skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Feeling jaunty in my sailing duds and delivering yet a few more Xmas presents! P.S. Don't think my student was there after all. What a debacle, dental records are being used to ID now. It's really tragic.
Sam and I have been ill for like a week, as have most of our friends. My students were generous with the Yuletide germs as well. So rather than run around before Xmas like a blitzing pathogen, I've decided to stay home mostly and write endless streams of Xmas cards.
I got inspired by a 12 year old fashion blogger named Tavi G (no relation,cuz I would be T Tavi) who is adorable and has fun in the snow of NY and raps about Comme des Garcons and other fashion houses. She is precocious and who doesn't remember being that age- all dressed up, nowhere pressing to go, entertaining oneself with recording devices. In my case, it was a tape deck. If only I had kept all of the non-sequitur "interviews" I did with my friends and myself as other characters. Surely they'd be good for a laugh, since 12 year olds have kooky senses of humor in their juvenile grown-up way. In her case, she uses the internet blogdom that transmits to the globe. She has been hailed as a fashion "it" girl and demurely she has resisted the attention. I can only imagine how weird it is to be 12 nowadays. When I first got a video camera before I left for China in 1998, I was filming up everyone's nostril, I was so excited to document something. I recorded punk shows back when they seemed more fun somehow. I even went to my newfound, financially out of bounds favorite clothing store Anthropologie and filmed myself in the dressing room in dresses I would never have the occasion to wear or the funds to buy. This made me feel like I didn't need to own them, just document them. I've never particularly enjoyed getting dressed up, not since I was a reckless teen in the 80's. Then, I wore crazy costumes, some shredded beyond recognition, others sewn, pinned or laced into something like clothes. Thrift stores were raw and untapped as a resource. The makeup was generally spooky style. Black eyeliner looking like lower lashes clockwork orangey and lots of Siouxsie influenced blocks of eyeshadow in all colors. Into the late 80's and eventually I decided I wanted to hide instead. So I stopped wearing makeup for a couple of years and started dressing in monochromes. Before, black, white and gray were natural favorites, then it became forest or olive green. There was baby and navy blue for awhile and even brown which I had once loathed. I still have to resist the urges of black, white, gray, green, blue or brown. My clothes were whatever I could comfortably wear for a few days stretch, despite tatters. I studied in France and this lack of fashion did not go over at all well. I was treated like a wretch and waiters avoided me. I came back to graduate. Nirvana hit big and my friends living in Paris said the whole city was awash in little tattered long haired boys and girls. As anyone who had been punky before Nirvana knows, the times were very confusing. I was sure that no one would copy me if I dressed in plaid kilted school uniforms. That quickly became co-opted as did anything anyone in the scene did. We were forecasters and there were eyes everywhere. Now it is so prevelant in the advertising world, that punky people from that period are no longer surprised to hear Buzzcocks sell cars or see bands reunite without much foresight. I'm sure this topic has been exhausted extensively and at the risk of seeming nostalgic for the bygone days of punk rock purity (of which there probably never really were any) I'll stop waxing. Well, this brings me up to the present. Although I still cannot afford it, I have become a little bit of a clothes horse. I don't like making myself nor anyone else feel awkward so I rarely wear my fancy clothes out the door. Something about the lighting in the dressing rooms convinces me that I will someday find the reason to wear this garment. So like Tavi G dressed up with no particular place to go, I thought I'd take advantage of my bedrest by doing a little daily fashion blog until the prescription ends in 10 days. Then no more amoxicillin fashion days. Here's the dress Sam got me for Christmas and here I am on Christmas Eve in it and then dressed in what I actually wore out of the house.
I have been avoiding my blog because I knew inevitably I'd post about my cat passing away. It happened June 5th and I still feel pretty raw about it. It's like the Hadron Collider created a black hole in my heart that threatens to engulf my world. Two kittens have since fallen into our laps. They are wily and funny and share nuances of our old cat RayRay but they have some pretty big cat boots to fill. RayRay was given to us by our good friend Anthony when he couldn't fit him in the Jet Blue carrier for a cross country move to New York. We had known Ray since his kittenhood and Anthony knew he'd be happy with us. Sam and I are cat ladies minus the piss smell and french fries for cat food. We were RayRay's satellites, and he behaved every bit the tiny emperor in his pagoda cat tree. He was adoring and adorable, the kind of cat who comes out and charms the guests, then leaves them with a licked on head and lap of ivory fur. He could also be crafty. He was a fiend for Comet and would roll around in the slightest residue for hours. He loved to play slot machine with the TP and hit jackpot by rolling it out completely. He was really into stealing things and depositing them in his water dish. He was a God of Chaos who liked to knock things off from great hieghts just to see them crash and fall and hopefully break. He had complicated relationships with other cats, especially if they attempted to cozy up to me. He was very loyal and I still try to see him in our windows when we come home, looking out on the world, waiting for us.
Finally, I'm editing some footage from China 98-99 into a documentary. No narration just musical footage from all regions of China and Tibet. Still haven't figured out the consequences of posting this project on You Tube. The fine print is mindboggling. They can't sell it can they?
I'm heading out for some Christmas festivities here. But first I was researching the deranged Santa in Covina (city just over Kellogg Hill) who opened fire on a Xmas party and then torched the house. He has the same last name as one of my former students' and I hope his family was not at this party!!!!! The bodies are too charred to ID.
