THE HERMIT'S HOLY SATURDAY
Silence hangs on the earth. A pale moon’s risen
Above the ridge and shoved the clouds aside.
The morning’s rain has gone. The eventide
Turns frigid. Winter seems a bitter prison,
Spring a failed escape. Send me a vision,
The hermit prays. Send something. I’m afraid
Of all this nothing. So he tries to read:
Something strange is happening. Windows glisten
With frost and firelight—-this, he thinks, is strange,
Given the time, when death and life contend.
The outcome isn’t clear, at such close range.
He knows, but un-remembers. At the end
Of penance, he pokes the coals. How can he change His life? The embers thrum. This fire could mend.
---Grateful acknowledgment is due the editors of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, in whose pages this poem first appeared.
*****
Holy Saturday is always so betwixt-and-between: Lent is over, but Easter isn't here. The work of the Cross is finished, again, but we're still waiting for what happens next.
I've walked the dog in the rain:
And I'm dressed, though not in Easter finery.
It's a good day for the coziness of my Sierra dress, with a merino base-layer tee, heavy leggings, wool socks, and hiking boots. The part of me not covered by my coat is pretty wet, following a 20-minute walk around the park loop, but I'm still perfectly warm.
Anyway, the quiet day of waiting and preparation goes on. We'll have a reprise of last night's meatless dinner (homemade mac-and-cheese) before the Easter Vigil tonight. And we will put on . . . some kind of finery, but with plenty of layers. Will update.
Meanwhile, today's outfit is thrown-on and wintry, but still one of my favorites. I love the dusty, purply rose-pink of this tee. And I went ahead and put on the earrings my husband bought me back in January or February, whenever it was that we took a Sunday-afternoon outing to Valle Crucis. The hit of blue (and the hit of blue that my glasses represent, too) is a welcome clear note in the grayed colors I'm wearing on a gray day.
Meanwhile, today's outfit is thrown-on and wintry, but still one of my favorites. I love the dusty, purply rose-pink of this tee. And I went ahead and put on the earrings my husband bought me back in January or February, whenever it was that we took a Sunday-afternoon outing to Valle Crucis. The hit of blue (and the hit of blue that my glasses represent, too) is a welcome clear note in the grayed colors I'm wearing on a gray day.
I like this picture, because it shows me my coloring pretty clearly, even though my eye color isn't that apparent. My lips and my shirt are almost exactly the same color. My whole skin is very obviously a very pale rose-pink --- no peach or gold in my coloring at all.
This would be a good photo to keep with me when I'm looking for something pink to wear --- I had an email digest from Nat Tucker this week, talking about making your skin color a base color for your wardrobe. Of course the difficulty is in identifying just what color your skin actually is. We have these broad words, white or black or brown, to describe skin color, but in reality, within any one of the demographics those words inscribe, there's such a vast range of variations. Yeah, broadly speaking, I'm "white," because all my ancestors came from the British Isles, but I can't just pick a white shirt off the rack and say, "Hey, here's my skin color." Even if I say my skin is pink, which it basically is, "pink" can mean a lot of tones. I think it probably helps to have a good photo, taken in a clear light (this is my bathroom light, which is pretty bright and non-yellow) that shows your skin tone as it is --- and have it where you can pull it up on your phone easily when shopping, to hold fabrics against it and see how close the match or complement is.
Otherwise . . . my hair has some gold tones, actually, but I think that's mostly a function of not wearing a hat outside and being sun-bleached all the year round. I do spend a LOT of time outdoors, and I don't usually cover my head. But in a photo like this, where my hair is pulled back, you can see that its natural tone, where it hasn't been so exposed to the sun, is this kind of dark ash-brown (where it's not silver).
You can also see that I gravitate toward silver jewelry, and I think I'm right to do so. A gold stud in my ear would look garish, and feel garish to me.
All this to save you the hassle and expense of having your colors "done," when you can do a lot for yourself by simply paying attention to the colors that you are.
Thinking about all this, having read this rather fun Twitter thread about why Ryan Gosling looks so bad (apparently) in the upcoming Barbie movie (about which I care naught, but I do think Ryan Gosling is pretty cute). I still really don't buy that there is such a thing in this universe as a "warm blue," though her point is well taken that with his coloring, which is generally blue-eyed golden-boy coloring, Ryan Gosling looks a lot better in a blue suit than in a black one, and that white-platinum hair doesn't work for him at all. I would argue that this is because his natural hair is gold-toned, his eyes are blue, his skin is kind of peachy-pink, rather than rose-pink, and his overall level of contrast is low to medium, so that stark, high-contrast colors (black, hot pink, icy white and white-blond) wash him out. He has soft, rounded features, not angular ones, which add to the overall lower-contrast picture.
Again, I maintain that "warm/cool" is not helpful or accurate language for describing colors. I think it helps to identify the actual colors in tones and undertones: what makes grays different from each other, for example, is the amount of brown or blue or purple or pink in the gray. Ditto beige.
And because it's raining and I'm bored and don't feel like going to the store (though I must, eventually), AND because my black choral-wear dress came today, I thought I'd play with color a little.
Here's the black dress, another of those Piko bamboo swing dresses, a style I already own in both navy and burgundy, though I generally just wear them as nightgowns:
This would be a good photo to keep with me when I'm looking for something pink to wear --- I had an email digest from Nat Tucker this week, talking about making your skin color a base color for your wardrobe. Of course the difficulty is in identifying just what color your skin actually is. We have these broad words, white or black or brown, to describe skin color, but in reality, within any one of the demographics those words inscribe, there's such a vast range of variations. Yeah, broadly speaking, I'm "white," because all my ancestors came from the British Isles, but I can't just pick a white shirt off the rack and say, "Hey, here's my skin color." Even if I say my skin is pink, which it basically is, "pink" can mean a lot of tones. I think it probably helps to have a good photo, taken in a clear light (this is my bathroom light, which is pretty bright and non-yellow) that shows your skin tone as it is --- and have it where you can pull it up on your phone easily when shopping, to hold fabrics against it and see how close the match or complement is.
