Supper table, cleared except for candles, a vase of lemongrass, our two folded napkins, and the water pitcher.
Been out to Mass, and now I'm back. Here's my current morning-desk miscellany, including coffee, breakfast (consisting of dinner leftovers: Italian-ish ground beef with cauliflower rice), my rosary, a coaster from the pub, the landline phone handset, and a Wendell Berry novel (A Place on Earth) doubling as a placemat:
Just, you know, the normal morning thing.
Wearing today, for Mass and beyond:
*Wool& Maggie (M/Long) in Marine Blue, bought May 2022, last worn July 16
*Thrifted cotton button shirt, bought about five years ago (maybe four), last worn July 20 (with my other Maggie, as it happens).
*Crocs sandals thrifted by the Texasgirl in April
Today's projected high is 92F, nice and warm. It could be worse, but that's still pretty hot, especially when you figure in humidity. There are more thunderstorms in the forecast, so the run-up to that action should be plenty sultry.
I wanted to wear a top layer, especially for church but also because a top layer just adds some polish to a basic outfit. But I wanted to do that without adding a lot of weight and heat. A linen shirt might have been an even better choice, but --- and in truth, when I walk the dog, I'd take any top shirt off anyway --- I wanted to practice wearing this one some more. It's been in and out of outbox purgatory so many times, and I want to justify my choice to pull it out again and keep it. The only way to do that is to wear it.
I really do love the color and the details. And something about its slightly billowy shape (as I've remarked before, it looks an awful lot like a maternity shirt, but does not seem actually to be a maternity shirt) makes it work as a layer over a swingy dress, adding interest without (I think) too much straight up-and-down boxiness. Its own swing kind of hints that there's a shape underneath.
Thought I'd give the clogs a rest today, too, and wear these strappy Crocs thong sandals. My husband likes them, for one thing. For another, I like the soft contrast that their bronzy color creates with my dark hemline. This outfit is very simple, and it doesn't particularly highlight my body, but what I like about it is the way that every element brings some interest, without competing with the others. The vibe, again, is like that arty teacher whose classroom people want to hang out in. That's sort of what I go for, especially in these button-shirt-layer outfits. I can't explain why exactly that's the vibe I envision, but it is one I have observed in women whose aesthetic I find pleasing.
Here's the close-up color photo for the day --- the photo, that is, that purports to show how I look in these colors:
This is my bare face in my study window, in morning light (but without direct sun). There's a lamp on to my left, behind me, but no lamplight shining on my face. I try to go for natural light as much as I can --- I've been taking my full-length mirror shots with all the bathroom lights off, just the light from the window to illuminate things. I do have to edit them to up the light just a little, so that colors show more clearly, but I'm not using any filters, and there's no artificial light. That's the best I can do to make these images show up accurately.
Anyway, no makeup here, which should surprise no one who has been reading here. I just cannot be bothered. I depend on the colors I'm wearing to give my face color. This color feels like a definite win, pretty much every time I put it on, the right saturation, the right intensity, the right balance of blue and green. It's really a best color --- not the one and only best color that I could possibly wear, but one of them for sure.
That's why natural-light selfies like this are helpful, and I would encourage anyone to make a quick close-up a part of her daily routine. You get desensitized to having your picture taken, which is good. It's good to practice looking good in pictures: smiling (or at least not looking as though you're embarrassed to be alive), finding an angle that shows your face to its greatest advantage, making sure the natural light is falling on you so that you're really illuminated.
Getting used to your own face is a great thing, because there you will find things to love about yourself, if you look with a dispassionate but kindly eye (as I hope you'd always look at other people). You can love your eyes. You can love your skin tone. You can love your hair (even if it drives you crazy --- you can love the play of colors between your eyes, your cheeks, your lips, and your hair).
And you can see how the colors you wear either do or do not make the most of what's there. This obviously will be different for different people. I look like Chalk Woman in black. You might look dramatic and stunning, with black as an element in your whole high-contrast makeup. I can wear very pinky pinks. Those same colors might be at war with your red hair, or your apricot skin --- though there are shades of pink you could probably wear.
You can pay to have your colors done --- or, for free, you can keep a running photo diary of the colors you wear. This will show you how on the money your color instincts probably are. Most of us kind of know when we feel glowing and beautiful. We also kind of know when we don't. But having a photographic record will show us with greater accuracy where we get it right and where, maybe, we don't.
ETA: When in doubt, pay close attention to the colors of your own body. You can always wear your eye color (and you can wear whites that align with the whites of your eyes, whether those are bright-white or more ivory). You can always wear your natural lip color. You can wear your natural hair color. And so on.
