(no subject)
I’m forever lending psychological, emotional, and symbolic implications to stylistic decisions. My low cut shirts aren’t Just cleavage exposing garments, they represent both a perversion of and a throwback to the days of early high school, when hapless naiveté led to my persistent wearing of inappropriately revealing attire. My leather boots are an implicit “fuck you” to the world, if tinged with some slight irony, in light of the fact that the majority of the paltry sum of “action” in my young life has taken place in the company of said boots. And without question my stubborn insistence on Skirts All Winter Long, which become my mantra, and which I observe the way some people do Lent, reflects upon my character in no small way. In fact, I’ve been paralyzed by indecision this semester, regarding whether I ought cut my hair- when Madelynn mocked the amount of emotional energy and general frustration that I’d invested in this question, I tried to explain to her why it mattered so much. Long hair means high school, I explained. It means innocence, it means youth, it means a stunning lack of both self-knowledge and true Cynicism. Short hair means college, pretensions at “maturity”, a question towards adulthood, and awareness of being more “grown-up”, or at least of trying to be. How am I meant to select which of those selves is the more appealing? (I still haven’t cut my hair- not because I’ve decided not to, but simply because I’m physically incapable of deciding. I might shave my head, just to be done with it :P )
So the fact that I’ve spent most of winter break encased in a jean jacket (gifted by my sister, purveyor of fashion advice and creative abuse) probably is Significant. it’s a deliciously straightforward symbol of an attempt to don a clock of invulnerability, wrap myself in a layer of protection from the world, etc. Like my dreams, which tend to need no more than 30 seconds of consideration in order to be well understood, the “meaning” vested in my clothing choices does tend towards the rather transparent and superficial. But.. I have developed the sporadic ability to cheat my own neurotic subconscious; I can sometimes consciously recognize, mid-dream, that I’m asleep, and alter the landscape of my night-time world while still allowing my unconsciousness to retain a semblance of its former dictatorship. That’s my plan for this semester, to sneak my psyche into positions of relative vulnerability, while assuring it, through physical representations of security, like the jean jacket, that it remains well-guarded. Maybe I’ll even go so far as to (gasp) involve myself in some activities, or speak occasionally in classes.
Or maybe I’m just talking out of my ass. And either way, it seems someone ought give me some children to bear, a household to run, or at least a bit of hard manual labor to perform- at any other time in history wasting my precious minutes in contemplation of fashion related self-deception would have been entirely absurd, instead of only mostly so.
So the fact that I’ve spent most of winter break encased in a jean jacket (gifted by my sister, purveyor of fashion advice and creative abuse) probably is Significant. it’s a deliciously straightforward symbol of an attempt to don a clock of invulnerability, wrap myself in a layer of protection from the world, etc. Like my dreams, which tend to need no more than 30 seconds of consideration in order to be well understood, the “meaning” vested in my clothing choices does tend towards the rather transparent and superficial. But.. I have developed the sporadic ability to cheat my own neurotic subconscious; I can sometimes consciously recognize, mid-dream, that I’m asleep, and alter the landscape of my night-time world while still allowing my unconsciousness to retain a semblance of its former dictatorship. That’s my plan for this semester, to sneak my psyche into positions of relative vulnerability, while assuring it, through physical representations of security, like the jean jacket, that it remains well-guarded. Maybe I’ll even go so far as to (gasp) involve myself in some activities, or speak occasionally in classes.
Or maybe I’m just talking out of my ass. And either way, it seems someone ought give me some children to bear, a household to run, or at least a bit of hard manual labor to perform- at any other time in history wasting my precious minutes in contemplation of fashion related self-deception would have been entirely absurd, instead of only mostly so.