Otherwise . . . my hair has some gold tones, actually, but I think that's mostly a function of not wearing a hat outside and being sun-bleached all the year round. I do spend a LOT of time outdoors, and I don't usually cover my head. But in a photo like this, where my hair is pulled back, you can see that its natural tone, where it hasn't been so exposed to the sun, is this kind of dark ash-brown (where it's not silver).
You can also see that I gravitate toward silver jewelry, and I think I'm right to do so. A gold stud in my ear would look garish, and feel garish to me.
All this to save you the hassle and expense of having your colors "done," when you can do a lot for yourself by simply paying attention to the colors that you are.
Thinking about all this, having read this rather fun Twitter thread about why Ryan Gosling looks so bad (apparently) in the upcoming Barbie movie (about which I care naught, but I do think Ryan Gosling is pretty cute). I still really don't buy that there is such a thing in this universe as a "warm blue," though her point is well taken that with his coloring, which is generally blue-eyed golden-boy coloring, Ryan Gosling looks a lot better in a blue suit than in a black one, and that white-platinum hair doesn't work for him at all. I would argue that this is because his natural hair is gold-toned, his eyes are blue, his skin is kind of peachy-pink, rather than rose-pink, and his overall level of contrast is low to medium, so that stark, high-contrast colors (black, hot pink, icy white and white-blond) wash him out. He has soft, rounded features, not angular ones, which add to the overall lower-contrast picture.
Again, I maintain that "warm/cool" is not helpful or accurate language for describing colors. I think it helps to identify the actual colors in tones and undertones: what makes grays different from each other, for example, is the amount of brown or blue or purple or pink in the gray. Ditto beige.
And because it's raining and I'm bored and don't feel like going to the store (though I must, eventually), AND because my black choral-wear dress came today, I thought I'd play with color a little.
Here's the black dress, another of those Piko bamboo swing dresses, a style I already own in both navy and burgundy, though I generally just wear them as nightgowns:
I knew it would run pretty short, because these dresses just do. I'll most likely wear this as a tunic, either over my Audrey or over a secondhand black skirt that I'll pick up at some point. If I had to wear a little black dress for something, I would wear this, but I can't think of a social situation in which I'd choose to wear a black dress over another, more flattering color. That's why $18 is roughly my price point for something like this, not $128.
I don't know that I look that much plainer in this color than I do in other colors, and I certainly wasn't trying to look pretty in this photo, but seen from a distance, I don't seem to have . . . facial features.
Here I am in the actual outfit I'm wearing today:
I don't know that I look that much plainer in this color than I do in other colors, and I certainly wasn't trying to look pretty in this photo, but seen from a distance, I don't seem to have . . . facial features.
Here I am in the actual outfit I'm wearing today:
Not the same angle, and I did bother to smile, but it is the same setting and light, and I'm not wearing makeup in either shot. Here I do seem to have some color in my face.
Actually, I think my glasses help a lot. As long as I'm wearing blue actually on my face, that's going to brighten my skin. Otherwise, I don't know that I look objectively worse in the second picture than in the first. Yes, I have circles under my eyes, because I almost always have circles under my eyes. Maybe my eyes themselves don't pop as much, in terms of color, when I wear black. Black just feels harsh, like it's sucking energy from me, not giving me energy. I don't look as corpselike, though, as I generally feel when I wear black. What if I take my glasses off? Reader, I feel naked without my glasses (and I can also tell how much I've neglected my poor eyebrows, not that I've ever had great eyebrows).Here's my naked face in pink:
Yeah, here I definitely feel plainer, even given that I already knew I wasn't like American-Movie-Star material. It's not awful, but there is a difference when you wear a color that doesn't support you.
Even when you smile, and your hair is all falling everywhere because you've been taking clothes on and off:
What I should really be comparing are black and blue, but I do have to make this store run sometime, then come home and wash my hair and do whatever else will make this long, quiet day go by, until we gather to see in the Resurrection.
About to leave for the Easter Vigil, in the rain and cold. Feels like an English Easter, as I should keep reminding myself.
Wearing pretty much what I had planned to wear, though obviously not with sandals.
Maggie underneath my thrifted floral rayon skirt, with thrifted green cotton cardigan. Snag merino tights, Tari boots, because that's been the theme all winter . . .
But --- I said to myself --- what about close up? Does color make that much of a difference?
Here's the pink tee I'm wearing today:
And here's the black dress:
And in black:
Yeah, here I definitely feel plainer, even given that I already knew I wasn't like American-Movie-Star material. It's not awful, but there is a difference when you wear a color that doesn't support you.
Even when you smile, and your hair is all falling everywhere because you've been taking clothes on and off:
What I should really be comparing are black and blue, but I do have to make this store run sometime, then come home and wash my hair and do whatever else will make this long, quiet day go by, until we gather to see in the Resurrection.
LATER:
About to leave for the Easter Vigil, in the rain and cold. Feels like an English Easter, as I should keep reminding myself.
Wearing pretty much what I had planned to wear, though obviously not with sandals.
Maggie underneath my thrifted floral rayon skirt, with thrifted green cotton cardigan. Snag merino tights, Tari boots, because that's been the theme all winter . . .
