ANOTHER WEEK OF QUARANTINE

(MY NEW TEE-SHIRT)

On Monday after dinner I put on the tee-shirt that I sleep in and didn’t take it off until Wednesday morning. Is that a sign of something bad? I didn’t feel depressed  — merely, disengaged. Now I’m worried. 

Isolation has unlocked a whiplash return to “pre-adult” behavior. First to go: bras. Next, make-up. No hair cut in nearly three months. No toenail polish and I’m biting my finger nails again.

I slouch over my desk. I rest elbows on the table except that I’m short and my elbows don’t reach.  Thank god tomorrow is Memorial Day. It’s O.K. to wear white shoes without breaking any rules — if I had white shoes — if I needed to coordinate shoes with an outfit — which I don’t. 

Sleep tee-shirts don’t need matching shoes.

Rebecca Solnit in her new memoir “Recollections of My Nonexistence” writes about her years in San Francisco. As a young adult in the 1980’s, she soaked up the unique atmosphere of a city entwined with gay culture, one where people lived in public more than any time since. 

A friend of hers, a young painter, in stage 4 lung cancer, phoned an art gallery director every morning and asked “what are you wearing?” The gallery director was gay, proud and elegant with a vast wardrobe that Solnit describes as “statements that had wit, wryness and glamour.” Ed would describe that day’s splendor and then the patient would say ‘Thank you. I feel so much better.” And hang up.

Solnit writes:  I came to recognize that… looking amazing is usually thought of as a mildly despicable self-glorification or a strategy to access sex, (but)  it can be a gift to the people around you, a sort of public art and a celebration, and, with wardrobes like Ed’s, even a kind of wit and commentary.

Solnit goes on to say that who you are, what you do, what you wear and say matters to people around you in ways rarely direct or measurable — “that how you live can be a gift to others.”

Isn’t that the best?  Do you know someone whose unique style makes you smile — or sometimes raise eyebrows (before you smile!)? What better gift? Have you ever told them?

Add them to your gratitude list.
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We bent the isolation rules slightly Saturday night. There were only six of us to dinner — outside —  celebrating a friend’s birthday.  Public life! How I miss it! I wore my new tee-shirt with the silver metallic on front. At first, I wondered if it was appropriate for an outdoor picnic, a bit over-the-top for a bonfire. Then I thought “Fuck it!  It’s a birthday party and who knows how many more of those any of us have coming?”