It could indeed be worse

The virus could have hit the US between July 5, 2018, when I said I didn’t want to be his wife any more, and January 3, 2019, when I moved out.  I would have been living — as so many women are right now — with someone who verbally abused and physically threatened me.

I wanted to leave in October 2018 — I started paying rent on my apartment then.  He convinced me to stay until Milo had taken his college entrance exams.  The idolatry of college entrance exams and achievement!  It was stupid and costly — also to Milo, because we were fighting pretty much openly by then.

So I’ll have the holiday alone.  Milo isn’t careful of my feelings, and he will spend most of the quarantine at the family home, which is 3x the size of my apartment and has outdoor space.

And yet, I have so much.  My beloved friends will FaceTime me tonight for a pre-Pesach open house, where I will show them my debut Seder plate, on my grandmother’s china, which I have never used despite having possessed it for 20 years.  I will show them the dishes I am making just for myself, but I am my own honored guest.  And then my true love Will will be with me, also via FaceTime, sending his love because he doesn’t want me to be alone.

It could be worse.  It has been worse.  It’s better now.

Pesach 5780

I started this blog post by looking back, but I get to revise it.  I get to tell the story from the start, from now, not then.

Today was the start of my Pesach kitchen transformation.  I wished today that my mother were Jewish — which I have never wished before — so that I could call her and say, “I just did my refrigerator, where are you?  What are you doing about the seder plate this year?  What are you making?  Can we stream the seder?”  But she’s not.  We don’t share the holiday back end, and I am sad, especially as I am coming to fully inhabit this holiday.

I am proud of my Pesach kitchen.  I do more a thorough changeover than I did when I lived with Daniel, lived in that narrow place, trying to find a space between his disapproval and generalized rage at Pesach, his disdain for my Jewish practice, when I was balancing the whole burden of Orthodox practice on my head.  But now, it is for me — and for Milo, for a few days, and I’m not sure he’ll notice or not.  Even alone, I am connected to Jewish women (I wish Pesach cleaning weren’t so gendered… maybe it isn’t in other households.  In my current set up, all the domestic labor is gendered.  Milo vacuumed for the first time in his life when he was here two weekends ago.  He was delighted by the novelty, but took umbrage when I asked him to do it again.  He agreed to clean his desk, which was also his dining room for his two week of post-travel quarantine with me.  He took Women’s History last semester, so he has all the rhetoric, but gender privilege — modeled to a T by his father —  is in his marrow and he has to fight to overcome it).  I am connected to all of the people who spent hours today, wiping out the fridge, switching the contents of the cupboards, scheduling the controlled landslide (right metaphor?) of Pesach through the rest of the kitchen: sink, dishwasher, microwave, stovetop, oven countertops (why do we say “won in a landslide”? That doesn’t make sense.  We don’t say, won in a tidal wave.).

I control nothing at all outside my door.  The virus will affect one in seven residents of my city, according to the latest projections.  There are 15 apartments on 11 floors in my apartment building.  One trash room per floor.   One laundry room — 10 washers, 10 dryers — for all of us.  One package room for the endless deliveries that we believe keep us safe.  The odds are not in my favor.  So how glorious (my Will’s favorite expression of delight, “glorious,” in his really sexy light Queens accent. Why yes, Will does read my blog.  Why do you ask?)… how glorious it is to declare that my kitchen is as I want it, as it should be.  My kitchen, for Pesach, is communal, connected to all the other kitchens like it until the night of April 16, when Jack in the Box of the holiday springs open and we scatter.

This constrained Pesach feels full of possibility.   I will take time off, which is counter cultural and counter-intuitive.  My boss’s confusion radiates through her email.  Why would you take time off when you can’t do anything?  Exactly.  No doing.  Reading, walking, ceasing to push the heavy boulder up the steep incline of my job, which has ceased to engage or fulfill or reward or pay my bills.  This Pesach, with so much forbidden, I will be free.

(The last time I wrote about Pesach it was like this.  And now, with everything confused and so much fear about work and money and when will I be able to free myself from Daniel legally and financially,  I have all that I need, things that were literally unimaginable when I last wrote about Pesach, two years and four days ago.  I did this.  I made this.  It’s indelible.  Whatever else happens, whatever I might lose later, I did this.  I love you, my Will.)

