Another brilliant blue-skyed late-autumn day. I guess I can start calling this season fall-into-winter anytime --- think I'll wait until Advent 1, though. It's a cooler day, with a high of only 53F and a low tonight of 28, but bright and beautiful, as you can see.
So it's Saturday, and we have no plans. The Viking Son is going out with friends at some point today --- most of his local friends these days live down around Greenville, South Carolina, so getting together involves a road trip on his part. Not sure what the Artgirl is up to. Today is their last full day at home, though their plane doesn't leave until midnight tomorrow, because that's when it was cheap to fly. Already I feel a little elegiac, and sense the swift passage of time. A week ago, a week seemed long. Now it doesn't so much. It's been lovely to have them, but the loveliness is tempered by the knowledge that it's passing away so quickly. They'll be here less and less. Already the Christmas-break plan is to spend New Year's with the Texasgirl, at whose house New Year's is the big family holiday, with all the siblings on both sides. Then the Artgirl plans to go to San Diego to see her boyfriend before school starts. They both might fly back here briefly, because there is a window of time --- the semester begins on the 17th of January --- but nobody is sure. Anyway, more and more their grownup lives call them away, and that's how it should be, but I do feel the preciousness of the days when they're here.
Unrelatedly, and bizarrely, we were talking the other night over dinner about this series of advertisements, which I don't remember but my husband does. He's only three years old than I am, but that's enough for him to have memories of, say, Vietnam War television that I wasn't clued in enough to have registered. Also, we didn't have a television until 1968, and the only reason we got one was that my dad was tired of borrowing a tv to watch the World Series --- or else his friends were tired of lending their televisions, because maybe they too wanted to watch the World Series in the comfort and privacy of their own living rooms. So one way or another, I missed out on the whole Hot Dr. Pepper craze, which seems not to have been that much of a craze, except in the fevered minds of advertisers --- and weirdly enough, just as we were talking about it, the Washington Review of Books, whose free email digest I receive because I can't possibly subscribe to every paid thing, linked to that piece about it. And now you can read it, too. You're welcome.
So, I'll go out shortly to walk the dog, then knock around. I am dressed to do precisely that, and no more.
What I'm wearing right now is one of those outfits that I'll look back on later and resolve to dedicate the rest of my life to not wearing ever again. But I am comfortable. You just really can't beat a Willow dress for ease and warmth, especially over a base-layer tee --- though I'm honestly not sure about those colors next to each other and might take the tee off later.
Yeah, I dunno. (ETA: I don't know why I felt dubious. I actually think these colors are pretty together) Also, people in this house keep turning the heat up, so I might truly not need the base layer.
I'm also doing a thing I had sworn not to do: leggings with socks and Birkenstocks. Admittedly, I wouldn't wear this out to dinner. It's strictly a knocking-around-the house/dog-walk look (though I might actually put on boots when I go out to walk). But you know, my Darn Tough socks are cute.
They just are. I like for them to show up sometimes, instead of being always hidden in my boots.
And I'm wearing my new-to-me Aran cardigan, which I love. I can kind of see why the seller wanted to sell it. It's got a little pilling, but nothing bad. And the sleeves are short, but then I push my sleeves up anyway, so that doesn't bother me. It's exactly the kind of thing I had been longing for, to replace the ratty old acrylic cardigan I've worn every day, for years and years, in the house. I wouldn't have worn that acrylic cardigan out in public; this on the other hand I would wear in public. It's a lovely heavy merino knit with lots of cabling, plus a hood and pockets. It's also exactly the same dark charcoal gray, which I was wanting.
Check out the pretty little Trinity-knot zipper pull! I love it!
Anyway, I won't win any style awards for this ensemble, but I'm completely comfy.
