De Profundis

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Sister Wolf

I’ve been meaning to read De Profundis since I read a biography of Oscar Wilde, around 100 years ago. I know Max read De Profundis and liked it. I was disappointed, though. Oscar Wilde managed to perceive a benefit from his suffering: It would bring him humility, and a better appreciation of Christ. That’s where he lost me.

I wanted to find something as dark and bleak as my own grief , something that resonates. Suicide Survivor websites talk about “Journeys,” a word that is now ruined for me.  I am not on a journey. I am already there. It’s the land of the Not Living but Not Dead. There’s an exit but I must not use it.

There is a dark veil that hangs just beyond my peripheral vision but I can see it there. I have to work hard to keep it away. When it sweeps over me, I am lost. It’s just agony. I live in fear of the dark veil and I work hard to refuse its existence.  This grief cannot be borne.  It’s not possible.

I stay up at night because going to bed might produce some moments of unfiltered thinking. I have to wait until I’m nearly unconscious, but I try to get to bed before six AM.  One night not long ago, it was nearly six and for a moment I felt a giddy sense of total freedom from responsibility or repercussions:  it was the epiphany that I didn’t exist any more, so it didn’t matter. The feeling was brief but scary. I can’t even decide if it was a moment of clarity or psychosis.

People who suffer from Cotard’s Syndrome often deny that they exist or believe they are dead. “In the first stage (Germination) patients exhibit depression and hypochondriacal symptoms.” Check. Jules Cotard, who first described the condition,  “described the syndrome as having degrees of severity that range from mild to severe.  Despair and self-loathing characterize a mild state.” Okay then. A mild state is good but not as good as mental health.

I have always felt contemptuous of women who seem to bounce back after losing a child.  I was appalled when Marie Osmond resumed her show in Las Vegas only a week after her son jumped from his 18th floor window.  Gloria Vanderbilt,  Judy Collins, non-celebrity mothers who write about their Journeys and even offer tips on handling intimacy with their husbands.  What propels them to go forward with their lives as if anything matters?

It’s no comfort to know I wont be one of them.

~

image: The Honeymoon, 2007 © Cig Harvey

Posted in Disorders, grief | Tagged , , | 17 Comments

A New Favorite Shopping Site

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Sister Wolf

The ra webshop is heaven sent for people craving avant garde apparel. Everyone modeling the outfits looks completely insane, and the prices are sky-high.

I was upset to find out that one of my favorite ‘pieces’ must have sold out, but luckily I had saved a picture of it:

Leather hat (and corset) by Niels Peeraer.  Let’s love him, okay?

Here is a great runway look by Niels –

It’s going to be hard to go back to those boring skinny jeans and moto-jackets at Shopbop. It’s just a sea of nothingness there.

Check out ra and tell me what captured your heart.

 

Posted in Fashion | Tagged | 29 Comments

Mr. Know-it-all

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Sister Wolf

I had lunch today at an Indian restaurant where my friend and I were regaled by the wisdom of a guy I’ll call Mr. Know-it-all.

Mr. Know-it-all (see above) is one of those guys who knows everything. And I mean everything. He reminded me very much of my friend’s ex-husband, who also knew everything. The ex-husband once insisted on telling me something about screenplays, even though I had been reading them professionally for ten years.

Anyway, Mr. Know-it-all had one of the cooks in his thrall, at one point telling the man something about India, the cook’s birthplace. The cook managed to say “India is a place of great diversity” before Mr. Know-it-all ceded the point and moved on to the subject of Pakistan. In his authoritative monologue, Mr. Know-it-all held forth about the economy, manufacturing, Russia, the Rockefellers, the Carnagies, Fidel Castro, Israel, Iran, and my personal favorite, where to get the best bagels in China.

Why do these people exist? Why are they always men?

I have to admit I was fascinated by Mr. Know-it-all, and had to fight an urge to interact with him, just to make him spew forth more information. I suggested to my friend that she offer to marry him, since she’s had so much experience for the position. Sadly, she gave it a pass. We may never know the full scope of his knowledge.

The food was great, though.

 

Posted in irritants, Rants | Tagged , , | 49 Comments

If You Can Pronounce ‘Balmain’ Correctly

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Sister Wolf

Before you complain about the $13,776 price tag, consider the close-up view of this vest:

“Take your ___  cues from ___  and wear this  ___  style with  ____ attitude – think  ___  pants  and  ____  heels.”

