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  • A Fashion Inspired Trip Down Memory Lane

    M-82-2475-51196-2KXZuOgcySidAt some point over the weekend, when I was not willing to face whatever it was I was supposed to be working on and I was frittering away a few moments on the internet, I came across this photo of an outfit from the fall/winter 2014 Marc Jacobs collection.

     

    I was transported back to the fall of 1972.  I was in the 9th grade.   Tunics over flared pants were in.  Wave patterns were in too, although I couldn't have afforded, or gotten away with, such a fancy fabric.    That year I made a tunic with matching bell-bottom pants from a fine wale corduroy print in HomeEc, which was required for all 9th grade girls. But I also had an outfit more like this one, in a matching gray and maroon swirl pattern knit.  Just like the model on the Marc Jacobs runway, my pants were long enough to drag on the ground, which was oh so cool in 1972; only now I respect how difficult it was for my mom to make those pants long enough that I could destroy perfectly good fabric by dragging it around in the dirt.  

     

    At any rate, I think I'll pass this time around although I appreciate the brief trip down memory lane. 

     

    Of course there are other differences between the 2014 version and the 1972 versions.  Aside from fabric (my outfit was polyester knit) my tunic did not have a wide boat neckline.  I don't actually remember if boat necklines were fashionable at that time; I only remember ovals and scoops.  My tunic had a rounded neckline and raglan sleeves.   I loved the outfit, but even then I hated raglan sleeves.  I hated the way they pulled when I moved and the way the garment seemed to shift in odd ways, but I also remember that my mom told me I should always wear raglan sleeves, told me they would look better with the shape of my shoulders and upper chest, told me they would be easier to fit.  Perhaps they were easier for her to sew for me, especially when I wore the Milwaukee Brace, but I never liked the way they felt on, and still don't like the way raglan sleeves look on me.  

     

    RES14-BLC_TWIST_hero_0Perhaps I started thinking about those sleeves because I was also looking at this coat from Mary Katrantzou over the weekend, virtually looking that is, and with no serious intent. I love the color palette.  I love the digintal print.  I love the idea of the coat more than the actual coat however.  I don't like the line across the bustline, whether that is part of the print or a seam; it would only be flattering on the most boyish of figures.  Most of all I don't like the raglan sleeves, even as I can appreciate that the raglan cut may have been easier, from both a design and manufacturing perspective, in maintainign the continuity of the print.  I  would think the raglan sleeves would make the coat more difficult to wear for anyone who wants to move around in their coat, but perhaps that is just because I have never bothered to make the effort to try and learn to properly fit a raglan sleeve.

     

    When I think back to the 70's, to my swirly tunic outfit, I think how cool wearing it made me feel but also how I would fidget over the way my clothes would scrunch about when I moved in ways I didn't see happening with the cool girls. I think back to those early raglan sleeves, especially in jackets and coats.  I think about the way I would allow my shoulders to roll forward, perhaps even more than was natural, to avoid the pulling of the seams against my shoulders and the back of my neck.  I would think about how the shoulder straps of my handbags always slipped off and I thought it was something about me.  I remember how, when I bought my first coat with fitted sleeves, I stood straighter, with my shoulders back and down, how the strap to my handbag stayed up without slipping.  What a revelation this was to me.  For the first time I started thinking about not just what I liked but why I liked it, and started questioning the idea of what I was supposed to like.  I started to recognize that if one was not comfortable with oneself, one could never be cool.  Not that I can claim to be cool, or whatever the modern equivalent is, to this day. I can at least claim coming far closer to my true self, and if not caring less about the idea of fashion itself, caring less about being in fashion.

     

    Mark Jacobs pantsuit, here.

    Mary Katrantzou coat, here.

  • Making the Right Choice Requires Asking the Right Questions

    There are some lessons that just seem not to stick, that I have to keep learning over and over again.  I seem to have relearned one of those lessons this week, and it revolved around that issue of a desk and a chair.  Such a simple thing isn't it? Or at least it should be.  It seems however, that for me at least, sometimes the biggest lessons are learned from the smallest things.

     

    I was looking for a desk through the eyes of I-as-part-of-a-we, or through the mindset of my former life.  I recall that during the first six months or so following George's death I was struggling with identity, and it was a puzzling experience for me.  I had thought that I knew who I was.  I had strong opinions about many things, and generally  knew what I liked and what I didn't.  Or so I believed.  