 

The new story; the now story

3:29

I did not write an intentions blog post last year.  I remember exactly why.  I wrote down my intentions elsewhere, in my Ink & Volt exercises (and yes, last January I invoked Brad Feld and said, “I wish I could do what the cool VC guys do.”  I repeat myself.  It’s fine.  If I say it twice, I must mean it.)

I met my goals and lived up to my intentions beautifully last year, ahead of schedule. I looked back at my posts from January 2018 and they made me very sad.  I was crushing myself.  I was not at all a friend to myself.  I did some extraordinary and brave things and told myself I was stupid and heartless to do them.  No. I was right the first time.  Once I got some momentum going, living in truth was unstoppable, and I have lived in truth as best I could for 2018.  I look back at least year’s Ink & Volt lists, and the blog posts, and recall the conversations with friends and see how small and scared I was then.  I wonder if I will look back a year from now and see the same thing, next year when I am that safe giant.

Or maybe this will be a year for consolidation, for cementing all of that behavior change when it will get really challenging.  Maybe this will be the year that I say that it’s okay for me to have all the good stuff.  Because even as I’m typing and thinking about the move and how great it’s going to be and the rugs I want to buy, I have that old fear, that something bad is going to happen.  That it’s not going to be really great after all.  That it can’t really be great for me.

Here is the antidote: I note, record, and revel in how this has been truly the best year of my life.  This year, when I walked into many of nightmares and continued walking.  (Did I write that already? I think I did.  I must really mean it.)  This year I learned that I could do that, walk into the nightmare.  I learned that even a nightmare truth is better than pretty lies.  The solidity of knowing the worst is better than the wobble-board of fearing the worst.  And there were so many people holding my hand as I walked into and through the nightmare.  I never thought that would be the case, but they showed up.  This might have been the hardest year of my life, but I don’t think so– I’ll have better perspective later.  When I put aside the fear, I had more room for happiness and joy.  When I detached from a grading system that would always fail me, I felt more successful.  I made things possible that seemed impossible just weeks before.

So… Even if my new apartment is less congenial and commodious than I hope; even if my neighbors are loud; and the water pressure in the shower remains unworthy of the name; and the cable cord is strung along the ceiling rather than the floor and it vexes me every single day and I have to stay home and pay money to get it changed; even if I run through my savings and have to borrow more from my parents; even if I buy all the wrong rugs and lamps; even if my stuff won’t fit in my new apartment and I have to rent a storage space for my Pesach dishes and college memorabilia and suitcases.  Even if lose my job.  Even if friends break my heart by leaving me because I have left Daniel.  Even if I never find the love I hope for.  Even if all those things at once, the last year is indelible.  It happened.  I am the me that did that.  I am also the me that undermined herself for decades, see, consolidation, above.  But a strong counterstory is emerging.  “Is emerging” as if it were a gas or natural phenomenon.  No. I AM CREATING a strong counterstory.  I am living a strong counterstory.

My main intention in 2019 is Abundance.  I have elsewhere told myself it’s abundance, not excess, but I’m going to excise the negative from my intention. I know the difference between abundance and excess.  One makes me happy and the other makes me anxious, so I don’t have to wag my finger at myself and warn myself away from too much (I’ve overspent this past week, and I’m struggling a lot with that.)

4:04, with breaks

 

Strained

8:32

I wanted, four hours ago, to call this post “Silly” because I had, ridiculously, spent $200 today visiting a friend.  It wasn’t exactly like that — it never is.  Daniel took the car this afternoon to take Milo to an activity.  So I rented a Zip Car, to spare myself the cost of an Uber.  I wanted to drive, and that’s something I rarely feel, so I gave into it.  I believe, now, that I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts for the 30 minute ride to the suburbs, and I certainly didn’t want to be with a driver.  Driving gave me something else to think about.  And the cost wasn’t much more, if any more, than an Uber.   So that’s $45.

My friend Annabeth has cancer.  Bad cancer.  So $25 on flowers, that being the very least I could do.  And she is a gem.  We have seen each other maybe three times in the last dozen years since we graduated law school.  Folly!  She is a gem, and I need more of her in my life.  And she has cancer.  She’s remarried, and I mentioned that I’d last seen her right after she got married again.  She said, “Yes, the modern era.  So much better than before.  You know the first marriage was bad when now, even with cancer, is much better.”  We visited for an hour (“visited” is a verb from my childhood, usually used in past tense without the final consonant, as in, “It sure was nice visiting’ with you.”  Occasionally in the quasi imperative, “C’mon over here and let’s visit.”), and she got tired because she’s had a treatment recently.  She was delightful, then tired.  We laughed.  I didn’t ask her about her illness.  I did tell her the truth about my situation — she knew Daniel from our law school days, and he leaves an impression.

