Saturday-afternoon porch view. We had a brief window of sunshine yesterday, before the rain returned last night. In that window, the husband did yardwork and I luxuriated on the porch swing reading Plato, Augustine, Milton, Dante, and Cervantes, all in small increments (10 minutes, maybe, of Plato, 5 of Augustine, one Milton poem, one canto of the Inferno, one chapter of Don Quixote). So I read a lot, actually, and had a lot to think about, but it wasn't ever really too much. I try to stop a reading before I lose attention (a core Charlotte Mason educational principle), and to vary things --- alternating prose and verse, for example. That way the mind has to change gears and refresh itself, and you bring that freshness to the next (short) reading. It will take me a while to work through all these different texts, but I will have read them, and read them well enough to retain something of what I've read.
I've also started the volume of English essays, mostly because I want to read Sir Philip Sidney's "Defense of Poesy." Not sure I care as much about the rest.
The husband and I talked a good bit while I was making dinner about the virtues and shortcomings of the Harvard Classics series. It is weird. Plato but no Aristotle, for example. Granted, I've read more Aristotle already than Plato, but still, that's such a weird omission. No Thomas Aquinas (as far as I can see) --- Augustine and Thomas a Kempis, and then two volumes of "Sacred Writings," but I haven't looked yet to see what those are. I've read Imitation of Christ, or a good chunk of it, relatively recently, so I'm not sure I'm going to read it again now. But it's been a long time since I read the Confessions, and I'm enjoying revisiting them.
The order of these volumes is weird and random, too. It's not at all chronological, so you don't get a sense of a developing intellectual tradition, just a lot of disconnected bites. That --- as the husband remarked --- is pretty puritan of them. I don't mind reading across things widely, with a lot of seemingly discrete readings going at once, but to read straight through these volumes would be really dislocating, I think. I can kind of get my own timeline going --- AND I know what the timeline is, anyway. I know who comes before whom. That helps me make sense of things. But that the whole of classical philosophy is Plato-Epictetus-Marcus Aurelius is --- and I know this, even knowing next to nothing about classical philosophy --- not providing anything like the whole picture. (Also, Odyssey and Aeneid, but no Iliad? That seems not very CompleteTM).
Anyway, I can fill in gaps as I go. I have read Aristotle's Poetics multiple times within recent memory, but I have not read the Nicomachean Ethics, and I really should. I might splice that in somehow, if I can handle toggling between Kindle books (I do have it on Kindle, I'm fairly sure). I at least eyeballed the Iliad the last time I had ninth graders at home, which is longer ago than I care to contemplate now . . . but I revisited it every time I assigned it over the years, so I question whether I really need to reread it now. Ditto Beowulf, which I feel I know, but then how well do you ever know something? Those texts yield more every time you reread them, so I'd never say, Oh, I don't need to do that. The question is, though, what I haven't read, and what do I really need to prioritize of the things I haven't read, or read so long ago that the memory is hazy.
I think about all that, and then I think about clothes. I realized as we were finishing the rosary last night that I'd been thinking about dresses the whole time, not prayer intentions --- mea culpa! I hope God can do something with those wanderings of my mind . . . but I need to keep it in the road a little better than I do.
On the other hand, yeah, I think a lot about clothes, and while I should not do that while purporting to pray, I still maintain that that's not a bad or trivial thing (besides, it makes a nice break from Socrates and his arguments for the immortality of the soul --- which mostly make me think that, ahem, Thomas Aquinas would like a word).
I've been running my eye over my Style Album for this year, because fall is coming, in approximately four months, maybe, and I want to think about cold-weather clothes again. One thing that strikes me, looking over the months from January to April, is that while there are certainly some outfit misses there --- things I really regret having put on (though in the great scheme of things, this absolutely does not keep me up at night) --- there are far fewer than there were in the previous year's album. It's getting better. Mostly the improvement is a function of simply having better things to work with. You can't discount the importance of that. It is easier to put together good outfits out of carefully chosen items than out of random stuff you picked up at Goodwill because it was cheap. My 20-year-old daughter can pull off all kinds of random stuff as part of the whole art-major aesthetic, but I really cannot get away with that. Partly it's my age, but mostly it's my personality --- I really couldn't have worn what she wears at 20, either, and looked half as good as she generally does.