     

    In retrospect I see that it was not so simple really. I could see that during those years I was caring for George, I was also struggling with my own frustrations and, sometimes, animosity toward the role of caregiver. I was struggling with how to fit this new perception of my place in the world with my prior perceptions of myself as seen through my marriage, my career, and my role in the world prior to this great reversal. Although George and I shared a sense of the importance of steadfast responsibility and loyalty, there were times when I struggled with having to always be the strong one, the rock, the protector, the comforter.  I wanted to be protected again, to be comforted, to be understood, and there were days, weeks, months even, when the protection and comfort and understanding of God seemed far, far away. Yet although I craved comfort, I was afraid to be vulnerable, afraid that if I opened my heart I would fall apart and not be able to live up to the responsibilities that bound me.

     

    It is apparent, to anyone who has followed my blogs over the years, that during that time I was struggling to define and understand myself, and that I was not quite ready to accept the need to do so.  I was clinging to the known for fear of getting lost in the unknown. In retrospect, perhaps I was not asking the right questions. I was struggling from a position of "I want" and "I can't" rather than a position of "I can" combined with "I need".

     

    Although I did eventually let go and let vulnerability and faith back in, and I was beginning that process of transformation and rediscovery before George died last May, I was still very much in in a place in-between.  And yet I thought I was firmly established on a path toward my future self, even while still acknowledging that my life was in many ways a precarious balancing act between a past and a love that was rapidly fading into the mists and a future life that could not quite be achieved. I was not prepared for the way that George's death would plunge me even deeper into that act of questioning.  I was unaware that this one great loss could wrestle up from the depths all those past losses I thought I had resolved, but in fact had only shelved. I had not realzed that this questioning, this becoming, would force me to face my life and see how the world as I experienced it had shaped and altered that person who I was born to be into the person I had been. Nor had I realized that if I truly wanted to move forward, rather than opt out and rest upon some shady bank along the way, I needed to resolve and reintegrate these various aspects of self: the self I was born to be with the self I am in the world.

     

    So how does this affect the choice of a desk, you ask?

     

    Each thing we do in the world, each choice we make, even the choices we refuse to make are a reflection of the complex mapping of ourselves, our history, our place, and our time.  We exist in the world, and although we are unique, we are also complexly shaped by the world in which we live.  Of course, most of the time, we simply live in the world and do what we need to do with little angst.  But occasionally we stumble, and although sometimes we simply right ourselves and move on, sometimes we manage a glimpse of something more.

     

    My search for a desk helped guide me to a few basic realizations:

    • First I should not chose a desk because it was one my husband would have also liked, because it would have fit our life, our style, our place in the world.  
    • Nor of course should I take the reactionary "I always liked x, but he hated it" tack which I see as the foot-stamping, temper-tantrum induced I-want-what-I-want-and-no-one-can-change-it stage, a stage that is not necessarily true to the self but a reactionary, oppositional choice.
    • I had to address the WHY of my search for a desk, a question that proved far more complex than I had imagined, tied up as it proved to be with my own definition of who I am now.  After all, although my current desk is not ideal, I have been using it for several years. So the question was begging to be asked:  Why do I need a new desk?
    • When I was working with computer clients, going to grad school, and designing databases and computer systems I used a large desk that basically consisted of a door atop a couple of file cabinets.  I could spread out my books, printouts, and ages of materials perfectly happily.  But  although I loved that career, and at times I have struggled with wanting to update or refresh a few programming language skills or application skills, and although I've often considered looking into reinstating my IEEE and ACM memberships because I miss the connections and learning opportunities they provided, I realize they do not reflect a career path I wish to resume.  They are a part of who I am but they do not define where I am going.
    • When I first worked in medical billing, and even as an office manager, I had a very small desk, not much bigger than a student desk. It was too small.  I was surrounded by piles. When we moved the practice and I moved into a more comprehensive administrative role, I needed a larger desk.  But, once again, although I loved my work, loved learning new things and mastering skills I had not appreciated I possessed, I am done with medical practice administration.  I have no desire to go back.
    • I bought my current desk when I retired to care for my husband. In many ways it is a desk that seems like an afterthought, something I needed, but which did not warrant much space, or thought.  I needed a place to put a computer, to pay bills, to write. But although I had published a couple of poems in minor journals while I was in my twenties, and an essay around the same time; although I journaled extensively and wrote a couple of blogs,  I did not consider myself a writer

     

    It seems it has taken me this long to accept that this is who I am today, and that accepting who I am means accepting that I need a space that works for what I do.  I am a writer.  It may not be all that I am.  The majority of what I write may be only for myself but that doesn't matter.  I don't need external reassurance to prove that I am who I am.  I accept that I write.  I accept that if I don't give myself time to write I become grumpy and small and cannot be generous with other people because I cannot be generous with myself.  I need to accept that I will always spend a lot of time at my desk.  I need to accept that this is a part of who I am and it is deserving of attention.  

