Thank you for your patience as I’ve been traveling for fashion month. Something that continually find myself enjoying is the creative aspect of fashion writing. I find that I can successfully inhibit my words the same way that we exist in our clothing. For this piece, please enjoy this excerpt of creative writing!
Books I’ve read recently and enjoyed: Orlando, Virginia Woolf (1928); Homeward From Heaven, (trans.) Bryan Karetnyk, (auth.) Boris Poplavksy (1928); Dead Souls, (trans.) Robert A. Maguire, (auth.) Nikolai Gogol (2004); The Days of Abandonment, (trans.) Ann Goldstein, (auth.) Elena Ferrante (2005).
Have you ever wondered why? And why Women?
I enjoy the Manhattan bridge on the M train. It’s running fast enough that they could kill you. Pulling into Delancey. No bone breaks just a final end; no co-pay, the roar claims our contemporary screams. It’s one of the few times the car feels like my womanhood and I can’t breathe fully enough as it reaches my feet. My feet, not my toes. If it were to reach my toes, I would have to live without fear, but a man followed me all the way down Eldridge so it remains at my feet. My partner is back at the corner. They were intrigued to see if it could be the end, or maybe it was a disabled man on Essex, who needed to count his steps with another to cross, in order to mimic the physical therapy for his bum leg. But it was probably the end. So it remains at my feet. I lick the glass paperweight with air bubbles inside as a part of a design. Why make such a flawed design? That’s how the universe made men and that’s how men portray women. And dance. With empty holes left to be filled by the pain they caused. Necessarily. Inherently. Generationally. We are assumed to be flooded.
At Eldridge and Division, I turned left. The traffic on Barry seemed appealing, but there were other things that I needed to accomplish. An orthopedic appointment in two days. A deadline in five. The comfort of one of the few men I trusted eminently. But he’s not a part of the story.
Has your head ever rang so violently with the gangs of heaven that your eyes were blinded and you screamed in agony? Imagine a complaint with the pungent smell of fresh dog shit. A contemporary issue phrased in deeply antique terms. I know. The lease of God expecting, my school calling, I screamed; oh I screamed, the pain with the reality of anyone except myself. And so I kept on screaming, blinded by rage, hurt, and biological upset. What else could we do but accomplish a very obvious task at hand. Why wouldn’t we stop the radio or drive slower over any pot holes left in the road than disrepair the infighting local housing committee.
It was the dog's fault, but why were we talking about the ineffectual being of myself. We expand infinitely at first, through our mother by stealing her womb. The thing that gives us both life. Her pain from birth to birth. It is not taught or learned. It is hereditary, right as I open my eyes to fear light with brief moments until I gain my shadow partner, the partner that will embrace, reject, haunt me, till I die. It is the eternal tango of my youth. I sit down to eat; I perform. I ask for the menu in English and French, but I don’t speak French. I face the street, performing to the charade that I observe. Bread, carpaccio de boeuf, omelet aux champignons, baguette. When did my style become like this? I guess I’ve always been succinct, astute. It’s another word for it. Even my writing is a performance for those who might read all my talent.
A talent must be performed and must be expressed as an act of service. For those who serve you were gifted to genuflect before those friends and family who continue to gratify their own egos. They watch you dance and they get to say that they found you, nurtured you. I dance. I need the validation. Otherwise I wouldn’t be performing twirling, writing, alone, street side with my glass of Chablis. Side order of fries. The waiter laughed when I said Frites. I have no readers so I sit here right in front of the public forum with my not so mysterious facade and my cigarette that makes my ill filled stomach spin. He leaves the empty glass on the table as I prostrate myself for the fashionable crowd I observe. Like my women ancestors before me the waitress allows me a knowing look. Women spare us the allotted paint we may experience any given day as though it is a sin to transfer our own to our others. That’s why we pass down clothes, to apologize for the newness that we can’t provide with the excuse of the safeness we once felt through those worn seams. We see the way our own daughters operate the act of performance, at first through blind disguise, and then with conscious recognition. Sometimes you should button your coat when it’s cold.
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