Then I went to the food co-op in her neighborhood.  I used to shop at a different branch, since closed, and I was so happy to be back.  I spent $150 on kombucha, beer, soap, chocolate, and environmentally righteous menstrual products.  Why?  Because Annabeth has cancer– bad cancer.  Because she has a truly, deeply loving husband, and a little girl who asked me if I did all the housework in my house (er… um… kind of, not really… yes it feels like it).  Because I don’t want her to die.  Because I don’t want to be married to Daniel.  Because I realized today that the feelings I wasn’t feeling weren’t feelings of relief or happiness, but of deep sadness.  And maybe I can drink and eat and bleed and wash all that stuff away.  Maybe I can surround myself, intimately even, with all this eco-luxury and that will make me feel entirely better.  At the very least, it was a reminder of a time when I had less clarity, and believed I was happy, and worried less about money.  I am worrying about money — the money it will take to buy my freedom — all the time, except when I’m filling my cart with luxury objects.

Then we did a family logistics thing — no need for details — which is always a recipe for extreme tension.  Milo and I are both on the ceiling right now, and he won’t talk to me about it, which is entirely age-appropriate but it makes me sad.

Annabeth makes me sad, too.  I am so sad.  Sad I haven’t seen her more.  Sad she has cancer.  Sad she is missing out on even a minute of happiness with her husband.  Sad about all my missed minutes, too.

What will I do?  Her cancer is not about me.  But this blog post is.  What will I do?  I know what I have to do.  Daniel came home from the grocery store and was actively nice for a bit.  I liked it.  I fell for it.  He believes it’s all fine.  It’s not fine.  It hasn’t been fine for a long time, and it will be so costly in every sense to make it so.  He’s already threatened me with an awful divorce.

I realized last night that when I first mentioned divorce, he said I couldn’t because of Milo, not because he loved me.  Maybe he gets a pass because he was angry and surprised.

I could decide to spring myself.  I could decide not to take the next round of grants and leave my job in June.  I could decide to leave Daniel now.  The money is there, from my parents.  If I said, “Daddy, I need the money, loan it to me, and you’ll have it back in two years,” I could do that.  I could do all those things.  I’m just so sad at having to right now.  I’m too sad right now.  And then I’ll be sad throughout.  And I still trust myself to do the right thing at the right time.  This is being brave for myself, and I have to be brave for myself so that the next good thing will come.

There was a point with Annabeth when I thought, as I have thought sometimes, “and yet, I’ve never been happier.”  I”m getting back to myself.  I am restoring my soul to me in mercy, and it feels pretty good.  I’m renting a car and driving to a granola suburb and spending silly money without justifying it to anyone, and it feels good.  It felt good.  Clarity is better than what I had before.

I should stop.  I should just read now.  I’m going to do health insurance reimbursements and iron instead.

8:56

 

 

Larrapin

8:06

I’m not feeling particularly inspired, so let’s see what I can do with the title. My paternal grandmother had a wonderful way of speaking. She’s the only person I’ve heard say the word larrapin. (It’s in wordpress autocorrect). I thought it meant excellent generally, but apparently it’s specifically used for especially good food, Southern food, or country food. Definitely a regionalism. I miss her. Illness and age reduced her years before she died, so it’s been a long time since I experienced her grace and charm and wit.

I thought of larrapin because Ls, and I wanted to use it while I could. I’m feeling oddly relaxed. My business trip was intense and disappointing. It’s hard to get people to give me money, at least the six-figure sums I need quickly. And then the weekend was abysmal (I should use that word more often, as I have often felt at the edge of an abyss). But I had a strong rebound. Milo has been sick enough to stay home, but not sick enough to worry about, so that slowed everything down. I had the luxury of catching up on most of my email and tying up a lot of vexing loose ends.

I just made myself laugh by realizing that I’m relaxed because I feel like it’s someone else’s turn to make the next move. Someone else has to reply to my emails, or advance my work goal, or make things happen for me. I’m on the sidelines today, just helping out, pitching in where I can. I have declined an active role. Tomorrow I’ll probably shift, but it’s nice to know that this is possible, and that it feels like a tremendous luxury — which it is.