     

    So,I simply went out and bought a desk.  It will not be here for two weeks.  It is not either of the desks I showed you in that last post.  I could ask what I was I thinking, but it is apparent I was not thinking as myself.  

  • Books, Life, Meaning….

    213119Yesterday afternoon I ate my lunch outside.  As I sat basking in the warmth of the sun, I read, re-read actually, an essay from Mike Madison's Blithe Tomato, a book I read at the beginning of the year.  It is a book that surprised me.  I expected the short essays to be a little more frivolous perhaps, something you read once and toss, perhaps more strident in a my-way-is-better-than-your-way fashion, or perhaps I expected the over-educated kind of one-upmanship I find characteristic of writers like Bill Bryson, writers whose prose is so smart and so clever that they can't seem to help admiring how clever they are.  The book was none of those things, at least not to my reading, and it promises to be a book I will continue to pick up and delve into occasionally, with essays that are astute, often contemplative, but also kind and forgiving of human follies as well as short and easy to read.  I love the way the essays open a door that lets my thoughts wander down their own paths.

     

    Even though Mike Madison is a farmer and the book is marketed as containing essays about food and farming, this is not strictly true.  Yes the essays do revolve around farming, farmers markets, farmers, and people who shop at farmer's market, but their subject is not so narrowly defined. The essays are really about life and about humans with all their strengths and weaknesses, follies and foibles.  But the essays are written with compassion and humor and the author is able to turn that compassion and that humor on himself as well as upon others.  It is a book that needs to be savored slowly.  It is a fairly easy read, and the focus, for the most part is on the small, the routine, the everyday.  But small things can sometimes point us to something greater. I enjoy reading this book most when taken in small doses, as a bit of a of a pick-me-up during the day.  

     

    When read straight through, without time to reflect and savor the best parts, the essays tend to run together and turn into something less than the whole.  I don't mean that in a bad way, I mean to say that it is a book that should be enjoyed essay by essay, allowing time for reflection, much the same way a beautiful spring day is more memorable when one stops to smell the fresh air, soak up the sunshine, pause and reflect on the goodness of life.  When we rush onward without pause, too preoccupied to celebrate the small things, we too easily become stressed and overwhelmed, and the beautiful and the good seem to fade into the background, seeming, to our inundated neural pathways, to be less than they really are and perhaps too simple to be believed.

     

  • Dreary Monday and the Search for a Desk

    Well, truthfully I don't know if it is dreary yet as the sun is not yet up.  It may prove to be a glorious day.  But at the moment I feel dreary.  Yesterday was a busy day and I didn't drink enough water or go for a walk, opting instead to curl up on the sofa with a cat and my knitting.  This morning I have a fair amount of sciatic pain, am plagued with a mild cough, congestion and a sinus headache and am generally dragging myself around the house without enthusiasm.  This is the opposite of my normal state of early morning energy and efficiency. 

    So what measures can be taken to improve the situation? A hot shower is always a good start and gauranteed to open up the sinuses.  After that, I would say that I spent too much time at my desk last week, and I should be doing other things today.  

    What kind of things?

    A4ed59705a21957c560dc8199e9d113dWell, I could go buy a new desk chair, since the one I am using is uncomfortable and surely is not helping my back.  My Aeron chair moved upstairs for use at the sewing table, perhaps prematurely, as I am spending more time at my desk than at my sewing machine, and it is too heavy for me to move it back down.  The chair I am using is something I let a salesperson convince me would fit my back better, and it was significantly cheaper.  I suppose it is remarkable that the salesperson tried to sell me the cheaper chair, but it was a waste of money because I still have to go back and buy the Aeron, which is the best desk and sewing chair that I have ever owned.

    So, if I can run downtown and pick up a new chair, why haven't I done so?

    I was prepared to run right out and buy a chair in early January. But I also need a new desk.  My current desk is too small.  It is the perfect length for my use, but at a mere 18" depth, it does not quite offer enough surface space, especially on those occasions I must share my workspace with a feline companion.  

