curtained & draped

 

Easter Hat, from Draped, Anonymous Women, by artist Patty Carroll.

Dear Confidante,

I am working on the mysteries, still.  What is identity?  Yes, we have spoken of this, and I think I mentioned my panic at being asked to define one for myself.  I have been digging at it sporadically, in my usual, unkempt garden kind of way, and I found this artist, this photographer, Patty Carroll.  She'll knock you out of your socks; enjoy the ride!

Identity Pie

 

Dear Friends,

Today I shall be sharing my secret recipe for Identity Pie.  It's a no recipe recipe, I guess, but as I said before, I want you to enjoy making yours, so feel free to measure exactly, or find another recipe for it.  In any case, this pie will only feed one, so you will have to get together with more folks if you want to make a dinner party out of it.  If it doesn't seem like much more than a list of things, that's because I am trying to include all the things that I did not when I was asked to make it before.

sitting around with a cup of coffee

watching birds, animals, plants, the sea

sewing things like clothes, pillows, stuffed mice

other needlework like knitting, crocheting, quilting, embroidering, weaving

baking bread each week

making fermented hot sauce

being in open spaces

buying lipstick

loving shoes and clothes and temporary tattoos

singing and playing guitar

speaking Spanish & French

writing

drawing

painting

taking photos

shopping

baking

cooking

looking up words

playing solitary games

watching junky, old, television, with questionable white, male protagonists

liking chrome

hating cleaning

liking wine

smoking

considering

apologizing

cutting my hair

appearing knowledgeable

appearing interested

appearing polite

appearing

Not Doing

 

Dear Reader,

Recall our last discussion- on what we should do, and by extension, what we should not.  I am going to put some space here, in which you should consider the question, let it sink in; selah, in the musical pause sense.

Ready?  I will go first; I think we should try to do what we like, even though that will mean a certain amount of secrecy.  I would also add that I want to work to be less secret.  What does that mean, you ask?  I am not sure, but I think it means that I will tell you what I am thinking and feeling without filtering it so much that I mediate myself into your acceptance.  Hmm, that makes it sound like I am spoiling for a fight!  Maybe I am.

Okay, you next.  What should we do?

Recall also my pathetic wheel of identity, as I tried to craft a persona that said "I matter and this is why."  This topic will be broadened in our next meeting, titled, Mattering.

A case of The Shoulds.

 

Dear Betty,

I never knew, as a youth, while enjoying cooking and baking, that I was a part of the gender role wars.  I just liked it, and I didn't concern myself with the notion that I might be enslaving women with my pleasure in cooking.  I have asked myself many times since "what have I done?!"  And I have seen also that being good at something can often make you an object of envy and hatred.  And so, so what?  So I only cook for a very few people, and I keep it a dark secret that I enjoy it.  I don't go quite so far as to complain about cooking, but when pals start to talk about cooking, I don't join in the conversation, and I don't let on how much I know about reduction sauces, pâte à choux, or making tortillas.  

Recently, I was asked to use a little paper wheel with spaces to fill in the things that made up my 'identity.'  Well, like anyone would, I crafted this thing oh so carefully!  I kept out anything that might make me look house-wifey, or home-makery, or crafty;  everyone hates Martha Stewart Perfection, and creative, expressive women who are doing the 'real' work, women who are 'leaning in' do not have time for such things.  Consequently, this wheel was missing a lot of the things I like to do on it.  I picked only the most boyish and intellectual of the things I spend my time on.  I avoided anything that smacked of excess or obsession, and tried to stay inside the tidy lines of 'passion.'  I am not proud of my fabricated self as detailed in the identity wheel exercise, and looking at it, I didn't even like this safe, careful person I had built of six safe, careful hobbies.

And so, again.  I am enjoying (from a comfortable, safe distance, and behind my blind of anonymity), the shifting sands around cooking these days.  I hope you will read this article by Laura Shapiro about Sam Sifton's cookbook and popularity.  Shapiro has excellent criticisms, and worthwhile issues to consider.  I also sympathize with Sifton, and I enjoy his relentless positivity and cajoling.  He reminds me of these pages, in fact.  And so, I hope that I haven't, in my enthusiasm, produced a case of the 'shoulds' in you.  As in, you should cook without (or with) a recipe, or you should read the article mentioned above.

