merely glancing at this photo of ice-encased grasses makes it clear that it is cold out. very cold.
because some things are obvious. a no-brainer, as it’s said. you can see right through.
silence is like that.
remaining completely silent – not uttering a word of raging disdain or abject horror – in the middle of this country’s hellish descent in this time of destruction – makes your position – of complicity – obvious. a no-brainer.
this is a time demanding connection. this is a time when we need each other. we need to band together and buoy each other. we need mutual support in a liminal frozen space of atrocity as we all witness the stripping of our democracy. we need to talk. we need to ask questions. we need to sort. we need to speak up.
i haven’t been able to decide if i am more sickened by what’s happening in this country or by family, friends and acquaintances who – clear as ice – think it’s perfectly ok. like too many others, i wonder, “who the hell are you, anyway???”
you may think your stance is not transparently clear – while you publicly – and callously – try to give the impression of going about normal life normally – or while you pretend it isn’t happening – even privately – but your silence about these atrocities in very real life speaks volumes.
having been thrown under the bus before by people i have trusted – including perhaps you – i warily wonder how far you would go to support all this.
and so we reach to others, we connect, we stand with them, we protect each other as best we can.
because just as clear as ice your silent complicity are their good intentions. and the choice is obvious. a no-brainer, as it’s said.
there is really nothing unhappy about polka dots. it is rare that polka dots are scorned, even more rare that polka dots are looked upon as harbingers of negativity. polka dots get a bye in the fashion world, seemingly always advancing to the next round.
yesterday we spent about five hours on the phone with spectrum trying to fix our internet. we unplugged our two-in-one modem-router combo, drove to the store, exchanged our equipment and tried to self-install (underscored in its excitement rating) and then spent another hour on the phone. it was never fixed and we are hopeful for today, as a tech person will come and “evaluate the problem”. we were ridiculously weary with internet-failure by the end of the day and solaced ourselves with a favorite holiday dvd movie snuggled around the laptop under the covers before sleep.
our dear friends texted us a youtube of a spectrum skit on SNL that we could watch on our phone. it was hilariously accurate and made us laugh. we had literally spoken to an insane number of reps during this tech-debacle. chris was one of them.
i liked him immediately. he promised me a ferrari and a pizza as well as finding us a “package” to fix our internet grief. i told him to keep the pizza and he thanked me profusely because, on a diet sans pizza, he has been craving it and did not want to think of me, his newest friend, eating pizza. i told him to maybe have a piece of pizza, that life is too short. it’s not good to crave things and deny yourself everything. anyway, after our philosophical discussion, he again said that he would find a plan and he would fix our internet once and for all. he was basing our success on “my demeanor and clothing choices”. my ripped jeans and moccasin boots railed in protest but recognized we weren’t on a video call, after all, and gave up the fight. it sounded like clothing really mattered to him and so i’m imagining that he had a dark blue gingham-checked shirt and jeans with a solid dark-blue skinny-but-not-too-skinny-to-be-out-of-sync-with-his-body tie and very cool rich medium brown tie shoes, since brown shoes seem to be really vogue with blue these days. though chris was delightful to deal with – since it could have been different and dry and kind of like having a tooth filled at the dentist so I was relieved to be laughing and joking – chris did not fix our internet. neither did any of the other reps, all nice and scripty polka-dot-ish, but unable to address the problem.
so, no ferrari, no pizza AND no internet.
we are determined, after last night’s movie made us predictably mushy, that today will be a polka-dot kind of day.
we mantra: the tech will come – dressed in spectrum attire – and voila! fix the internet. we will suddenly go from 30mbps (an old time warner cable plan no one told us to upgrade) to ultra wifi 400mbps (I will believe this when I see it). we will have no issues with brand new equipment we just brought home. we will easily engage wifi on all our devices. we will carry on, having woefully lost a whole day in spectrumland, but rapidly recuperating back into reality.
we will be in polka-dot happiness with real polka-dots.