At home, well, whatever. Daniel apologized last night by phone (he was away on family business) for saying “Who could ever want to be married to you.” So that was very nice. He was in circumstances yesterday that always work to my advantage. I know what I mean by that. But it’s the same weird distance now that he’s home. I’m not bothered by it. I’m tired, buzzing a little on endorphins, and just too worn out by everything that’s happened to have the energy for change. So someone else will have to do it. But I still always have to unload the dishwasher.

8:16. meh

Joy

4:38

I’m breaking one of my cardinal rules, and blogging during the workday.  I will leave my desk in 22 minutes anyway to go to yoga, and there’s nothing work related that I can accomplish in 22 minutes. Well there almost certainly is, but nothing is coming to mind and I’m not looking hard.

So some things that are bringing me joy right now, regardless of all other things, and in no particular order

1. Frugality. When I am thoughtful about spending money, buying new things only to replace old things,and using up all the old things and clearing out and letting go, I magically have money for the things that matter (therapy!). I’m loosening my grip a little, but so far, it’s not been too hard and the psychic rewards are much greater than the rewards of careless spending.

2. My new CSA subscription. To be fair, I won’t see the produce for a couple more weeks, but I am very happy about the idea of the fresh produce and adventures in cooking. This subscription touts itself as being extremely easy to manage. A few weeks ago, I would have said I couldn’t afford it (groceries come from Daniel’s portion of the budget), but I think it will make me happy to spend this money in this way.

3. Bringing my lunch to work. Before our financial pinch, I never brought my lunch, and thought it would be impossible to do so. Who wanted to cook on Sundays for the week? Me, it turns out. Some three months in, it’s not oppressive. I have a very high tolerance for eating the same foods over and over (I’m on week 2 of lentils every day). I go into the common areas of our offices, and have my nice lunch away from my desk. I think eating away from my desk is essential to this enterprise, and the food is incidental.

4. My new offices. I thought I would hate this location, but the space is delightful. It feels fresh and new. I also like working in a slightly different neighborhood. I enjoy being an urban explorer.

5. Bicycling. The new offices are most easily reached by bike, and I delight in unlocking a bike every day and flying along the streets. My bike commute is very short, downhill (I usually take the bus or walk home) and energizing. I feel like a college student, or little kid, and I enjoy that.

6. Writing. At work, I write for 10 minutes a day on whatever project is at hand — mostly playing around, brainstorming, sometimes revising. It is magic. I have ideas I wouldn’t have come up with otherwise. I move projects along that would have seemed too daunting to take on. Even when I don’t feel like it, it’s just 10 minutes. I didn’t read about this practice on a blog or in a productivity book.  I just made it up, and I love the results.

7. Milo. He’s spectacular. He shows me what mutual love looks like, and there is so much freedom and happiness in it. (Shadow to this: my relationship with Milo, and the goodness in it, revealed to me so many of the limitations of my relationship with Daniel, and the wrongness of what Daniel said about me and how he treated me. It’s an awkward truth: Milo’s love showed me that I have to leave his dad. Hmm. Milo will need a good therapist of his own.)

8. My friends. I thought for years I was a bad friend, needy, self-centered, only showing up when I needed something. My friends show me something different. If these amazing women want to spend time with me, then there is something really right with me, and it gets more right the more time I spend with them. I didn’t have models of female friendship growing up. These women are saving me, every day.

9. The gym in the office building. Finally, finally, I’m running. Just the treadmill, just for 15 minute HIIT workouts, but I’m running and it’s hard and I like it. I’m also doing some weights and resistance work. I looked forward to it all day yesterday. It feels better (and is so much cheaper) than spinning.

4:59. Not my best prose, repetitive and pedestrian. I care enough to note it, but not enough to change it.

