More leaf-shadow drama on the Airbnb garage door. There's not a lot of what you would call scenery around here, but there are little beauties to be found, if you're looking for them.
Yesterday:
*lunch in a Mediterranean cafe
*drive through the country to Ft. Worth
*an hour or so in the Kimbell art museum, seeing their impressive European and Asian collections
*dinner and evening hangout at the Texasgirl's, with her husband, the Fire Son and Anastasia, and the youngest sister on that side, Juliana. Random dinner of whatever was on hand, and a lot of fun around the table
Today:
Not sure what we feel like doing. Texasgirl and her husband are hosting a party and dance at their house tonight (Juliana had come over to help put down the dance floor in the back yard), so they're busy with that most of today. Artgirl is going to see the Viking's matinee show at 2, so her afternoon is taken. He's got shows this afternoon and tonight, and then Our Town run is finished.
We might, if we feel like it, venture into downtown Dallas to see the art museum there. But I imagine we'll have kind of a slow morning. My mother has always been a relentless go-go-go kind of person, which I am not, like at all, but I am having to recalibrate my ideas (aimed at pleasing a relentless go-go-go person) for what seems like a whole new set of limitations --- how far she can walk, how much energy she has. The fall-off in the last year seems kind of striking (resolving to go home and lift more weights, climb more stairs, walk more miles, build more muscle --- but also realizing that whatever I do, I am going to get old eventually and surprise and frustrate my children with my unexpected limitations). So we're flexible, and we dial it back when we need to, so that we can both have a nice time.
Anyway, wearing today:
*Wool& Maggie dress (M/Long) in Marine Blue, bought May 2022
*Secondhand Birkenstock Mayaris, bought April 2024
It's going to be 83F today, so I won't need much of a top layer, though I might add one this morning. Still, I really enjoy this dress most when it's entirely on its own, simple and swingy and uncluttered.
The wrinkles will fall out eventually, though I do have my spray bottle to spritz it if I need to. Now, THAT is a handy thing to pack --- mine is travel-sized, so I wouldn't have to dump out the water, but it's just as easy to pack empty, then fill with tap water at my destination, ready to spritz my wrinkled clothes or my hair or whatever I want to spritz.
Anyway, yeah, I'm a huge fan of the flow of this dress.
It's so basic, so clean, so easy, so cool in the hot weather. I do like layering it in the winter, though some of my least-favorite, least-successful ensembles have in fact involved this dress. I should just resolve to do simple tights and boots and a cardigan, and have done with it --- keeping the line clean and uncluttered all the way down.
Not the most flattering angle, and my glutes are a work in progress, but it sure does help not to have visible panty lines. Derek Guy, were he interested in women's clothes (he seems not to be, which is fine), might say something about the way putting your hands in your pockets in a knit dress pulls the dress out of shape and creates pull and wrinkling, but oh well. Derek Guy is not here, and he isn't that interested in women's clothes anyway --- which honestly is fine, because if anything is under-talked-about, it's not women's clothing. It's men's clothing.
In women's clothing, what you wear underneath does matter and can alter the entire look of what you're wearing, a fact that does not mean that we have to go back to wearing girdles, just that I'm probably not buying bikini briefs ever again, because I don't like the lines under my clothes, and I don't always want to wear a slip to smooth them out. In fact, especially in the summer, I usually very much do not want to wear a slip, because it's too hot. Bike short underwear is a good option, accomplishing very much the same thing without being an extra layer, and also providing coverage for hiking and other outdoor activities for which I generally wear a short dress.
The chair I use is a child's school chair, so it's lower than a normal chair --- but if I were just starting out, I'd use a normal chair and maybe not even a small weight, but just practice sitting lightly on the chair and standing up again, using my legs and backside to raise and lower me, preferably without having to use my hands (making praying hands in front of my chest or something, and challenging myself not to need them to stand up).