Looking back at the winter and early spring, I am mostly struck by how short my hair was, and how glad I am that it's not that short anymore. Some days it looked good, but a lot of the time it simply did not. That's one good reason for taking these interminable selfies --- every day you can get a range of better and worse shots, which are illuminating, but also you can readily go back and see that even when you thought your hair was doing okay, it wasn't, and you should probably remember that the next time you're tempted to cut it. I mean, it was fine, and I can't get hung up on it, but once again: note to self.
So, many of the outfits that look to me, initially, like outfits that don't work, are misses largely because of things that don't have to do with the clothes at all, but with what I was doing, or not doing, with my hair that day. Meanwhile, there are things I just like.
Postulant Chic, for example. It'll always be one of my go-to colder-weather aesthetics.
I dunno, I could go on and on. But looking back, I'm surprised by how many outfits I actively like from the winter and spring, when I so often, day to day, just felt that I was piecing things together (and getting tired of doing it, just as I am tiring, now, of not doing it, because that is the human condition). If I dress a little eccentrically, most of the time --- again, to my real surprise --- I dress in a way that I like. It might not be everybody's mojo, but it's mine, and although I don't expect it to work, more often that not it kind of does.
And again, when it does work, that's freeing. I can get dressed and --- although this blog would not give you that impression --- forget about myself. Having fewer clothes overall (though I don't have to remind you, probably, that I'm not a minimalist), but being sure that I like the clothes I do have (and that I move along clothes I don't like, or that consistently do not figure in outfits that I like), and spending some time thinking about how I'm going to wear them, paradoxically releases me from the anxious self-consciousness that has crippled me for most of my life. This feels like a grace, and I'm grateful for it.
It's also really not dependent on my feeling a particular way about my body, or in fact having a particular body size or shape. I have lost a few pounds since January, though I struggle to lose fat --- I might lose a total of ten pounds this whole year, hopefully in the belly fat that I really could stand to lose, and that would be a triumph. I'm not willing to be hungry all the time, or to have my hair fall out, so my calorie deficit has to be extremely modest, and I just have to be patient and basically content with myself as I am. AND I have to focus on building muscle, which will serve me at least as well as I age as the loss of belly fat would do. Again, it's a slow process because I'm not willing to devote a solid hour of my day to it. It's pick up the weights and do 20 reps of some kind. Or get up and jump on the trampoline until your legs feel wobbly, then go back to work.
None of this is schematic, and none of it is delivering fast results. And at the end of the day, no matter what, I will still have an old body. The good news is that I can dress it in ways that I like and be happy with how I look, or at least just forget about how I look, because I'm comfortable with that. What may look like vanity actually serves as a release from the prison of self-consciousness that I think vanity really is, the inability to let yourself go that just reduces your life, instead of granting you more space.
This seems workable. The other good thing about keeping the Google Photos style album is that I can easily glance back and see what I have and haven't worn --- how long it's been since I wore a given item. I use this blog to process it all, but really it's the style album that I lean on day to day, as a visual reminder of what I have and what I can be wearing. Glancing at that album prompts me to put things on my list for the week, when I might not think to reach for them otherwise. It keeps me from overwearing some things and forgetting about others. Three years out from my 100-day dress challenge, this is what feels like a good rhythm to me: really the opposite of wearing the same dress for a hundred days.
Anyway. I got up early to wash my hair for Mass, and now it's time to get dressed. I'll have to come back and plan later, remembering that I'm going to Memphis Thursday to Sunday, so will need a travel capsule.