    Bddfdff1947ba5651b59101284ef2315Since I know the chair I need, it makes sense to buy it first and get a desk that works with the chair. But then I saw the Elizabeth Writing Desk by Redford House, which can be made in a tarnished silvery-gray color, and it occurred to me that a grey desk with a light grey Aeron chair would look lovely in my office, which has white bookcases on three walls.   

    This desk fits my requirements. It is exactly the right size.  It has drawers, which I am currently lacking.  And I like the cabriole legs, which will look pretty with the molding and trim in my office.  

    So I was stymied over the question of color.  Which color Aeron chair should I purchase?  Dark or Light? All would have been simple if I could purchase the Elizabeth Writing desk locally. But I can't. I would have to buy it online or through a decorator.  It will take time.  I don't know enough about furniture manufacturers. I can't see it or touch it first.

    So doubts began to set in. 

    5b5c6e492f25c11a64ab4d1cbab9535dThose doubts were confounded because I also like this desk by Julian Chichester, which I discovered last fall.  At that time I was thinking of putting my office in a larger room, and I thought it might be too dominant in the small office.  But it is available through a local store and I am more familiar with the manufacturer's other pieces (although I want the smaller version which will have to be ordered).  

    Plagued by indecision, I simply buried my head in other things and avoided the issue.

    Perhaps today I should go out and look at actual desks in local stores, to see if I find something that I like as well or better than either of these choices.  If not, I need to make a decision.

    Daylight. Time to get going. Procrastination gets me nowhere.

     

    photo credits:

    1. Aeron Chair from the Herman Miller Website: Here.

    2. Elizabeth Writing Desk. Redford House. Here.

    3. Julian Chichester Cortes Desk. Here.

     

  • Snow

    Truth be told, I miss snow.  I still love snow.

    IMG_0717

     

    Although it is possible that my Tennessee neighbors may not agree with me. Snow is not typical here and it has been many years since Knoxville has seen this much snow.

    IMG_0720

    Snow makes winter beautiful and lifts the soul, relieving the eye of dull brown and lifeless grey.  The pure enchantment of new snow is a welcome balm, even if only for a brief time, before modern life with all its ugliness interferes.  And where snow is concerned, when mixed with cities and towns, roads and automobiles, snow turns ugly very quickly.

    I am hoping that it is warm enough in the daytime here that the snow will be vanquished back into mud, rather than the greyish brown piles of ice and slush that were common in New York. Neither is lovely, but sidewalks and parking lots filled with brown ice seem an affront to my eyes, necessary, but too harsh of a reminder of the ugly underbelly of modernity. 

    My neighborhood has been plowed, although the neighborhood between me and the next major street has not, and my driveway is clear.  I am ready for the melting, the overnight freeze, and the rain that is anticipated for tomorrow.

    ** Both photos were taken a few moments before sunrise, when it was still cold and a light snow was still falling.  

  • Books, Lists and the Question of Reviews

    First, a little housekeeping: A list of books read in the current year has been added to the sidebar, but I don't believe it has assumed its final form. Brief reviews will no longer be included, but I will add links to any reviews or comments as they appear.

    Having spent far more tiime than is necessary deciding whether or not to post a list of books and then what or how much to post, a couple of points have become clear:

    1.  I've been puttering about  with LibraryThing and Goodreads for a few years.  Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but I increasingly prefer LibraryThing as it allows me to categorize books into collections and categories, keeping track of my impossibly long list of books I might be interested in reading someday, books I own and have or have not read, books I've read and donated or sold or never owned in the first place etc.  I also find it easier to both manage and display lists of books on Library Thing, although Goodreads is better in the social aspects of reading.  Since, my working list is on LibraryThing, I don't need to keep a list here, but I like having it, and it will provide a convenient way for me to add links to books I have reviewed should I decide to review them.

    2. I will still maintain my Goodreads list.

    3. I will probably add a "current reading" list to the sidebar as well.

    4. I have resumed the habit of my youth, namely of reading many books simultaneously depending on my mood, time, and attention on any given day.

    5.   I am not really interested in the standard review format.  I am not interested in critical analysis, although, as an ex-English Major, I am well versed in that approach.  I suppose I am most interested in the ways a book fuels my thoughts or imagination, about philosophical or moral compass, about the vistas that have been opened by reading a particular book.  I suppose I have given myself permission to choose whether or not to review a book based solely on the completely personal and arbitrary criteria of what I am thinking about on a given day.  

    6. I haven't yet decided whether or not to blog about books that do not end up being the subjects of posts. I will however always answer questions about any book.

