What Do We Think About When We Think About Fashion?

Is black the new black? Will I ever be a photo in the The Sartorialist? Do I even like the Sartorialist? What makes me want to dress better? How can I move through space with minimum waste, maximum joy?* Is fashion even worth it? Does it improve my self-esteem, and if so, is there something wrong with me?

We could call it a Wikifray Symposium. Sound in with your thoughts.


*It's a Sade tune that sounds the way I'd like to look.

Bachelor Party

Waiting in the back room
for the coast to clear is someone
still combing his hair to the extreme
that it's the greatest work of art
anyone might see, if all they’ve seen are
country fairs on TV, fabulations by satellite,
seriously, I'm not kidding this is how they think, in a syntax
of hard rubber tines weaving through follicles, cross-cutting a scalp.
He could kiss himself, and he’s been drinking alone.
The problem is that the place is empty
and the bartender wants to go home
and there are wet spots in his crotch,
but there's always TV and magazines,
life going on somewhere,
There's a bone he wants to pick
with a beer of his own and a remote control.

Live Blogging the Clinton/Obama Debate

(well, technically not "Live" at 8pm Pacific time)

8:05 - Missed most of the opening statements, but let's get right to the substance: does Hillary usually wear that much eyeliner? Doesn't she remember what happened to Harriet Miers?

8:09 - Obama's answering the first question about making Clinton a running mate, and she's got what looks an awful lot like a tight, cynical little smile on her face. From the side, it almost looks like she's smirking. She still looks amused when she answers the question. In fact, so does he. Inside joke?

8:14 - He's sorta cute, isn't he? I can see why people find him persuasive. He still looks too much like my dad, though.

"I am the granddaughter of a factory worker from Scranton." Nice.

They both look entirely too chilled.

8:21 - Obama claims he reaches out to people of faith, and indeed, he really does.

8:29 - George Stephanopoulos asks Obama, "Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?" Srsly, dude - wtf? Clinton makes a feeble attempt to bolster the validity of this question. Fuck right off, HRC.

8:36 - Obama manages to be much more gracious, but really, this is like watching two people competing for the job of Head of Brain Surgery by being required to perform an interpretive dance while the other shoots spitballs at them.

8:42 - Questions I would like to see: "Senator Obama, is it true that you worship the Ghost of a Dead Nazarene on a Stick? Will Jesus' response to the moneylenders guide your response to the banking crisis? Do you believe in magic?"

8:55 - Charlie Gibson: "But Hils, [shocker!] you mean you won't listen to the divine wisdom of General Petraeus about what to do in Iraq?"

9:08 - Does any candidate ever tell the truth about taxes? Why even ask? It's like saying, "Please tell us some lies, now, but do it better than the other candidate."

9:13 - On taxes/economy, Clinton sounds infinitely more knowledgeable than Obama. She knows her stuff. He sounds like he's got the broad strokes, but that's all. No depth of understanding is apparent. Does this mean he wouldn't be a better president? He's a big picture person. Some big picture folks make the very best leaders. George Bush is a big picture person. Hillary Clinton is a detail person. The critical thing about being a big picture person is that you have a competent team. He's already admitted that this is where he's coming from. I suppose that in order to be convinced by that, one really must have the audacity of hope.

9:37 - This is the first debate I've watched, and I started out tonight trying to suspend my bias, thinking that both of them are great, really!, and I'd be happy to see either of them in. But forget it. She's it, and anyone that doesn't see that is a fucking idiot. Obama should just do the right thing and withdraw from the race.

9:50 - Audacity: in the coming weeks they do sufficient harm to each other that the only way either can win the election is by clinging to the other. They go over the rapids, McCain disintegrates in the churning foam, Clinton and Obama swim to safety on the far shore, and there they begin to rebuild civilization together.

Redesign

is underway. To catch anyone reading this up, Ender here. I'm giving WikiFray a makeover as making Blogger blogs over is one of the things I do these days. I'm not back except in the aforementioned capacity. This would be the place for any likes, dislikes and wishes.

Death is nothing to us

Dead bodies seem like sacks of dust to me. I don't see a person when I look at a dead body. I see an envelope where a person once lived. The force that stirred that dust is gone, and with it, the thing I loved.

