Ballet flats

Got these today. Cracked patent leather ballet flats.

Whenever I get flats or heels, I have to go down a size or two from what I normally wear in oxfords. These I got in a size 6 1/2 instead of 7 1/2.

A shoe-man once told me I had narrow feet, which was why shoes slip off my heels all the time. Probably why I have to size down, too.

Summer at the thrift store

The best books have just appeared at all the thrift stores around town. Usually, you mostly find thrillers and romance novels. But today I got
. Gnomes
. The White Hotel, D.M. Thomas (a pretty sexy, but literate, novel)
. Wuthering Heights
. Heart of Darkness
. Gulliver's Travels
. The Sun Also Rises
. The Iliad

The other day, I found
. The Complete Guide to Birdfeeding
. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Seeing as how I have mostly nothing to do this summer, I may as well start a reading program. Reading helps me feel normal.

I've also resumed the shopping. First thrift stores, then it became online shopping. These days, I hate going into the stores, where you have to talk to overly friendly SAs and make decisions on the spot. I like to relish the idea of having something, and imagine what it would be like, which o.s. lets me do.

Thrift store haul

From the 70s
. High-waisted pants with contrast stitching on the pockets
. Pleated floral 2-piece dress

From Ireland
. Striped canvas belt with tin metal closure

New pleasures

Rather than clothes. Plants, curtains, music in the background. Laying flat on my back, staring at the ceiling, daydreaming. Reading on the stoop outside my apartment. Opening windows wide.

Baby girls and boys

I was thinking about babies, and the baby wishes of the people I know and have read about. If a preference is stated, it usually comes down to a parent who wants a boy to teach how to throw a football, or a girl that can be dressed up in pretty things.

I think in its way, it's the parent's desire to give their children a social advantage. A social advantage mostly in adolescence, before we diversify and become more sophisticated and removed from the crudely sketched-in fascimiles of the people we will become, that we are in adolescence.

Okay. I mean that for a boy, popularity can most easily come from physical prowess. And for girls, being attractive.

Thrifting

Haven't been thrifting much lately. I used to love to thrift, when I had lots of time and little money. That's the ideal calculus for thrifting.

Sometimes, being in the thrift store depresses me (although, what doesn't these days). All the racks of clothes and things, turned out and discarded. All the people in the stores, quietly going through the racks.

Still, my favorite things have come from thrift stores:
. bright blue and white polka-dotted blouse with pocket ties
. leather belt with assymetric buckle
. Dr Marten striped sneakers
. black cocktail dress (worn to the rehearsal dinner for my wedding)
. cognac leather peeptoe slingback heels

So I return and hope. You never know, in the sea of crap, there might be one or two fantastic, unique things that you can't find anywhere else.

...

Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

an excerpt from W.B. Yeats' "The Circus Animal's Desertion"

Budget

I have put myself on one. Rather than going monthly, however, I've decided to go by season. First is spring/summer, and then the other half of the budget is for fall/winter. I don't quite remember what the remaining budget is for this summer, but so far I'm sure that I've done rather well since I've bought very little this past month.

All I've gotten so far was two shirts from the sidewalk sale yesterday at Anthropologie. I didn't intend to go shopping (the boy was only going to get a cable from the Apple store), but when I saw that they were having a sidewalk sale. Mon dieu! How could I resist.

But, at least, one thing was marked down from $118 to about a fourth of that. So I am still way under budget.

Returned

Went to Target today and returned a bunch of Luella Bartley stuff, part of the Go International collection. Luella, also known as Crappella. Funny how a little time takes off the shiny veneer.

"Vacation"

I love living out a suitcase. I like having everything I need, reduced. And I like wearing the same thing over and over, 5 different ways.

Not been shopping much lately

Relatively speaking.

I try to compare the pleasure of getting something against the unhappiness of being weighted down by things. Most things seem more like a drag than anything else these days.

I think it's heartbreakingly sweet

When people try, and you see evidence of their trying.

And I don't mean that in a condescending way. I mean in the way that we all have to get up every day, invent who we will be. That, despite the suggestion of futility, we try anyway.

This is someone from the Fashion Spot. A lawyer in Scotland.

I think she looks pretty cute. (Never mind the headless shot. Forum convention.)

Once

These two hipster guys asked to take my picture. They said they were taking photos for Diesel, I guess as street style inspiration.

I said no.

Beauty

I think I'm just chasing beauty. I have accumulated files and files of pictures on my computer, images of pretty things. Mostly they are in the vein of "street style" pictures, just ordinary people dressed to go out in the world. I have few pictures of models or editorials.

Although I like runway pictures because a runway show is a cohesive story. Something to set the imagination going.

But the pictures of what people wear are inspiring.

It's like when I see a flock of birds alight. They look to me like torn pieces of confetti, thrown skyward.

So with these flashes of people going past.

Hmmm

The skirt I bought off eBay turned out to be a dress.

Service industry

I feel strange when the SAs really help me out. Yesterday, I went into Nordstrom to return a handbag (oh my God, the trauma with this bag...I didn't even want to blog it), and the girl very perkily helped me out. She offered to bring out similar bags from the back, and place any that I liked on hold until their big sale next week. She came out with a half dozen bags on her arm. She showed them to me. Took out stuffing so I could try them on more easily. Kneeled down to wrestle them out of their dust bags.

I felt bad. I wanted to reach down and pull her up, tell her that I can unpack my own bags. I am reminded of what the boy's best friend said, about the unhappiness he sometimes detects on the forced cheery facade.

Yet, I remember that I truly did enjoy helping people sometimes when I worked in retail.

But I also remember that my manager looked on my sales numbers to determine next week's hours, which would in turn determine how well I would eat the week after.

I don't know.