Again, the outfit rundown (because I know you'll all want to rush right out and copy it):
Wool& Willow (medium regular), in Wisteria
Thrifted Icebreaker merino base layer tee in Dusty Rose
Thrifted Allbirds navy leggings (merino/tencel/lyocell blend)
Darn Tough Socks
Thrifted Birkenstock Rosemeads
Thrifted Aran Crafts cardigan
In other news, because I haven't talked about books much here in a long time, I've dedicated myself to finishing J.A. Baker's The Peregrine. The Fire Son gave this book to me for Christmas several years ago, and I've been picking it up and putting it down ever since. This is not to say that it's not good, or that it's hard to read. The prose is breathtaking. As nature writing, it makes Annie Dillard look hamfisted. Here's one example, in which the tiercel peregrine stoops on a woodpigeon:
He fell so fast, he fired so furiously from the sky to the dark wood below, that his black shape dimmed to grey air, hidden in a shining cloud of speed. He drew the sky about him as he fell. It was final. It was death. There was nothing more. There could be nothing more. Dusk came early. Through the almost dark, the fearful pigeons flew quietly down to roost above the feathered bloodstain in the woodland ride.
I would give a lot to have written this passage. The way the paragraph begins with alliterations, like a line of Anglo-Saxon poetry. That sentence, "He drew the sky about him as he fell." The lightning bolt of the kill, and then the desultory aftermath, the birds coming down to roost above their own likely fate.
The whole book is like this. It's stunning moment after stunning moment. Again and again Baker tosses off sentences like this: "The north wind brittled icily in the pleached lattice of the hedges, and smote through the thorny gaps." Maybe part of why it's taking me so long to get through it is that, like Adam Nicolson's The Making of Poetry, it's composed of such rich language that I can hardly digest it. But then, too, unlike a lot of other nonfiction, this is a diary. It doesn't really have a narrative arc. Each day's entry does, but the arc is just man goes out and sees birds. That this arc is described in such starkly gorgeous language doesn't mitigate the fact that, as you read, you feel you're going nowhere. That this is sort of the point doesn't keep you turning pages to get to the end.
I've decided --- two or three years in --- that the way to finish the book is simply to pick it up at bedtime and read at least one day's entry. Just live that one day for five or ten minutes, and let the prose marinate in my mind, or my mind marinate in the prose, whichever is the more apt way to put it. After all, what the man is doing, day by day, is going out to marinate in wind and weather and the behaviors of birds, who come and go across the stage of the fields and marshes like troops of extras in a play with two actual characters: the male and female peregrines. Or, well, three characters, if you include the human watcher who translates their actions into English prose.
I really need to do this with The Making of Poetry, too. I want to finish these books. I want to have read them. I enjoy, deeply, the experience of reading them. Yet I keep setting them down and forgetting about them. I'd really like not to keep doing that.
Well: time to let the dog out. I think I'll go put on some boots.
POST-WALK:
The maybe-less-eccentric public-dog-strolling ensemble, featuring thrifted Birk hiking boots and this very old linen scarf. We walked for about half an hour around the neighborhood, then came back and, with Dora still tethered to my waist, cut mulberry branches that have been growing over the fence and across the driveway, and dragged them down to the street. Now Dora is in her crate, resting from these labors and the hard work of breakfast-eating, and I'm back in my leather chair in a patch of sun.
Later on I plan to do some weight exercising --- some of this, maybe. And some exercises for my knees, because they're achy in the colder weather. And some posture work. I don't exercise in a highly organized, routinized way, but pretty much every day I try to cycle some short bursts of physical work into the flow of what I'm doing. It feels good to get up, go into the sunroom, and lift some little weights for a few minutes, or swing the kettlebell, or get down on the floor for some core exercises (toe taps or "dead bug," generally, though I also do standing crunches, often while I'm cooking or otherwise on my feet doing some task). You can plainly see how shredded I'm getting here, day by day, but it does feel good.
And I need to change the sheets on our bed and probably run a load of house laundry --- we are going through napkins, bath towels, and kitchen towels at a breathtaking pace.
PS: I think I might dye my white matelasse bedspread with tea this week, too, when the white linen skirt comes. I'd need to do that in the washing machine because of size, but I could put a LOT of tea bags in a mesh "delicates" zipper bag and do it that way. The white is just getting dingy around the edges, despite washings (I washed all our bedding this past week), and it has some faint stains that would be less noticeable if the whole thing were ecru. I'm thinking a soft sepia color would be nice . . . in the same way that it would be nice in a skirt. It's a pretty bedspread, and I don't want to replace it, just freshen it. Again, I've been washing it on hot, yet the edges still look a little discolored. It was my mother's before it came here, so it's seen a good bit of wear, though it's otherwise in perfect condition.
