One month of No-Buy 2022 (clothing only), down and done. Pictured above: an item in Housewares and Bedding, a category not included in my no-buy year, but nevertheless one of the last things I bought in 2021. It's a cotton pillowcase, which I found at the neighborhood thrift store and bought as much for the feel of the cotton as for the pretty blue-and-white stenciled design. I changed the sheets today and put this pillowcase on, and then it seemed photogenic.
Unlike me, running on little sleep again. I fell asleep just fine, reading Turgenev's A House of Gentle Folk, but then woke up –– I don't know what time it was –– and couldn't go to sleep again. I took a bath this morning to wake myself up and washed my hair, mostly because I really don't like the conditioner bar I've been using. It leaves too much buildup and makes my scalp itch. Today I used just the Yellow Bird peppermint shampoo bar, which is supposed to be not only sulfate-free but extra moisturizing, and I dunno, the effect is a little bit too much the opposite of what it's been for the last three days, but at least my hair feels clean and not weighed down. I like these zero-waste bars, at least in theory, but honestly, the best hair-wash I've had in the last month was when I used some of my daughter's Suave coconut conditioner for a co-wash . . .
I really wanted my clothes to feel like pajamas today. Meanwhile, I'm trying to cycle through my dresses, so that I don't wear the same one or two over and over. Here I'm wearing my thrifted short-sleeved dark-blue bamboo swing dress –– indistinguishable from the long-sleeved version, obviously, since I'm wearing a cardigan, but at least I know it's not the same dress (for whatever that's worth). Thrifted gray Athleta cardigan again. Cheapo magenta leggings impulse-bought at Aldi sometime in the last two years. You can tell how cheapo they are by how sprung they've gotten at the knees. New Boody bamboo socks and thrifted Birkenstock Floridas.
The bright legs are fun. And I really can't say enough about these socks, which are fantastic.
I need to dive today into the late John Ridland's translation of the Middle English poem Pearl, from which I'm going to be reading a roughly ten-minute section in a Zoom reading in mid-February, dedicated to translation and sponsored by my poetry publisher, Able Muse Press. I'm feeling a little trepidatious, because although I've sort of read Pearl, I'm hardly an expert, and I'm probably going to have to give some significant context for the passages I read, so –– time to go do research, too, so that I can pretend to be a scholar. I'm reading Ridland's translations with Maryann Corbett, who actually is a scholar in medieval literature, as well as a translator. Not really sure why they asked me to read, except that maybe my Richeldis poems suggest that I know something about Old English (I do not, beyond random words and etymologial details). Maryann thinks Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, from which she'll be reading, is the easier pick, but I dunno –– I'd be up nights worrying that my pronunciation of Gawain was wrong. It's harder to mispronounce Pearl.
It's sunny again today, and feels warmer. I'm happy to see January take itself offstage for another year –– one of the things I most love about the American South is that February can, and usually does, include a lot of springlike days. It was my father's favorite month in the whole year. It's the month when I want to get busy planting and digging and being outdoors, though we've also had significant snows in February. At any rate, this January has felt eternal, and the new month on the doorstep is a welcome arrival.
I am also making a note to myself to go around and look at all my Nativity scenes, still up around the house, while I can. I love Candlemas –– whether the secular groundhog sees his shadow or not, Candlemas always feels to me like the moment when the Church decides that winter is over, spring is coming. That this new season won't bring Lent right away is always a little strange: an azalea Easter this year, not a daffodil one. Still, Lent and springtime go together in their bittersweetness, flowers opening and shivering in the cold. Half the time, in these parts, March is colder than February anyway.
My husband stays late at school tonight, so it's just Dora and me, hanging out. She's in her crate right now, hanging out where she can't climb on me and eat my soup. Eventually I'll have to let her out. I have a phone call to make around 2, so maybe I'll go sit outside to make it, and let her roam about the yard while I soak in some Vitamin D and try to stay awake.
Pecking away at a poem in quatrains –– first and third lines in pentameter, second and fourth in varying tri- and dimeter.