Wearing now:
*Secondhand Christopher&Banks linen-cotton skirt
*Secondhand Carolyn Rowley pink linen tee
*Secondhand Flax periwinkle tunic
*Thrifted Crocs
Skirt bought last summer, tunic bought in February, Crocs bought by the Texasgirl in April, tee bought in June: an all-secondhand outfit today.
Coffee mug by the Artgirl.
More later.
LATER:
Back from Mass, which was nice and kind of quiet, with a number of the monks gone either on vacation or to the Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis.
Took off my top tunic and am contemplating how much I like or don't like this basic boxy top with this skirt:
I mean, it's okay untucked. But still a bit boxy, and hitting right at the place on my body where boxy is not what I most desire:
Again, this isn't bad, but as a silhouette, it's a bit like a refrigerator, top and bottom drawers. And it's not about the size or shape of my body. It's about the silhouette and internal lines of my clothing, full stop. I could weigh twenty pounds less than I do and still present this basic effect in this outfit.
Granted, the fact that my body shape is very emphatically pear, with narrow shoulders and wider hips, doesn't necessarily help here. If I don't feel like a fridge, I can alternatively feel like a human triangle, with my pointy little head, my thin shoulders, and the widening of my body shape as the eye travels down.
But that (say it louder for the people in the back) isn't really about body size. Even when I weighed 125 pounds, I had hips. I wanted so much to be a sprightly little gamine figure, and reader, I simply was not. In the car on the way to church, in fact, I was talking to my husband about the way we so often carry in our minds an image of our physical selves that is at odds with reality --- for good or ill. Most of us tend to carry an image that's a lot uglier than we actually are, because if there's anything women are good at, like really have a gift for, it's self-loathing. One of the things that I said to my husband was --- and not that you haven't heard this here before --- that I really think that what we think of as vanity is that imprisoning self-loathing, and not self-love.
At least, that's the actual spiritual problem that seems to plague most women. I can't think of a woman I know, or have ever known, in all the course of my life, who just looked in the mirror and thought, without any irony whatsoever, Hello, beautiful. I mean, sometimes we recognize that we look good. Sometimes we recognize that we look great. But that's not vanity. It's just an acknowledgement of reality, and a little credit to the author of that reality, who in fact makes good things.
So, well, what was I saying? Oh, yeah, that a lot of our looking in the mirror and taking selfies is a function of wanting to reconcile the image in our head with reality. We don't actually know what we look like, and it really helps us to know. Yeah, sometimes we don't look great, but most of the time we look a lot better than we think we do. Even if the outfit's not working, even if it's a bad hair day, even if we're not happy with our body size, there's always something going right: our eyes, our skin, our lips, the colors we chose . . . something. It's good to know what we really look like, so we can dress the actual person with dignity and care, instead of dressing a nonexistent version of ourselves, at odds with the real us. Sometimes our image of ourselves isn't bad --- it's just not what we actually look like. It's helpful to reconcile those things with each other. Among other things, getting dressed is a lot easier when you know who you are in your outward, as well as your inward, particulars.
And all that to say that I had to reconcile myself to being, even at my very thinnest, a kind of curvy person (not that my husband has ever complained). A loose shirt like this over a straight skirt like this would work on a woman with narrow hips, larger shoulders, the inverted-triangle body type, a little better than it does on me. But still, this bisecting line isn't great, because the proportion between shoulder-to-shirt-hem-distance and shirt-hem-to-skirt-hem distance is, if not exactly 1:1, very close. It's not enough to create the ideal 1/3:2/3 proportion that helps an outfit feel balanced and in focus.
So I tucked my shirt in. This also is not ideal, because this shirt has buttons in the hem, and that creates a little bulk beneath my skirt --- but it's not bad, really.
Now, I'm marveling here, because a year ago, when I had just bought this skirt, it was too tight, like I could barely button the waistband. I was going to resell it. Then it didn't sell, and I hung onto it, and sometime last winter I tried it on and it fit. I wouldn't hang onto something actively hoping that it would one day fit, but that's how this story just happens to have ended. Even so, I had not really anticipated tucking anything into the waist.
