169. DRESSZING

From the Archives

(November 2005) Here’s what I now know, thanks to the Oprah magazine that was in my doc’s waiting room: you can go to dresszing.com to learn all about a fashion coach (!) who is devoted to helping women and men develop their personal style.

Now I ask you, what sort of person has to BUY her own personal style?

A psychoanalyst in the same magazine said that the task of adulthood is to remember and resuffer what we couldn’t really suffer as children because it was too painful then. So maybe hiring a fashion coach is how some people resuffer the pains of their youth?

(Wearing those bold-striped soccer shirts once was not enough so, a-ha, you must now live in argyle and Izod hell forevermore!)

Today I am wearing a moss-colored linen blouse, dark green linen slacks, a brown suede jacket, polka-dotted green socks, and brown Joseph Siebel shoes. What would my fashion coach say about that?

(And why should I care?)

Somehow I think it'd be exactly what my basketball coaches always said: run 5 more suicides, Medea.

Finally, some copywriter who is clearly not paid enough money wrote the following ad copy for an article about women married to men who use viagra:

Read about women who run with the pharmaceutically enhanced wolves.

Okay, so I am off to the Low Country now for some much-needed R and R and writing and fresh seafood. Won’t be online for at least a week, but will be oh so happy when I return, so ciao for now.

16. THE WOMEN I HAVE FISTED

From the Archives

(March 2005) Watched Oprah Winfrey’s production of Their Eyes Were Watching God last night. Don’t remember the book well enough to compare the film to Zora’s work, but it was a good production and the cinematography was especially well done and LawdHaveMercy that Hallie Berry is one sexy woman!

I guess it’s hard not to be sexy in a role about a repressed woman coming into her own sexually but I gotta say that I would eat those strawberries with her anytime.

Unfortunately, the down side of watching that movie is that I woke up at 3:19 AM in a repetitive memory/PTSD moment, frozen to the bed, clammy, and absolutely drenched in sweat.

Took me a few seconds to figure out where I was and then another 20 minutes or so until it no longer felt as if someone had put 1,000 pounds of weights on me while I was sleeping.

I haven’t had one of those familiar dreams or memories or flashbacks or whatever they are in a while, but suspect that the gunshot at close range from the movie was enough to put me right back in the room where my mother shot herself once I closed my eyes.

It’s weird. After all this time I know where practically every spatter of blood was on the ceiling and walls and floor, just as vivid as that day ... and I still wake up as shell-shocked.

Thanks brain, but I thought you understood repression. Ugh! Hope I don’t have another one of those for a very long time.

Figured I wouldn’t wake up at 5 for my made-up karate cata rotine but didn’t. I did manage to escape for a nice long walk on this absolutely gorgeous day though.

Spring is here!

Hmmm. Just thought about this line from Bob Dylan’s “Advice to Geraldine on Her Miscellaneous Birthday” (which I painted on a room divider): "When asked what you do for a living, say that you laugh for a living." ... and either I have some serious ADD today or I have spring fever or this here blog is determined to become a picaresque narrative despite my best intentions.

Had a fun thought when I was walking today too: thought about writing a piece about various models from my anatomical drawing classes called “The Women I Have Studied” (alluding to art piece), then my mind went downhill and I thought oh but wouldn’t it be more fun to write “The Women I Have Fucked” instead? Or why not go whole hog and write “The Women I Have Fisted”?

La la la