This, at any rate, is what I was thinking as I changed the sheets a while ago. For one thing, I think ecru would be pretty with the various blue pillowcases we have. I bought myself two mulberry silk pillowcases in a beautiful duck-egg blue --- I have not noticed that my hair holds up any better, which is why I bought them, but I love the pillowcases anyway. I might get another pair eventually, so that we can both have them, although I doubt my husband cares the slightest fig about sleeping on a silk pillowcase. He might even think it's kind of girly. BUT they're pretty, and the color seems to cry out for a softer, earthier companion color. So: I have tea on the brain, and not necessarily for drinking.
EVENING UPDATE:
The Viking is out, but the husband, the Artgirl, and I had a lovely leftover supper: plenty of turkey still, with dabs of dressing, sweet potatoes, etc. I had, of course, made the vat of cranberry sauce, but even that is much depleted after tonight. We ate in candlelight and had a good time, and it was all delicious, even as a second round. We also finished off last night's curried pumpkin soup, so that's a win. We have houseguests coming next weekend, and I really should clean the fridge. Every little bit helps.
I was reading through Instagram posts by this Finnish woman whose style I admire so much (even though, as I realize, many of her colors are not my colors at all, so I wouldn't really want to replicate it). Anyway, I forget which post it was, but she was talking about her shopping resolution for this year, which was to buy (excluding underwear) only five new-made items, as a sustainability measure. Everything else would be secondhand.
Anyway, I was intrigued by this, as you might imagine. I've said before here that whatever resolutions I make, I'm not talking about them, because I don't want to wind up rationalizing how I'm not keeping the resolutions, which is how it always seems to go. So I am not talking about resolutions now. At least, I'm not talking about making any. If I am making any, I'm not talking about them.
But I was interested in this way to parse your purchasing habits. I mean . . . boy howdy, can a person go overboard buying things secondhand, as I happen to know. There's a lot to be said for making careful investment purchases, because then you know what you want, and that's what you spend your money on, instead of twenty things you didn't want that just happened to present themselves when you walked into Goodwill. That is a habit I'm glad to have broken, and I'd really like not to resume it. Poshmark could be a danger that way, although the good thing is that I can search for what I'm looking for in a targeted way, which you can't do at Goodwill. But in general, I guess it's kind of a relief to see somebody talking about sustainable habits without talking about minimalism. She seems not to feel that there's a number of clothing items that exceeds the limit and becomes too much --- though she seems thoughtful and careful about what she buys, and she resells a lot.
But the pure enjoyment of clothes is refreshing, without the burden of what I suspect is vestigial American puritan guilt about things we enjoy, especially if the things are things. Truly, there's nothing wrong with liking clothes, or with liking to look and feel good, or with wanting to dress for your life, with all its weather. And as long as you wear the clothes you have, you probably don't have too many.
Of course, the great temptation, in looking at somebody's grid whose style I like, is to think, I need to buy more linen!* And you know . . . I have done so, a little. I think some different textures and shapes, especially to combine with my wool dresses, will be nice as we move into the new year. And I might consider that thought when I think about summer clothes, the possibility of adding some secondhand linen dresses and skirts rather than buying wool. I do have a good number of wool dresses. We'll see. It's nice to have a new infusion of ideas, anyway.
None of this is a resolution, mind you. I'm not talking about resolutions. This is all in the realm of what if, nothing more. Shortly I'm going to layer up to walk the dog in the cold, admiring the frosty moon and stars which are the delights of an evening late in the year.
*ACTUALLY what I think is: Everything she's wearing is right! Everything I'm wearing is wrong! It's a habit of thought I catch myself in all the time. Even when I think I like myself just fine, all it takes is for me to see another person looking great, and where my mind automatically goes is to the place where I look terrible. I don't just like that person's style --- I hate that I am not that person. And this, friends, is what envy looks like, pretty much. It's sad, but it's true. So I had better turn my thoughts to something else . . . I do like her clothes, but I had better remind myself that I also like my own. And myself.