I also took a little series of what I think were pretty successful camera-timer selfies (propping the camera on an outdoor-umbrella stand):
The backyard landscaping here is pretty minimalist: just grass, basically, though it's very lush green grass right now. This minimalism lends itself (I realize retroactively) to a kind of David Hockney aesthetic, where you can have very simple forms and colors on this very linear lawn-sky-and-building background. I wasn't really going for anything in particular, but I like how these turned out compositionally: my off-center figure uniting the grass, the garage, and the blue sky. There's also an echo of my figure in the light post to the left of my figure as you look at the picture. The trees, especially the one to my right, above the garage roof, in the middle shot, make an interesting motif with my untidy hair, too. So this was basically an "I'm bored" little exercise, but I like how it turned out.
And there's a good principle for selfie-taking, too, which is: don't look at the camera. The other day the Artgirl was telling me about the self-portrait project she has to do for her human-figure drawing class, and how the one rule is No ID photos --- meaning, don't make eye contact with the viewer. There are times when you might want to do that, but I honestly think the best images of people happen when they're not looking right into the camera. Making eye contact with the camera tends to stiffen you right up, make you self-conscious, so the resulting picture isn't really a good likeness of you as you are.
The poses I'm striking here are self-conscious poses, though the main thing I'm conscious of is the imperative to look at something other than the camera, which I know is looking at me. I have to ignore it --- that's the rule. The looking-at-the-ground pose is a total photo-session cliche, but it's still better than standing squarely in confrontation with the camera, and tends to show off the subject's hair to good effect. It allows for some motion --- the wind is blowing my hair here, and I can just let it, and that's more interesting than trying to freeze-frame myself, as if the world were more static than it really is. Even the shots where my face is visible show you particular planes of my face, as I'm looking elsewhere: my profile, full or partial, as I let the light fall on my face.
I didn't make any particular grooming preparations for these shots --- they were very off-the-cuff. My hair is messy and unrefreshed. I didn't dress up or anything. The simplicity of my dress works with the whole composition, but that's a happy accident more than anything else (though it is generally why I like very simple clothing). I'm not a model, which is to say that I'm not very good at being in front of a camera and have no especially talent for it, but just observing the one simple rule of looking away (and angling my body/keeping it off-balance instead of standing squarely in front of the camera) makes for a better shot of even a very ordinary person, with a very ordinary face, body, hairstyle, outfit, etc. These are also not really art photos --- like I wouldn't exhibit them anywhere other than on this blog. But I like treating myself as a subject in an artistic composition, rather than as a self to be photographed. Paradoxically, I wind up looking more like my natural self when I'm thinking about rules of composition than I do when I'm fixated on myself and how I look.
So, anyway, that's interesting to me, and might be helpful to somebody as a set of ideas for how to appear in photos. If I can look half-decent, so can you.
PS:
An unsolicited product review, since I was mentioning bike-short underwear ---
I own, currently, two brands of this kind of underwear. I have six pairs of Understance modal bike shorts, three in black and three in "natural." I like these a lot --- they're thin and do ride up a little sometimes, but they fit very cleanly under my clothes, and are very easy, because of the thinness, to wash out in the morning and hang to dry. They're ideal for travel, but I wear them pretty much every day. I find them very comfortable, breathable, etc., and the price point is a lot friendlier than any comparable wool underwear I've seen.
Recently I bought a pair of Huha bike shorts --- their longline boxers, or whatever exactly they call them, but they are basically mid-thigh-length bike shorts. These are tencel, with a crotch panel infused with zinc and something else, to make them more antimicrobial. I really love these. They fit beautifully and don't ride up, breathe well, and feel substantial, but still very smooth under clothing. They do take longer to dry when I hand-wash them, which is my one complaint, but with summer coming this is less an issue than it was. I wore them on the plane the other day, washed them the next morning (day before yesterday) and am wearing them again today. So while they're not quite as easy to wash and dry for travel, they're still pretty good.
Innnnn case you want some bike-short undies, those are my recommendations. Again, unsolicited.