     

  • At least I have socks

    Oh My,  I'd said I'd be back by now and I'm not….(enough contractions do you think?)

     

    I had a great visit with my mom.  I came home to some kind of super-cold or virus that is going around right now and although I have mostly recovered from that I seem to be a bit distracted, unfocused and accident prone at the moment.  All is well, just jumbled.

    IMG_8146

    I will leave you with a pair of socks I finished last week.  I'm working on another pair now and I hope to balance small mindless projects like this with tackling the mountain of UFOs and continuing my needlework, along with whatever trouble I've gotten myself into of course.

     

     

     

  • Traveling

    Yesterday I was flying west from Tennessee to Texas.  I was flying in the early evening, apparently close to sunset.  I have a habit of closing my eyes as the plane taxis down the runway and often dozing off.  I am not aware that I am particularly frightened of flying, I am not, but drowsiness always sets in just as the plane prepeares to leave the gate, although I never sleep long, just until we are airborne.  I am sure there is some meaning to this, to why I doze off during take-off but never during landing, and no landing doesn't make me nervous either.  I am inclined to think it is just a period of mental release, of closing the business of "home" with the more relaxed breathe of "away", but pehaps I am fooling myself.

    At any rate, when I awoke we were above the clouds.  The sky was a deep deep blue, gradually deepening into midnight but not yet black, and the clouds wee gray and somewhat soft looking below, with a texture somewhat like quilt batting, dirty quilt batting, but quilt-batting none-the-less.  But the horizon was a ring of color, firey-bright oranges and yellows fading to greens and soft blues that started light and became duskier as they merged up into the skies.  I love flying into the sunset and I suppose I sat there, looking out my window lost in the present moment, watching the gradual fading of the light, the slow deepening of the colors, the sense of stillness combined with slow steady change.  No matter that we were rushing toward that change, that was not apparent to those on the plane, and it was the very fact that we were rushing toward it that extended the sunset, that sense of peace and calmness.

    I was startled by the flash of a camera.  The person across the aisle from me took a photo of the sunset.  It occurred to me that I might be a better blogger if I took out my phone and snapped a photo to post here, if I tried to capture the texture of the darkness below, the deep glow of the sunset, the placid smooth stillness of the darkness above.  the etchings on the plane window that suggested runes across that darkness, my knitting sitting on my lap, red and yellow and orange of my sock echoing the colors of the sunset.

    But I didn't.  I enjoy the sitting in the moment too much.  I admire photographers.  I admire their patience and determination, their art, the ability of the good ones to capture that intense presence of the moment.  But in the act of capturing the moment you lose out on experiencing the moment, and I always choose the latter.

    I am traveling. I am not going to compel myself to post during the trip.  I'll be back on or about February 3.

  • We are all born equal onto this earth.

    I believe we are all born equal onto this earth.  We may all die equal as well but that is something we are not privileged to know. I believe that if we do not die as equals, that inequality has nothing to with material things or power, it has to do with our hearts and our souls and whether we have attempted to live with compassion or not.

    We are all born as equals.  We share certain minerals and biological connections.  We share compassion.  That does not mean we are all dealt equal opportunities.  I would like to think that we all have the opportunity to see to those to whom the world has been cruel as equals, as the people we might have been had our own fortunes been less kind.

    We are all born as equals.  How we chose to deal with the blows and opportunities life gives us is our choice.  Whether we chose to see others as equals or not is a choice.  Whether we chose to be bitter or happy is a choice. We all make choices.  We all make mistakes.  The best we can do is to try not to hurt other people either purposefully or inadvertently.  The best we can do is to care.  But it is not our job to judge because there is so much we are not privileged to know.   

    Thank you all, the many of you with your kind words.  They meant a lot to me.  Childhood rhymes to the contrary, words do hurt.  But hopefully we have resilience to overcome them.  I had a cup of cocoa and curled up with my cats for a bit, but only for a bit as my step-daughter and her family were coming for dinner, really just an impromptu simple repast of sausage and collards, food to soothe the soul, after which I ran off to the symphony.  It was a perfect concert to lift people's spirits in a dreary January:  The Overture to Die Fledermaus, a Mozart Piano Concerto, Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty Suite, Strauss's Emperor Waltzes.  The music provided the perfect respite for me as well, despite my normal inclinations; it was not a night I would have embraced Bartok.