Beyond the bright anguish of fresh grief, I have no attachment to bodies, and I don't care what happens to mine after I'm gone, but I've always been fascinated by the memento mori. It seems an odd way to hold onto the memory of love: by making a picture of the moment of your greatest anguish, of the moment when the person has ceased to be. It's like keeping a picture of a package that held the letter that brought some dreadful news. It's not the letter; it's not the news. It's merely what was left when everything was done—some wrapping paper, a bit of string, a few clots of stuffing—as evidence of what was lost.

While I find the memento mori strange, I find the pictures in the Life Before Death series strangely soothing, as if of strangers who have crossed a threshold and left something behind to reassure me of how deep and quiet is that long, long sleep.

[eta: link fixed]

Courtesy of dooce.

Drive Time

I knew that I had to start re-planning my commute when I heard the traffic report on the radio. But I didn't think about it much until, once it was light enough to get good video, the news helicopters started hovering loudly over my apartment. (In this regard, I was glad today was cloudy - had it been sunny, I would have awakened to the choppy drone of rotor blades, instead of my alarm clock.) By the time I left for work, people who'd moved north to Everett, chasing more affordable housing, had a two-hour commute on their hands. I did the simple thing - rather than use the on-ramp nearest my home, I drove down a couple of miles to the one at NE 124th Street - neatly bypassing the accident. It turned out that so many people lived on the wrong side of the backup, and even though there was only a single lane blocked, the bottleneck was so tight, that my commute time was cut literally in half. Traffic was barely any heavier than one would expect on a Saturday. There wasn't even enough volume to trigger the traffic metering lights on the on-ramps. Rather than stop-and-go, it was sixty-plus miles-per-hour all the way to the junction with State Route 520.

I found it difficult, the entire morning, to submerge being pleasantly surprised with my unexpectedly speedy commute beneath the nagging obligation I felt to feel sorry for the man whose death had enabled it.

Cruel Shoes

I was late getting out so I pulled on what was handy: a pair of black dress pants that are on the long side with my highest heels, sling-backs with a tiny peek-a-boo opening at the toe, an inch-high platform of unpadded wood under the ball of my foot, and about five inches of heel in back. They look like something a Vargas girl might wear, though perhaps not out on the town.

They’re my cruel shoes. I don’t know why I didn’t throw them out the last time I wore them, but what I keep doing instead is I let them sit in my closet until I forget the special agony of walking in them, and then I blithely put them on and go out. Not many mincing little steps later, I remember: they’re torture. Every step makes the flesh on the balls of my feet burn, and the places where the bones press down threaten to blister before I’ve traveled a single city block, but do I go home? No. Of course not. I have things to do.

Taking tiny steps, I try to affect a casual stroll. My feet shriek in protest. I entertain the idea that the shoes fit my current mood of self-loathing: they are the hair shirt, the horse-hair flogger with which I will suffer for my sins, which are legion. Not only do the shoes alter my posture, tilting my pelvis forward and making my ass stick out, I notice that they also have an effect on my expression, but it’s not a grimace of pain that I’m wearing, which would be understandable and appropriate; no, as I mince along in the heels, I tuck my chin under, open my eyes wide, and pucker my lips as if I’m ready to be kissed.

Because I’m innocent and fragile in my very tall shoes, and desperately in need of a man’s protection.

I notice the other women out on the town on this Friday night. Many are also wearing shoes or boots with soaring heels. In my cruel shoes, I can’t imagine their suffering is as acute as mine, but, like me, they tuck their chins under and teeter along the sidewalk, taking little steps. I stop watching myself and watch them.

It’s the first time it’s been plainly visible to me, this performance of femininity, and I stand there in my clingy black pants and my ridiculous shoes, with my padded, push-up bra under my too-tight black top, and I watch the other trussed and hobbled females parade like corseted show dogs in a ring. Skinny jeans tucked into skinny boots with a glittery bag. White semi-sheer tights with black stiletto pumps and a pencil skirt. Beside them, their male companions seem steady and non-descript, like trainers.

I watch them, and I’m struck by the absurdity of human beings squeezing themselves into these uncomfortable costumes and perching atop precariously high heels with expressions of sweet dismay on their faces in order to appear—what? Weak, yet graceful? Docile, yet alluring? Constrained, yet compelling? Easily captured, I think, because the clothing and the shoes are antithetical to movement, least of all a sprint for safety. Hell, dressed like this, we can barely get in and out of a car without assistance.