Gratitude 2017

It’s possible that this blog will turn out to be a diary of being married to a man who didn’t want to be married to me, and nevertheless tried very very hard to fit himself into our marriage.  It’s possible.  And I say that with love towards him, and in recognition that he also has love for me. And, weirdly, I am deeply grateful that I can write it without fear or shame or an inner implosion.  (1)

I am grateful for my friends who are coming through for me in brilliant and true ways.  When I call around looking for them to condemn me, to tell me that Daniel’s analysis of me and our recent exchanges is correct, they refuse, with vigor.  The emails I’ve received, from near strangers, from moms-in-the-parking-lot friends, move and stabilize me at the same time. (2)

I am grateful for Spotify.  I came late (like a month ago) to the wonders of streaming music.  Damn! San Saba County is on spotify.  Poi Dog Pondering (no, they aren’t good but they are the soundtrack of a particular time) is on spotify, so I can always hear that one song I like.  I listened to Taylor Swift 1989 today on CD while I was cooking, because I’m a sucker for Welcome to New York and Blank Space, then a friend told me about Ryan Adams 1989, and I heard that on Spotify.  A digital cabinet of wonders is this thing!  Now listening to the “Songs to Sing in the Shower” playlist.  Oh hell yeah.  Journey and then the Proclaimers?  That, my friends, is happiness.  Daniel is not speaking to me much, so it’s glorious to have other sounds surrounding me.  I’m also grateful for my wireless sport earphones. (3, 4)

I am grateful for yoga, spinning, core strengthening, and foam rolling.  (5, 6, 7, 8)

I am grateful that, during this impossible time, my dreams are generally happy and soothing, even the ones about Daniel.  (9)

I am grateful that Milo is the epitome of awesome, and is taking excellent care of himself. He gets that from me (he gets lots of less good qualities from me, too) and I am weak-in-the-knees grateful that he sees it’s a good thing, not a selfish or bad thing.  (10, 11)

I am grateful that I was raised by frugal people and know how to be that way, and even to find it an interesting puzzle.  Of course, I might blow the budget on expensive skincare later on tonight, but I can measure it in terms of additional days of packed lunches and foregone shoes.  (12)

I am grateful for a beautiful day outside and the color of the leaves that have fallen in my neighborhood.  Yeah, I am really grateful for color outside. (13)

I am grateful for our dog, who is providing Daniel so much comfort right now.  (14)

I am grateful for tea, beer, and excellent chocolate. (15, 16, 17)

And, because I thought for a minute it was 2018, because I am getting really bad about knowing what year it is (2011? 2016? 2017) and because I’m thinking all the time about raising money to keep my job going for 2018, I have an 18th occasion for gratitude.  I am grateful for my capacity to love, which is bigger than I thought.  My feelings are coming back to me, slowly, and some of them are terrible, but right at this moment I feel a lot of love and I feel a lot of ability to love.

Oh, also grateful for a new dress.  I bought it for a special occasion, which was cancelled (cancelled is too gentle a word.  It was nullified, obliterated, erased, unmade, eradicated when everything went wrong). I say this only to justify the cost — this was a special dress for a special evening.  I’m going to wear it to Thanksgiving dinner with friends.

Meditation on meditation

9:04

The smell of my house when I walked in the door tonight: wood, lilies (because Daniel buys flowers every week), a little bit of damp, residue of incense burned a week ago, a hundred meals worth of potatoes.  It’s warm here, and our house releases smells when it goes from warm to cold.

The bodega around the corner, which always plays the oldies station, and, when you grew up in the 70s and 80s, your most treasured music is now oldies music.  Last Friday “Beat It” was on.  I never loved the song then, but my heart soared when I heard it.  I did the steps I remembered from the video in the aisle.  It was only a couple of steps.   Today it was the Pretenders, and Chrissie Hynde always is a pleasure.

The bus that pulled up a minute after I got to the stop, and dropped me off right at the bodega.

Those were the exit doors from my foul mood (hmm.  Not really, unless it conveys a sequence, and I don’t think exit doors conveys a sequence.  Off ramps has the same problem.  I originally had “antidotes” but that’s too cliched.  Maybe “rungs on the ladder out of..”?  Votive candles lighting the pathway beyond?  Time to stop.)

Meditation makes these experiences as big as the more frustrating ones.  The original title of this post, when I was writing it in my mind was Everything Girl, or maybe Everything Girl vs. the Demons.  I was set to carry on about frustrations, how I am piling on unnecessary and foolish discontents and bullying myself when I’m already carrying a very heavy load, and doing it pretty damn well.

Then I walked in and there was the smell.  And I remembered the song.  And I thought about how nice it was that the bus took me exactly right there.  And that became the most important thing to write about.

Everything girl, bless her heart, is never very far away, nor are the demons (actually the point of the post was or will be that everything girl is in fact a demon… it will make sense once I introduce her), but that’s for another time.

