If you're a reader here, you know that every so often I wet my index finger, then stick it in the air to divine how the cultural winds are blowing. Nowadays I'm a big reader of newspapers, mags, and blogs for my zeitgeist info, but it wasn't always so. Used to be, I only paid attention to cars, software, fashion, and painting. What those four have in common is a breathtaking faddishness. With software and painting, I can understand why--both can be done speedily, and reflect prevailing changes almost as they happen. That monolithic industries like cars and fashion are equally prone to caprice is odd, but even so, they're dependable bellwethers.
Sometime back, I gave up the idea, and certainly all attempts, to follow fashion. The clothes I saw in the hag mags were expensive beyond imagining and practicality. For a while, I tried buying some debased version of the latest thing, only to discover that was like buying a print of Starry Night and pretending it was a real van Gogh. So occasionally, like an art historian, now and then I'll pop for a fashion mag, and study What It All Means. This is actually a pretty dicey proposition, since it leads you into standard but dumb ideas vis a vis short skirts and heavy eyebrows mean a wartime economy, tiny waists mean an authoritarian government, lots of jewelry indicates women-viewed-as-commodities etc.
So, to add a little context to my study, I use Street Mail. Street Mail is a concept I happened upon while puzzling my way through life. Broadly, it's anything that blows into your world, like flyers under the windshield, a button on the sidewalk, money in the couch cushions, and a tune on the radio. You can view this stuff as so much crap, or you can see it as a special letter from the universe, addressed just to you. And why not, I say. Taking my list of crud here, suppose the flyer on your car was for a window washing service, the button might be a signal to de-slut your appearance, dimes discovered in the furniture could be an admonition to start saving, while the jingle for Stanley Steemer might mean you need to clean up a bad relationship or a rotten habit. In all, that particular chunk of Street Mail is saying, Stop slobbing around and get to it. Whatever that it might be.
And so, given the pix of the little darling above, what I see is a wish (from whom or for whom, I don't know) to melt into the patterns of the world, disguised by plumage like a bird or a bug. Is her tired flop against these fabrics an understandable female exhaustion with the cube-farm job, the fatherless child, and the Match.com-picked guy? Again, I don't know. The Street Mail I got with this was an article about the debasement of feminism, and quoted Gloria Steinem on Sarah Palin, "Having someone who looks like you and behaves like them — who looks like a friend but behaves like an adversary—is worse than having no one." And my photo is certainly of a girl like me, but not like me at all.
The way she's dressed, in life might she have been invisible to me?
Could I have glanced at her strange softness, her indolence and seen her outlines?
Or would I overlook her?
Could she be my enemy disguised? One in camouflage, who simply waits?
Is this our collective fantasy woman? Someone there, but hardly seen?
You decide.
Sometime back, I gave up the idea, and certainly all attempts, to follow fashion. The clothes I saw in the hag mags were expensive beyond imagining and practicality. For a while, I tried buying some debased version of the latest thing, only to discover that was like buying a print of Starry Night and pretending it was a real van Gogh. So occasionally, like an art historian, now and then I'll pop for a fashion mag, and study What It All Means. This is actually a pretty dicey proposition, since it leads you into standard but dumb ideas vis a vis short skirts and heavy eyebrows mean a wartime economy, tiny waists mean an authoritarian government, lots of jewelry indicates women-viewed-as-commodities etc.
So, to add a little context to my study, I use Street Mail. Street Mail is a concept I happened upon while puzzling my way through life. Broadly, it's anything that blows into your world, like flyers under the windshield, a button on the sidewalk, money in the couch cushions, and a tune on the radio. You can view this stuff as so much crap, or you can see it as a special letter from the universe, addressed just to you. And why not, I say. Taking my list of crud here, suppose the flyer on your car was for a window washing service, the button might be a signal to de-slut your appearance, dimes discovered in the furniture could be an admonition to start saving, while the jingle for Stanley Steemer might mean you need to clean up a bad relationship or a rotten habit. In all, that particular chunk of Street Mail is saying, Stop slobbing around and get to it. Whatever that it might be.
And so, given the pix of the little darling above, what I see is a wish (from whom or for whom, I don't know) to melt into the patterns of the world, disguised by plumage like a bird or a bug. Is her tired flop against these fabrics an understandable female exhaustion with the cube-farm job, the fatherless child, and the Match.com-picked guy? Again, I don't know. The Street Mail I got with this was an article about the debasement of feminism, and quoted Gloria Steinem on Sarah Palin, "Having someone who looks like you and behaves like them — who looks like a friend but behaves like an adversary—is worse than having no one." And my photo is certainly of a girl like me, but not like me at all.
The way she's dressed, in life might she have been invisible to me?
Could I have glanced at her strange softness, her indolence and seen her outlines?
Or would I overlook her?
Could she be my enemy disguised? One in camouflage, who simply waits?
Is this our collective fantasy woman? Someone there, but hardly seen?
You decide.
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