But it's even looser now than it was then --- partly, I must confess, because there's a little spandex in the fiber blend, hence a little stretch. It's not all me and my weight-hefting. Nevertheless, there's more room than there was, and this is good. So I can tuck a shirt in, and that gives me much more the Rule of Thirds proportion that I'd want.
I mean, full disclosure:
Is my stomach flat? Nope. Will it ever be really flat? Probably not. Can I look a little dumpy from some angles. Why, yep, I certainly can. Am I going to let that ruin my day? I'm sure going to try hard not to, because that would be a waste of a perfectly good day. And in fact, I look better in these photos than I was looking in the myopic eye of my brain, so I'm glad I took them, even if all this is getting a little tiresome for anyone still reading.
ETA: Also, another plug for good posture. In the first photo of this pair, my shoulders are rounded. I'm not standing up straight. In the second photo, my shoulders are back, and I've made some effort to pull my belly button in toward my spine. It makes a difference. I really do try to stand up straight, not slouch when I sit, etc, but of course nobody's in barre class all the time . . .
I might actually toss on a wool dress for comfort for the afternoon. Usually what I wear to church I wear all day, because I don't like to change clothes, but this outfit isn't quite as easy-breezy as what I more often wear. BUT for now, you know, it's fine.
I like the sweet soft colors of these linen tops with this oatmeal-colored skirt, which I find very versatile, even if I don't wear it as often as some other things. Straight skirts just aren't as easy as full ones, but I have liked this one in the winter with boots, when I wanted to shake things up with pale colors in the cold. Now that it does fit, I can anticipate a lot of transitional-weather fall outfits with it. It cost me about $18, and now that it fits, I'm really glad I have it.
Meanwhile, I think I like that Flax periwinkle tunic better with my Audrey dress than with anything else. Audrey really gives me the best pencil-skirt vibe, and it pairs well with that voluminous top. The tunic is a medium, but it's huge --- I know for sure that Flax sizes run large, as the small sleeveless navy Flax tunic I own is also quite big. I like the periwinkle tunic enough with my Audrey that I think I'll hang onto it for the time being, but man, the neckline is wide. It's always slipping off my shoulders. When I'm ready to revisit the closet with the idea of culling, I will be looking (with some reluctance) at that tunic.
OK, so, an outfit plan for a week in which I will be home for three days, then away for five, including Sunday:
For my travel capsule:
*NPL Smock dress (reliable favorite, light and cool, goes with anything, I always feel good in it)
*Wool& Brooklyn in Pacific (ditto)
*Wool& Audrey (double ditto)
*NPL Cinnamon Rose Leila (though it's actually a tough choice . . . I really like my Chocolate Brown one, too)
*Trades of Hope Kimono
*Blue rayon shrug cardigan (goes with everything and is summery, if not exactly cool)
*Birk Mayaris
*Crocs
*Underwear and toiletries
So, four dresses for five days might seem excessive, but it's no trouble to pack four dresses, and I don't have to pack lots of accessories to change things up. As always, I find it easier to change the dress and put on the same shoes and top layer. I might take an empty spray bottle to fill with water to spritz my linen dresses before I wear them. Might well wear the Smock dress on the plane.
For Monday-Wednesday:
*Floral pinafore dress with turquoise cashmere-silk-merino tank OR Devold tee, depending on whether I want it to look like a pinafore or a sundress.
*Blue floral vintage rayon maxi skirt with Flax navy tunic and linen-blend duster cardigan
*Wool& Beetroot Brooklyn dress with Birks. Maybe I'll get taken to dinner one of those nights, since I'm away Thursday!
All righty. That's enough thinking about clothes. I've dumped it all here, so now my brain can go its merry way (like merrily still trying to sigh into this stupid fiction account so that I can help these people out).