9:22, because I feel done.  And about 5 minutes were spent watching the Beat It video to make sure that the moves were really from Beat It, rather than Thriller.  So much smoking!  That wouldn’t be allowed now.  See for yourself:

 

 

 

Inconsequential

7:03

Such happiness to log in again.  Nothing in particular to say, but sitting here feels like such a pretty luxury.  My microclimate is more hospitable than it was 10 days ago.  (Emphasis on microclimate.  Maybe even nano-climate. Outside my door it gets worse and worse.)  I am moving too fast, probably, to feel any one thing for long, good or bad.  So the gloom of my trip gave way to anxiety about the next big work thing, which was wonderful and hard and very nourishing, but 48 hours after returning I hardly remembered that I’d been away.

Today, though, my body got the memo, as Daniel likes to say.  I relaxed.  Tomorrow holds a small adventure to a new store in a new part of town.  Well, not a new part of town, but a part of town that’s emerging and I haven’t been able to explore it yet.  My guys are not urban explorers, at least not in our own city.  But there’s an errand to draw us out, and I’m treating it like a picnic.  I might be a sucker for destination retail.  But more than that, tomorrow is not frantic, at least not yet.  I know what I mean by that.  I make days frantic well in advance, and I am usually right.

There’s also joy in writing things that are inconsequential.  I write so many emails, so many, many, many important emails, and agendas and invitations.  So many things to be scrutinized and worried over.  So many things that are meant to have momentous effect, to do a thing, to make a difference, to show impact. This riff here is not very good, not very interesting, just another Hanon exercise, and I don’t care.  I’m stiff and over performing and it doesn’t matter.  This is what play is.

When I was feeling really low a few weeks ago, wrapped up in how blue I was, I played a word game with myself, like hacky sack.  I started with Blue.

Blue Moon

Moon River

River of Love

Love train

Take the A train

A-team

Team sport

sport … and then I’ll stall, and that’s like dropping the ball.  It’s like the geography game Milo, Daniel and I used to play, in which one player says a place name, and the next player has to say a place name that begins with the last letter of the previous place name.  Key to victory: remembering Xenia (Ohio).  It always came up after Halifax.  But then you’re sunk if someone says Bordeaux (we never remembered that), and you don’t have any more Xs.  There are several Chinese cities that begin with X, but I never committed them to memory.  I knew play, something non serious, something that didn’t matter, would give my mind something useful to do.

I should also learn to knit.  That would drive Daniel mad, which is not not a reason to do it.  Daniel is anxious about signs of aging in me, and I don’t think he’s familiar with knitting as a hipster practice.  He says, “I’m the only one who is allowed to get old,” as he nervously eyes my fast-graying hair and says he likes it.

We’re off to dinner now, at a fancy restaurant.  I’ll wear something ridiculous and youthful to please him.  He’s blue right now, and won’t think to play his way out of it (but maybe I give him too little credit.)

7:24

What it’s like

8:43

It’s like this:

(That song is 4 minutes and 26 seconds long.  Does that count towards my time?  Against my time?)

It’s not working tonight.  I’ve deleted everything I’ve tried to write.  And I don’t have to write anything at all.  This is something I do for myself, and if it’s not a kindness to myself, then I don’t have to do it.  I don’t have to challenge myself, push myself or improve myself.  I can be content and complete exactly as I am now.  I have, let’s say, a writing injury.  It needs to heal before I return to my regular practice.  Wow, that is massively comforting, when I needed comfort.  I would very much like comfort to come upon me, perhaps even to fall on me like a sofa (I am in love with my own simile, which tends to end with a broken heart or at least a tin ear, but for now, it’s a loveseat love fest.  Go ahead, groan all you want but this is helping me.  This is play and I so need it right now.)  Anyway, at the moment, comfort does not fall, settee-like, from the sky but rather has to be dug up like root vegetables (beets, please, I like those and they are so pretty).  So now that I’ve got the dirt under my nails, it’s time to say goodnight.

9:05, with most of the minutes devoted to deletion.  Elegance is refusal.  (Different commenters attribute this to Coco Chanel or Diana Vreeland.  I’m the Vreeland camp myself. And I’m not sure that elegance is refusal.  Perhaps that’s because I’m feeling very refused these days, and being accused of being aggressively refusing — see prior overworked riff on resistance. Re re re re re re re re respect… I hope it ends there.  Anyway, I think elegance, true elegance, comes from graciousness and generosity.  And if it doesn’t, I’m not sure it’s worth aiming for.)