane, and usually the rest of the pool.  So I’m staying in my own lane and taking up space at the same time.

#3. Be present in what I have, and balance that with staying open and welcoming miracles.  Well, that’s the challenge of my life, isn’t it?  I do notice that I am more inclined to smile and people on the street, and, now that we have a dog, I have a newfound feeling of affection for all the dogs I see.  Surely that’s a sign of something.

#5 Meditate 10-15 minutes a day at work.  So far, I’ve done 5 minutes a day more often than not — which is a very good start, I think.  I get so excited about my book work in the morning that I don’t want to stop and meditate. I probably should.  Usually around 11 or 11:30 I find myself straying from my work to noodle on the internet.  Meditation would be better.

#6. Be harder on my body.  This isn’t any easier than it’s ever been.  My favorite class is on Thursday nights: for the previous two and next four Thursday nights, my time is otherwise spoken for.  But I did try Pilates mat, and last week I changed clothes in my office, put a “do not disturb” post-it on the door and did half an hour of yoga right there next to my desk.  Now that I’m not doing yoga every day, I enjoy it so much more when I do practice.  Meanwhile, I love, love, love reading Fit and Feminist, (which I found via Already Pretty, which is the source of most of my great blog finds and it itself an amazing blog) I believe that being exposed to that conversation will, somehow, help.  And F&F has such a nice post today about Madonna and not disappearing (I’m soft on Madonna — she was the soundtrack of so much fun in the late 1980s and early 1990s.).

#8. Move to France  (sartorially).  I bought a dress with glitter on it.  I can’t claim victory here.  And lingerie buying will have to wait until my dragon-like credit card balance is a more manageable lizard.   In the meantime, I’ll point you to someone who actually did move to France, some 20 years ago.  I love this post on Another Garcon, which I found thanks to Deja Pseu at Une femme d’un certain age.  I especially love the piles of bags and papers and whatnot under the bookshelves.  That is, and always will be, the signature characteristic of any home I share with Daniel.

#9. Date again (Daniel).  Nope, nothing here.  Between Daniel’s recovery from surgery and his travel, we’re not making time for each other and it shows.  Daniel is being very dear and very strong and struggling with post-surgery blues (which he recognizes are post-surgery blues) and with changing his disastrous eating habits, which is analogous to giving up smoking for him.  He’s tired and so am I.  But if we wait till we aren’t tired, we’ll be waiting forever.

#10. Let Daniel have his own feelings, even if they make me uncomfortable.  Could you do me a favor and go back to the top of the list where I talk about all the great progress I’ve made?  To be fair to myself, I haven’t had many occasions to rise to this challenge, because Daniel and I haven’t been very quarrelsome.  When we did quarrel a few nights ago, I thought Daniel was being really unfair to me, and it’s hard to let him have his feelings when he’s angry for things that have nothing to do with me, yet directing his anger at me.   When he fusses at me because I ask him to do too much, or when I fuss at him because the kitchen counter is an impenetrable mess of newspapers, magazines, bills-about-to-get-lost, backpacks, wrappers, and crumbs (you’d fuss too, right?), what we are fighting about isn’t the request or the counter but something else that’s making us feel so unbalanced that the request or the counter is absolutely more than we can take.  That’s the fight we had a few nights ago.

#11.  Give money to Yoga Activist. Another not-yet-success.  Expensive dentist appointments, unexpected household bills, no financial discipline during Daniel’s hospitalization and recovery.  I haven’t given money to our synagogue to make repairs to the Torah scrolls, nor to the charity that Lena’s family designated for donations in her memory.  Those are the first places my donations will go when I’m out of credit card debt.

#12. Learn to poach an egg. Done!