I’m waiting for my Starbucks’ coffee when a young woman approaches with her beau. Spotting me in her path, she stops and gives me the giant doe-eyes and chin tuck of sexalicious deference until I give her the signal that it’s okay to pass. Oh, please. I think, watching her tiptoe behind the boy to a seat at the back of the café. Must we keep up this charade? It’s too much. Do men really want this silly performance? Tonight it seems parodic to me. We are caricatures. We’ve made ourselves into barbie doll urban kittens, and how do we like the results?

I finish off my coffee, pick up a few groceries, and I’m making my slow and painful way back to my car when a pan-handler sitting at the base of a lamp post asks me for some spare change. He leans towards me as I walk by, and I step sideways to avoid him, shaking my head ‘no’. “That’s some boo-tay,” he shouts after me as I walk away.

I get home and kick off the dreadful shoes. I examine my feet. A couple of hot spots threaten to sprout blisters, and I decide that I’ve had enough: if I can’t get an insole that will protect my poor feet, these shoes are going in the garbage.

Book Club

We’ve done a couple of book clubs on wikifray so far, and they’ve been interesting and engaging (for the participants, at least). We’ll need some more people to join in to get another one going.
Links:

• The Echo Maker
• The Mystery Guest (a number of people weren't able to get the book in time to participate, including me)

We haven’t settled on a book yet, for this one, but there’ve been murmurs of approval of the title august suggested, The Invention of Everything Else, by Samantha Hunt, about the inventor Tesla. The suggestion captured my interest, and I’m going to see a play about him tomorrow night and the Cultch.

Here are some I’ve been thinking about:

• The Parable books by Octavia Butler
• Mischa Berlinski's Fieldwork
• Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but everyone seems to have read it already
• Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, by Marc Estrin
• Circuit of Heaven, by Dennis Danvers.

The one I’d really like to do, though, is this one: Little, Big, by John Crowley.

Feel free to express interest in taking part, and make suggestions of your own.

Initial book club post.

Canadian Woman Marries 12 Americans

British Columbia resident Dawn Coyote made national headlines last week when, in Canada’s first plural marriage across international borders, she wed twelve US citizens and brought them to live on her organic strawberry patch on the outskirts of Vancouver. The move had folks from all over the political spectrum up in arms, and the Canadian government has ordered a task force investigation of Ms. Coyote’s marriage.

If they are found to be in contravention of Canada’s laws, the federal government will likely begin deporting Ms. Coyote’s seven husbands and five wives. Ms. Coyote has said that if that happens, she will fight it on the grounds that her spouses will face religious persecution if returned to the US, where, she says, they could be detained at a Repentance Camp for an unspecified length of time, and could be charged with heresy under America’s recently adopted theocratic doctrine, Nation Under God (NUG).

The legal issues affecting the group's plural union include the recent defeat of Canada’s anti-polygamy law, the laws regarding same sex marriage, and the support requirement for immigrating spouses. We asked Ms. Coyote if she took all this into account prior to formalizing her relationship with these twelve individuals. “Of course,” Ms. Coyote responded, “My spouses and I are not breaking any laws. We are merely trying to create an extended family in which we might all live and thrive. We possess sufficient resources to sustain ourselves, and we ought be left alone to tend our strawberry patch in peace.”

There has been speculation from some quarters that this union is a scheme cooked up to give people amnesty from America’s new theocratic laws, to provide access to universal health care, and to avoid the costs and complications of immigrating to Canada in the conventional way.

We asked Ms. Coyote about the sleeping arrangements of the group, but she demurred, saying that the media has no business in the bedrooms of ordinary citizens. Ms. Coyote did explain that she considers each individual in the union to be the full spouse of every other individual, and that they may act on this status as desire and mutual respect dictate. The newlyweds, who refer to themselves collectively as the Coyote Clan, declare themselves to be non-practicing atheists, and in keeping with their goals of living sustainably, they have no plans to bring children into the union. They say they will work on the organic strawberry patch, which they now own collectively, and there is talk of converting the unused acres of the property into a writer’s retreat.