Watch for more on my favorite topic of Not Doing soon!

Two posters, two questions, no answers.

 

Barbara Kruger, silkscreen, 1989.

Dear To Whom it May Concern,

I am not always sure who you are; I am not even sure who I am, so forgive me for sending you things you don't agree with, or things you don't even know exist.  

I remember, more than ten years ago, explaining why a particular woman (Ms. X) was wearing a close-fitting dress to a woman (Ms. BB) of an older generation.  I said that wearing tight clothes like that, revealing clothes like that, body-conscious clothes like that, was a kind of rebellion, an act of resistance.  This made very little sense to Ms. BB, because Ms. X didn't 'have the body for those clothes.'  Ms. X was supposed to use pleats and tailoring to hide her shape.  Ms. BB was raised on pleats and tailoring, as tools to present her body in the "best" way possible.  Of course, the rebellious act of wearing clothes you are not supposed to is not just about refusing to meet people's expectations; there is an unspoken idea that women with the wrong kind of body are not even sexual beings; they are aberrations on every level.  They cannot 'control' themselves (I know!  Isn't that just great?  Wild, out of control, so best stay out of my way!) and they refuse to be 'good' (again, so delightfully delinquent!).

Well, that is your introduction to the following two articles, which I have been considering carefully, and asking myself two questions:  Do they hate my joy?  Do I want them to touch me?

Article One.

Article Two.

Ellen Hochberg, 2012.

Independence from Dogma:

Dear July Fourth,

Did I eve tell you about the time an elderly French gentleman (with a tie, jacket, and cane- un flâneur véritable) met me in the door way of a Paris bistro?  Il sortait alors que j'entrais.  He was being aided down the stone step by a waiter in striped pants and a long white apron.  The staff knew him by name;  he might have been dining at that place for 60 years.  We made way for him to leave, and he asked me where we were from, in English, and I said "California," and he said "Oh!  America!  I love America!"  I think my expression must have been comme ça:  A puzzled Pourquoi?  He asked me didn't I love America?  I muttered that it was "all right," because I didn't think he meant what I might have by loving America.  He kept prodding me to to agree with him on the lovable-ness of America, and I kept deferring.  You can make your own list of what you don't like about America, but the biggest two items on my list are oppression and Capitalism.

But, what made me uncomfortable about being asked to join in a few harmless, neighborly, and kind words about my native country?  I ask you, how would you feel if asked to celebrate your country?  Would you think of the mistakes and cruelties?  Or, some other intangible, some kind of pride or idealism? 

Here is what I truly love about America:  roads, the great Native American West and South West, the rocks, the trees, the mountains, the gorges, rivers, beaches, milkshakes, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, doughnuts, bowling alleys, roller skating rinks.  I love the land and occasionally I love a few of the people, and I like some of its junk food.  But I don't love these phony ideologies, and even kind, well meaning, cultured French men from another era can't make me.

Gone

Dear Those Who Have Gone On,

I was looking through some boxes of snapshots-  I know you will recogninize the feeling- like so many drifts and avalanches of déjà vu.  All those different people, so many of them dead and gone, or forgotton, and many of them are me.

It's an exisitential crisis in saturated color on a 5 inch scrap of paper.  It probably isn't good for humans to have this much self awareness.  On the other hand, why is it so sad?  Why would years that I know were perfectly good years, perfectly fabulous times, now gone, bring sadness to consider them?  Is it just "the missing," or is it "the lost and never was anyway?"  I do not know.  But I intend to keep on poking at the sleeping beast.  Yesterday must have some meaning, some relevance for today.  But, it's like a dream you can't quite remember; all sliding away even as it forms on the back of your eyeballs.

Looking at the past in photographs is a form of transcendental time travel, only it isn't working right.  Whatever working right would mean.  I don't think it would mean that everything would prove to have a rhyme and a reason, but I think it would allow you to proceed with less doubt and more truth.  It would mean that you could be that bright spirit that you would like to be, without having to wish for it. 

Anyway, when I saw your picture, I thought of you, and I wanted you to know that I miss you.