Replace the missing words (the ones I found most irritating) with better ones!

P.S. My size is sold out.

 

Posted in Fashion | Tagged , , | 17 Comments

The Horror of Sex

Posted on September 29, 2012 by Sister Wolf

I had another bad dream a few nights ago that was not only horrible but also embarrassing. I’m not sure whether one can be held responsible for dream content. I would never choose such an idiotic and reprehensible dream.  I couldn’ t even tell my husband for days.

In the dream, I was in a bedroom with a fat woman who I was pretending to like for some reason. We were cuddling, and I didn’t mind it until it got sexual. I was very anxious and told her to stop. She asked why and I blurted out, “Because you’re a woman!”  The next thing I knew, she was on the other side of the room and she had turned into an angry clown, the kind we all fear and loathe. The clown took out it’s dick which was around three feet long and more like a baseball bat. He snarled, “Now you’ll be sorry.” I started to cry and woke up.

Well! I don’t have to tell you that I have no interest in being raped by a clown, or even a fat woman. A friend of mine gave me a far-fetched analysis involving rejection and guilt. Now I’m worried that the woman was my mother, and the clown was my father. But it might all be the consequence of looking at old circus photos for hours on end.

Maybe I’m at the point where I’m creeped out by sex. I love Tumblr and can’t seem to give it up, but the sheer quantity of tits and asses is overwhelming. Not to mention the unexpected animated GIF’s of men blowing each other and Japanese women bound up in rope. What’s the deal with this? Doesn’t anyone else feel kind of exhuasted by these images? There are only so many asses I need to see bent over a chair. Am I just too old to appreciate random asses?

And the tits, god, after a while it seems so tragic. Some poor woman in the 1950’s, displaying her gigantic tits like pies at a county fair, it’s just not a happy sight. Obviously, I can’t sympathize with the male point of view. Men seem to need tits to look at, 24/7,  irrespective of context.

As a married person, I think of sex as inseparable from intimacy. Without intimacy, it’s all clowns with baseball bats.

I wish I could end on that note but that would be dishonest.  I would be leaving out the more recent dream where a friend asked me to babysit his pony, who was a delightful cartoon character of some kind. Everything was great until the pony offered me its services. Of course I declined in horror, and wondered what the hell my friend had been up to.

Forgive me. It’s not my fault.

 

Posted in Art, Disorders, Horrible Stuff | Tagged , , , | 22 Comments

Curated Jeans

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Sister Wolf

These jeans by Cosmic Wonder are made of “used unprocessed” selvedge denim, with embroidered patchwork detail at the hem. (Notice how nicely the hem hangs in the photo below.)

Complete this sentence:

These jeans are worth $805 because ______________.

Posted in Fashion | Tagged , , | 32 Comments

Naomi Wolf’s Vagina

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Sister Wolf

Poor Naomi Wolf. Once, she was a respected feminist thinker, her book The Beauty Myth staking a place in the second wave feminist pantheon. She was never a radical but she was a person to take seriously. Her recent support of Julian Assange against his female adversaries who accused him of rape was a weird moment, incurring the wrath of many of her peers. I felt sorry for her. But not as sorry as I feel for her now that she’s written a ridiculous love letter to her vagina. Okay, not a love letter; she calls it a biography.

Given the powers she has attributed to her vagina, it should have insisted on writing an autobiography. Maybe the chore of writing is beneath her vagina. It is too exalted, what with being the repository of  her strength, her wellbeing, her life-force and her very soul. Everything necessary for an effective life of a women can be found, not to mention celebrated and worshiped, right there in her vagina!

Naomi Wolf is like a schoolgirl with her first crush, according to reviews of her book, and her crush is her vagina. She seeks affirmation from a vagina guru with  a funny name, who gazes into her eyes and says something like “I see you, I honor you, and I honor your vagina.” But he calls it a yoni, recognizing  its Eastern, mystical essence. Then he calls it a “Goddess.”

FINALLY! A word I can use to describe my female area! I informed my husband that we would now refer to my Goddess as my Goddess. He is on board.

I’m sure Naomi had more than money in mind, ahem, when she came up with the title for her book But my clitoris would like to take issue with her, even though it’s in no mood to write a whole book.  I believe that the clitoris is the one to speak to, the one to revere, the CEO, as it were. Ignore the clitoris and you end up looking for gurus who have funny names and have to gaze into your eyes.

