Good night. And don't worry, I'm not turning into Suzi Orman. I hope. Or Imelda Marcos. Or ...

[fflo]

... whichever "Sex in the City" character most loves shoes.

One of my fellow Cancers sent me our horoscope for this week. It said all kindsa great things to which I thought "Yeah, right---so far the full moon's meant my basement's flooding and I'm feeling crazy isolated." I don't remember what it said, but I feel good stuff now. Real good. McG called as she was leaving work, late. She came over. We looked at the moon a little and then had a shoe party. I had several pairs of shoes in a big box in my living room, waiting for me to try them on. It's free! It's free to try on for size, that is. The cats thought it was fun, too. Everybody partied.

Nice shoes are a most interesting concept. Nice things in general---it's so fraught. Not just with my familial inheritance of caution and frugality, Depression-era worrywort Mom. Also with class issues. There's something wrong about spending lots of money on things that aren't needed and cost a lot, especially if they don't seem to need to be so expensive. You shoulda heard me going on to bigfinedaddy about the obscenity of $300 sunglasses that aren't even prescription glasses---that was one of my early (adult) outrages, when there are people starving. Such a business to negotiate, it is---how to be, in relation to money. It's as hard as how to be a woman, or how to be with women, or men, or neither, or both, or many.

Anyway I'm already doing this acquiring of a painting this coming weekend. I'd show you here, but I think you're gonna have to come to my place to see it. I think you are. I think I'm going to have to have a party for it or something. Will you come? You're invited. I'll tell you later when.

So, yeah, I'm gonna buy this watercolor I saw in a café, as I wrote to John today, "like a nut, all cavalier & non-utilitarian, here in these difficult economic times." And there's something about that. Money is very freakin' tricky, and there's something about that. Something liberating, and maybe not only okay in a selfish American way. And now, as I sit here writing to you in the middle of the night on a school night, I don't want to take off my shoes and go to bed, cuz I don't want to take off my shoes.

These shoes feel so good on my feet, I cannot tell you. These are some freakin' comfortable shoes. I can tell already that they will be forming themselves more and more to my feet. And guess what. No, guess. No, really, actually, truly, don't bother guessing, cuz you'd never guess this. Olja is going to be jealous of my shoes. I'm telling you. She is. That's so unreal, it's 3-sets-of-italics unreal.

Plus I'm probably keeping at least one other pair. Maybe two! HahaHAAAhahaahaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

"All God's children need travellin' shoes."

I googled a quotation today that turned out to be from "30 Rock." And that part of the evening turns out to be among the very best.

If Venus retrograde has anything to do with any of this, optical illusion from our earthly POV that retrograding is, maybe she's bringing unusual opportunity as much as a possible mess. Or maybe it doesn't matter what's happening, when you remember how to be into it, that you can be into it.

I dunno about that, really, whatever the hell I'm saying there. But I know I like my new shoes.

Comments

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

[[the first lens (beyond the literal) that i read it through is about a claim to the right/experience of beauty as holding all the uglies, too, and the temporal variation. but i certainly see your point. ;)]]

i thought you were doing that too, and that for me was also one part of the 'training' here that i was either deprived or spared of: those years of schooling in which it is decided who is pretty and who needs to feel ashamed. that is only now coming to the lands of my people, with the advent of the media and the new rules, but it feels like the kids are still capable of maintaining some semblance of sense about how they may have meaningful lives beyond their "beauty" at 13. somehow people there don't get crushed as madly, and i'm glad i was spared for as long as i was.

get the boots! you'll wear them and they'll make you happy :)

[fflo.livejournal.com]

ha---i was thinking more the ugly realities (of the world, the life, the interacting with the people) in with the beautiful ones, vs. people/women and appearance, per se, but the tendency to want to embrace it all (as having beauty, aesthetic fullness) is probably part and parcel of the same thing---that is to say, not unrelated to my exposure to how it supposedly is. with the beauty and the looks and the "i feel pretty oh so pretty."

it piques my interest, this not being so crushed that way you speak of.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

it's a long story, but mostly about high school days, i think. when i first came, people i met were still relatively close to hs years and everyone was telling me what a trauma that was and how they couldn't wait for it to end.

i had never heard anything like it, but i had never been in a place where *everyone had to do the same thing. the savages still haven't learned their obligations, and i think that's what saves the kids. i obviously haven't learned yet either.

i spend some time on saturday with my new 'friend' from the department, or the closest thing to a woman friend i can have there. she's white, of course, and every time she says anything honest, she has to say 'and i say that because i'm a bad person.' i couldn't say i was tired of it, so i said she could always say such things to me because i have bad person's thoughts all the time.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

sounds like you're talking about the version of dogmatic "pretty" known as "nice." or the transgressing against it.

obligation's a minefield.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

it was a more mixed bag over there. the two who thought they were pretty were also the meanest bitches in the universe. we knew when we were 15 and 16 to stay away from them, and they were not happy we wouldn't indulge them.

one ended up converting to heroine use with a boyfriend; the other opened a car dealership and got rich with a boyfriend. both left boyfriendless, unmarried and without a degree.

the more properly attractive ones were not nice either, but that was part of their attraction. all of them finished college. some more decent ones were told by boyfriends they didn't need degrees but have gone back in the meantime.

meanwhile, everyone was practicing their own version of 'dressup' and noone was particularly concerned with 'nice.' so i guess the gender iconography doesn't align the same way. the same one i was spending time with on saturday was telling me that i would be ok because i was 'nice in person'. another thing i've never heard in my life from anyone i thought had any brain.

p.s.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

the savages still haven't learned their obligations

this here line is an epigraph waiting for its poem. its prose poem?

Re: p.s.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

perhaps :)

it has been suggested to me before that i should do 'prose poems'. it was suggested they should be in english, and at the time i wasn't sure i would know at what point my prose would start being poetry. but i'm still contemplating the idea.

i still have the title of my collection settled, but no actual pieces.

Re: p.s.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

i look forward to seeing the title. on the ms., perhaps? or will i have to wait until the bound copies?

Re: p.s.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i thought you already knew my title:

last week when i was french

it might be going out of fashion--the whole joke about identity politics--but *the people* might like it. none of the pieces would be about identity politics, of course.

Re: p.s.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

of course!

and of course. :)