    I can see that I only give a partial portrait here, and therefore much can easily be interpreted in ways I do not intend.  But that is another way all people are equal, we all show ourselves only in shadows and angles and half-formed images. Most of the time we do not bare our souls to any but a treasured few. I am only human, with all the faults and failings that being human entails. I know I like pretty things and some may consider this a weakness.  I suppose happy was not the best choice of words, because although I am happy it is not because of things. 

    Those of us in industrial nations, and I assume most of us who read blogs hail from similar lands, live in a world surrounded by things, a world in which one needs things.  It does not seem much to ask that those things, while filling a need, also bring a small amount of beauty or joy or contentment, fleeting though that may be.  But if the cost and name and value of a thing mean more than the joy of using the thing itself, then one is a slave.  One can be enslaved to the sense of not having, to the coveting, just as surely as to the having.

     I am very lucky in many ways.  One of the things that makes me lucky is that I know I could start over, and that I would still be happy.  I've lost everything before.  I've even lost everything that mattered, and no I am not referring to things. But I've been extraordinarily lucky because I've never lost my resilience, and I've always known that I could get help if I needed it.  And that is what really matters.

     We are all born equal onto this earth.  It is only in how we live our lives that we distinguish ourselves. 

     

  • A Relic of My Former Life

    Sometimes letting go of the little things can be as hard as, if not harder than, letting go of the big things.

    IMG_8109Take something simple, like my wallet. This wallet was not old, I bought it 3 years ago, and it was still in good shape.  I still love it, I love the soft blue leather, the caress of the leather in my hand, the feel of the woven leather —  intrecciato — it is called.  But now it is too small.

     

    Funny that,  I bought the blue wallet to replace a red wallet that was too large.  Perhaps I should have kept the red one in the wings, in anticipation of this day.  But when I bought the blue wallet I couldn't imagine needing more than 8 card slots.  In fact I already thought I was heading into dangerous territory, expanding from the small card case that I had used as a wallet for years.

     

    But my life in Knoxville is different than my former life.  And I carry more cards.  I would slide them into the various open pockets, only to have them fall out and bounce around on the floor whenever I opened my wallet.  This is really not so good.  It was time for a change.

     

    When my mom was here in November, I admired the convenience of her Vera Bradley wallet.  I had never imagined myself using a Vera Bradley wallet.  I thought they were pretty but for "other" women, not for rmyself.  Mom went home and her wallet slipped out of active memory until an episode that occurred about a week ago. I was standing at the counter at some store or another, it doesn't really matter where, and as I was paying for my purchases, I turned my wallet over and a few credit cards fell on the floor.  This wasn't the first time this had happened.  It wasn't the first time I was frustrated with my wallet.  But it was the first day that I was willing to acknowledge that it was time to stop avoiding change.

     

    IMG_8110So I went shopping.  I knew Vera Bradley was an option, but I made a noble effort, searching out various other options first.  Cracking through ancient biases can be tough work. But I didn't find anything I liked that had at least 12 slots, where the leather was soft and buttery, that was convenient to use.  Vera fit the bill.  Well, except for the bit about buttery soft leather. It holds my cards, the ones I use all the time and the ones I use less often.  There is a place for coins, and bills, and receipts.  I can even put my cell phone in it if I want to use it as a clutch.

     

    IMG_8139Yes, I would love to have a beautiful leather wallet in a color that is not black.  Saint Laurent may make one, but I haven't seen it in the flesh, only in pictures.  Bottega Veneta makes a new one with 20 slots!  But I don't need a fancy wallet.  The truth is this wallet fits my life now.  Most days I run around carrying Gray Baggellini bag that will hold my knitting, or my books for class, or whatever I need to drag around with me, a bag that is not to pretentious to wear with jeans, a bag that works with plaid sneakers.  That old blue wallet was simply out of place.  Besides the new one coordinates very nicely with my kindle.

     

    I'll save the blue wallet.  I'm not completely ready to let it go, even though I am perfectly happy not using it on a daily basis.  It is not the thing itself, strange as that may seem, but the way it reminds me that beauty itself is something worth pursuing, and that pursuit can represent a different kind of freedom, a freedom from the cares of the world that may pieces of plastic represent — discount cards, ID cards, all the various little bits of things that make life in this world "easier". (I am not talking about credit cards here, I still only carry 2). Perhaps someday I will travel someplace where I don't want to feel tied down by bits of plastic, where a pretty wallet can just be a pretty wallet.  Perhaps I just need time to say goodbye, which is strange, because I am not usually sentimental about things.  I actually don't miss my former life, but maybe I do still need to hold on to a few talismans.