i was grateful when they attached a name to it – shabby chic. my inclination to love things with the texture of peeling paint and a bit rough-hewn was vindicated…wait!…not only vindicated, but reinforced by the decorating fashion industry. phew! that meant that the old screen doors on the wall, the glass-less window frames tucked here and there, the chopped-off-side-of-the-vintage-desk end table, the vintage black suitcases, the metal radiator grate catty-corner in the foyer, the old door laid horizontal on horses, the tin ceiling panels…these were all fashion statements and not statements of making-do-decor. such a relief.
i must say, however, that i wouldn’t have changed anything anyway. these all make me happy. they are cozy and warm and, mostly, they have history. and it’s the history-that-remains-a-mystery and the history-that-i-know-a-smidge-about that i love. i had no idea whose screen door screens these were when i got them at a wholesale trade show years ago but i could imagine the sound they made when they slammed shut. nor did i know where the old black window with one colored glass square in my studio was from. the old four-foot tall window frames were being thrown out of the historic lakefront building where i had my offices, making room for new windows. i couldn’t bear to see them in the trashpile and the way i adored those offices made it easy to take them home. someone literally chopped off the side of the old desk leaving three drawers and a rough edge and selling it in the estate sale for $5. you can’t see the rough edge unless you really look and this piece has been in the living room for years and years now, serving a purpose and feeling loved. the tin, well, who knows? what i do know is that they make marvelous places to magnet photographs and cards and tiny little signs with sayings that help each day. so, yeah, i guess my point is that whether i know the back-story or not, i really appreciate the warmth of long living they bring. they sit alongside many rocks and sticks that have made short and long journeys home with me, in the back of little baby scion or in backpacks with corks that come home from times spent with my children and moments i want to remember.
i haven’t purchased a lot of brand new furniture. there was the first herculon-fabric overstuffed couch with two matching overstuffed chairs, a tweed in lovely shades of very-early 1980s brown.
well over a decade later that was donated to a youth group and a new couch in mid 1990s floral barn red and forest green with a reclining wingchair of red and white checks made its way into the living room. both of those pieces still have a place in the house – though no longer in the living room. the couch, still very comfortable, is covered with a black slipcover and has a place in the sitting room with a hand-me-down lazyboy, an old farm table and an antique copper boiler tub that stores our roadtrip writings.
there’s a black leather couch in the living room now that has been there over a decade. it shares the space with the old secretary that was my brother’s, the bistro table that was in the second story porch of my old offices, a vintage typewriter 20 bought me for my birthday a couple years ago, a few paintings i spattered, the desk-turned-end-table you now know too much about and the driftwood we brought back from a trip to long island. the two big branches we painted white and potted to hold happy lights still stand steadfastly happying up the room and each day i pass them i wonder if they are too holiday-ish. i quickly reject this as too big a decision and plug them in.
it is in recent days i have had the good fortune of hearing from a dear old friend i taught with in my first two years of teaching way-back-when. we soon will have a phone chat and catch up on everything from a-z. what lois doesn’t realize is that i have thought of her simply every day…as it is her dresser that stands in our bedroom of vintage size that couldn’t really accommodate one of those bedroom suites you see in magazines. instead, this old sturdy five-drawer sits opposite the windows of the sunrise and hold my dad’s peanut can, one of the precious items i have of my sweet poppo’s, the planters peanut blue metal can he tucked in his drawer that always held a few dollars and was the place he sent you if you were going to go pick up the pizza.
as i look at the top of that dresser right this second, pictures of d and me and of my beloved children are on top. there is a small piece of the carpet padding from the irresponsible-gasket-flood waiting to go in the special box next to the yago-sangria-wine-bottle-turned-lamp i made when i was 19 and there is a card in a glass frame that reads: “someday, the light will shine like a sun through my skin and they will say, what have you done with your life? and though there are many moments i think i will remember, in the end, i will be proud to say, i was one of us.”
all of this – the stuff with history i know, the stuff with history i don’t know, the peeling paint, the rough-hewn, the used and the it-took-me-a-long-time-to-decide new…all of it – around me reminds me of that and is the connecting thread. of the concentric circles of me, of us. probably that’s why “shabby chic” speaks to me. it is most definitely why it works for me.
reverse threading 