And if we don't get it right: well, the world does not end. I still have to wear black sometimes, and I might look as though I were dying of it, but I assure you that I never really am. Looking back over several years of selfies, I see outfits that I wish I hadn't thought of, and colors that aren't doing me major favors --- but also a surprising number of wins. Sometimes even a not-great overall outfit featured a fantastic color next to my face. Sometimes a theoretically great outfit came across as meh, because the color next to my face wasn't so great. And again, in none of these instances did the world end. Looking back over the photos teaches me a few things that maybe I wasn't learning too consciously in the moment, and I think I'm better now than I was three or four years ago at putting my clothes on, which is the whole point. I wanted to get better, and I have, and a large part of why I have is that I took photos every day and kept them for future reference.
So I don't think I'll spam you again today with tons of colors-next-to-my-face photos, but I'd really encourage you, if this is an area of struggle, to try to make a habit of selfies. Imagine you're taking a professional headshot, where you want to look your best. Take several, trying different expressions/levels of smile. Try to look friendly, alert, interested in whatever is in front of you (even when it's your own hand holding your phone). Imagine you're leaning across a table to talk to a friend you really love --- you're not beaming like a maniac, probably, but your whole facial disposition is open, receptive, loving, friendly, smiling.
There are also things I think help with full-length outfit photos, though I've probably belabored that a lot more already. Good posture, standing up straight and as gracefully as you can, playing the part of someone who is at home in her body and feels beautiful, even if that's not really how you feel. Making sure you get your whole outfit in the frame --- it's not really helpful to you, in hindsight, just to see the upper half of your body. You really need to see the whole thing to understand how the proportions are working, and how your shoes are speaking to the rest of your clothes.
Your outfit is a whole, from the top of your head to the bottoms of your feet. I know that sometimes I cut my head off in selfies, mostly because my hair is wet and really not contributing anything to the outfit, and I don't want to be distracted by that. But it's far more helpful to me, especially in hindsight, to look at my hair as part of the whole composition that I've put together. In the past I've really neglected both hair and shoes as elements in that composition, and when outfits have gone wrong, often enough it's because either my hair or my shoes (or sometimes both) are off in some way.
In the full-length photo above, for example, my hair wasn't totally dry, but I had washed it, worked some mousse in to style, and diffused it mostly dry, so that I could see how it was going to look before I left the house. The fullness and wave are, to me, part of the whole outfit composition, drawing the eye up, balancing out the fullness of my swing dress and of my pear-shaped body. I can't make my shoulders wider, but I can have fullness in my hair (which fortunately provides that pretty naturally --- all I have to do is give it some definition). Not that I would not wear my hair up, with the same outfit, but it's good to know how that different shape would alter the balance of the composition.
I'm making it sound as though I stress about these things a whole lot more than I do. I promise you that I'm thinking about them more in writing it all out, just now, than I do in the course of an ordinary day. I do not spend tons of time getting dressed. I do not spend tons of time on my hair. I want to spend my life living it, not getting ready for it. The small habits I've developed do not occupy many minutes --- what does take time is writing about them (but I seem to like doing that . . .).
As always, when I think about vanity, as a personal vice, I think about how sin tends to work in our lives: as an imprisonment, a bondage, a diminution of our flourishing that is inimical to the work of grace. In other words, I really don't think the problem is that we love ourselves too much. I think it's that we love ourselves too little, and that that lack of self-charity generates anxiety that truly does keep us in chains. In other words, the roots of our most abiding sins are not our badness, but the wounds we bear as a result of the Fall, and of living in a world with other wounded people. Paradoxically, I think we love God more and live more fully in his light when we stop beating ourselves up and learn to love what he has made.
And as always, the stuff I write about on this blog is oriented toward that. I want to see myself clearly, with charity, and this blog documents my progress toward that loving self-clarity. I don't want to be a narcissist. I don't want you to be a narcissist. I want you to stop hating yourself, because that way is the way to prison, and start loving yourself and finding yourself beautiful, because that way is the way to see with the eyes of God.
Today's Gospel is the passage on being salt in the world; salt is only excellent, and rightly ordered, when it is most itself, that is, salty. As Father remarked in his homily at Mass, we are most rightly ourselves when our whole disposition is oriented toward being truly ourselves, as excellently as we can, according to our state in life. It's easy to spiritualize that idea, but honestly: our bodies, our faces, our physical selves are utterly integrated into who we are. We can't be in this life without them. Therefore we should treat ourselves, our spiritual-physical-complex selves, with honor, reverence, and love --- and, you know, not be afraid to take the daily selfie, because that can truly help us be at home in the gift of our bodies.