While we wrestle with our shame over poor Naomi’s book, lets keep things in perspective by considering Myrtle Corbin.

Born in 1868, Myrtle married and, possessing two vaginas, she apparently produced 5 children using both sets of organs.  Now what, Naomi?

Posted in Art, Horrible Stuff, Words | Tagged , , | 34 Comments

Fat Thighs

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Sister Wolf

When I’m not thinking about death, I’m thinking about my fat thighs. My brain bounces between the two subjects like a ping-pong ball. I hate these preoccupations but I feel helpless against the tyranny of my depression. Obviously, I am looking for a new medication.

Fat thighs have always been one of my deepest, most elemental dreads. Fat thighs are loaded with significance for me, all negative. They represent weakness of the worst sort, a moral and aesthetic crime. It means being Female, in the most self-loathing and sexist definition of the word. God knows how this started, but my father hated fat and he hated women, so we might not need Einstein to figure it out. Years ago, I would cringe at the line from Master Song by Leonard Cohen:

and your thighs are a ruin, you want too much
let’s say you came back some time too soon

Leonard Cohen may have been talking about Mary Magdalene but I still take it personally.

How many women hate their thighs? I know the number is vast and most of you didn’t know my father. If you hate your thighs, can you recall the genesis of the hatred?

When I sit down, I see my thighs spread outward like a sea of blubber. I whine and complain and apologize to my husband for my fat thighs. He has demonstrated again and again his reverence for my thighs, but I feel they are a blight verging on deformity.

Out in the Fact-based Community, my thighs are probably slimmer than average but that has no bearing on my problem.  Fat Thighs are a state of mind, a state of being, a Feminist Issue, and a way to externalize anxiety and shame.

Plus, I can’t go out wearing shorts, even though it’s been a trillion degrees all summer and my house has become an Indian sweat lodge.

Thoughts, advice, insults, anyone?

Posted in Disorders | Tagged , , | 26 Comments

Paging Freud and Jung!

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Sister Wolf

I dreamed there was a dead Me, laying beside me in bed. I was very distressed but I tried to take care of her, plumping her pillow or something. She was very pretty and young, sort of a goth Ophelia. Suddenly, I discovered that my ex-husband had taken her to a school campus and had left her there. I was horrified and furious with him. I flipped out and screamed at him, asking him if he realized that she was defenseless, that everyone would make fun of her etc etc. I screamed: “Isn’t there any dignity, even after death?!”

Then I woke up.

What does this mean? That part of me is dead? Because that is my daily reality.  Or was the dead me really Max? Or was it about Mitt Romney, who had just made his comment about the Libyan Embassy? Or is it because I’ve been immersed in the first four seasons of Breaking Bad?

Help.

Posted in grief, Horrible Stuff | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

Me and Jane

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Sister Wolf

A few months ago, several people sent me links to an interview with Jane Aldridge of Sea of Shoes, depicting her as a narcissistic, clueless Mean Girl. They probably hoped I would take to my blog, going Nah nah, Jane got dissed!

My personal interest in Jane and her blog was extinguished long ago, after a staggering outpouring of abuse from her friends and associates. I appealed to Jane’s sense of decency, and she suggested that I write about something safe, “like muffins.” Finally, one of the worst trolls reluctantly agreed to stop contacting me, reporting that Jane was sick of my “whining emails.”

Thinking about Jane now, I see we’re not that different. I like to buy shoes. I buy shoes that I don’t even wear. I buy shoes that some people would find excessive and even stupid. Here is an example:

See? They are still in the box and god knows I don’t need them but I really love them.

In the spirit of solidarity with Jane, let me compliment her on her fabulous living room, pictured above. It was recently featured in a regional magazine celebrating all things Texan.

At only 20 years old, Jane has furnished her first apartment with modest but quirky good taste. She has shunned crass opulence in favor of a low key dorm room effect, perfect for a young girl on a budget.  It’s a welcoming, homey living room where comfort is obviously the priority. And I love the carefully edited knick-knacks!

As a lazy slob who hasn’t even owned a full-length mirror in twenty years, I say kudos to Jane. May all her dreams come true.*

*Unless she wants a pair of those silver shoes, then no.

 

Posted in Fashion | Tagged , , | 34 Comments