Because this winter has been so difficult and long and depressing, I found myself enjoying crafty projects more than I have been in the past several years. There was a time, all the way back toward the beginnings of this blog, when I used to take my sewing machine out daily, and I used to have a knitting or crochet project started at all times. Now the sewing machine only gets pulled out when I need to adjust or repair something, and I haven’t touched the knitting needles for year. I never make anything from scratch anymore, because I fail to see value in the clothes that I make (I only see the mistakes). However, there are very few additions to my closet that haven’t suffered some sort of adjustment, because when I find something in the thrift store, I tend to see the potential in my head, rather than the reality that’s right there in front of my eyes.
I tend to feel very cold in the mornings, when I wake up long before the sun, because the baby is an early riser. Those are the hours when I want to wrap myself in a shawl to warm up while I drink my coffee and read my blogs, before I start making breakfast for the kids and an actual effort to wake up.
Art, adornment and ritual are what distinguished modern humans from their predecessors. Somehow our species developed a taste for seemingly useless, wasteful habits. Why would they waste time painting caves, give away resources by burying the dead with their earthly possessions, and paint their skins or wear amulets and beads that were hard to come by and costly to produce? Somehow our race arrived to the conclusion, very early, that there is more than the eye can see, that the world is a place of magic and wonder and we are not only flesh and bone.
Some will say that this is a battle that is over and that we won: feminists can wear as high a pair of heels and as red a lipstick as they want and still not be excluded from the club, the membership to which is awarded to them at birth. (Yes, men feminists have more to prove before they are allowed entrance. Tough luck!) But I don't know if this perceived freedom is a real one or one projected to us in our slumber pods.
I am that. In a bad way. And to my disgust. OK, not disgust, but certainly embarrassment, because I like to think (pretend?) I am above this sort of undesirable behavior. Anyways . . . , right, about superficiality and snobbery.Because I am having to clean out my closets in preparation for grandparents arriving to spend some time with us during the summer and in a general effort to reduce and give away for others to reuse. So it’s high…
Last week I colored my hair with commercial hair dye, one of those that can be found in every pharmacy and supermarket. After years of using only henna on my hair. Because I couldn’t stand my bright-red temples, or the…