By the way, what I'm wearing was kind of my outfit plan. I think I'd planned to wear my kimono, but the shirt called to me instead, and that's fine. Plans are there to fall back on, but they're not a wagon you're harnessed to.
ALSO:
*Not that I really had to try to fulfill the #ditchthepantschallenge for July, but I did do that. Now what I need to try to do is wear my one pair of trousers, the pink linen wide-leg cropped trousers I bought back in the spring. Maybe for August I'll make a point of wearing them once a week. We shall see . . .
*I've sold one pair of Birkenstocks that I'd wanted to sell! Birk Balis going out to a new home today! I have loved those shoes, and they're so cute, but a 40 in that shoe has proved to be a little too big and loose, and I wear my size 39 Mayaris a lot more. Now if I can get the rest of these shoes out the door: my Birk hiking boots, my Birk Madeiras, and the Keens Mary Janes I bought last year with high hopes, but that didn't work for my feet. Two new-to-me pairs of Mary Janes incoming, both with much wider toe boxes --- I have high hopes yet again, but possibly (I hope I hope) those hopes are more realistic.
Here's my Poshmark closet, if anyone would like a look. A few other things for sale as well.
AFTERNOON UPDATE:
Still tired --- probably the heat, but boy, do I ever feel like not doing anything.
I have, however, been doing a little closet cull, to start the month. While I'm selling shoes, I think I'm going to sell two more pairs of Xero shoes that aren't really getting enough love, especially now that I have, for example, my Mesa trail runners.
Since I acquired the Mesas, I don't wear my Xero Colorado sandals much at all, and someone else might benefit from them.
AND I think I'm going to part with my red Cassie Mary Janes. I just find myself not wearing them. If I want to wear red, I typically want to wear a skirt or cardigan. I also find that I don't wear these shoes in the winter, when I'd typically want to wear closed-toe shoes. They're light and summery --- but in the heat, I want to wear sandals. I've put them on several times, then taken them off again without wearing them, and that, I think, should tell me something.
I think I'll get far more wear out of the leather Mary Jane shoes I've bought, which will be perfect for the winter, than I do these. So with some reluctance, because I have loved them, today I washed the insoles and started cleaning them up to sell. They are in great shape, just needed some deodorizing and disinfecting to make them fresh for the next person.
So . . . I don't know who out there wears a size 9, I have all these shoes to offer! Two pairs of Birkenstocks with much wear left! The Jackson hiking boots are immaculate inside, and just have some wear on the leather uppers, because I've worn them for hiking in rough conditions. The soles are in perfect shape, like new.
The Madeiras are worn but clean and serviceable, and for $20 or best offer, somebody could enjoy them for a long time. They're leather, so definitely worth having Birkenstock refurbish them when the time comes --- and really, that will be a long time. The cork insole is covered by a rubber outer sole, so there's none of the usual disintegration you start to get with much-worn Birks.
Those, with the Keens Mary Janes (also in very good shape) are up in the shop already. The Xeros are coming. Tell your friends who wear a size 9 to come check these out!
(OK, OK, truly, I'm not normally selling things here, and that's not what this blog is about. It just happens to be what I am doing this afternoon: trying to clean my closet and get good things into new homes with people who'll appreciate wearing them and keep them out of the landfill that much longer).
Otherwise, I'm just lying around on the porch swing, tinkering with a poem revision and thinking about turning 60 in November. Here we are in August --- only three full months and a handful of days to go before I turn that corner. It feels significant, a whole new decade. It's been ten years since I last had one of those. I don't know that we'll do anything particularly to celebrate --- I always get taken for a lovely dinner, and my husband gives me whimsical gifts, and I could not ask for a better celebration.
But I am thinking about marking the turn for myself. I'm thinking about clothes and shoes and things even more than usual because --- at least in part, I think --- I'm thinking about the kind of old lady I want to be. How do I want to look and be? What's my most consistent vibe? Who am I, really? And how does that essential am-ness manifest itself, like a sacrament, outwardly?
This is the question. And I find that all these pictures I've been taking of myself since 2020 give me some good hints. At least, I can go, Not that! But maybe that!
I do also ask myself why it matters. Am I not the same person I've always been? The answer is yes, of course --- but I don't look the same. I'm going to continue not to look the same. And I don't know what to think about it all, except that I want some shape to inhabit, where I feel at home. Like a turtle, but maybe less hardened, and definitely cuter.
For the moment, anyway, funky Mary Janes feel like the key to it all. But so does not having a number of pairs of shoes that I don't wear. I want to be the kind of old lady who wears the clothes she has, and doesn't have clothes she doesn't wear (except maybe for a fancy dress or two held in reserve, because you never know, and one or two fancy dresses will not take up much space).