Clothes
I'm unkempt. And shabby. I'm not proud of my closet. What will it take to fix it? There's a lot of cruft and I can't let go. I have this ideal of five sweaters, five shirts, five pants, and they all dangle loosely. There's a mass in my closet. There's a history in my closet I can't let go. The pieces are fashionable by themselves but its so mismatched. I want to become a unit. Middle seam.
I'm so impressed by my coworker's sense of fashion. I see the quality in fashion in strangers but its starting to become a blur. I'm overwhelmed by the morning people. I see a stranger wearing the right cut and the right color and the right texture and it sets in my memory. There's no room for originality here.
We wrap ourselves in the shed. We become closer to the perfect, the inert, the unchanging.
I want to move on from the horizontal stripes to the middle seam. I've become obsessed with the middle seam and symmetry. I want my closet to be artful and unique. I want to blend into the crowd. I want to be clean. I want to smell good.
I want to pull myself out of the swamp of negative emotion, I don't want every morning to be this slog, I don't want every day to be this slog of waiting
First, I dress for my anonymous city friends in the dead early morning. All the people fit neatly in each seat. We glance at each other on the subway; their judgement keeps me on my toes. Who would I be if I didn't care what she, the lady with half closed eyes, thought of my outfit? I'd ask her for tips, but like I said, she's half asleep. The roar of the wide open plain, framed by a beveled windowpane isn't enough to shake her from her reverie. I gas myself up and pretend my outfit would but I've already passed her, to my coveted seat, to daydream about tomorrow's office girlycore outfit, to remember the things that I've forgotten at home.
She's wearing a time capsule of last decade and I'm grateful that things don't die that easily
Secondly, I dress for my coworker's nervous sensibility, something conservative, to fit in, you know? and to imagine myself leaning back in the office chair, looking up, at the passerby. But it also needs to be spunky to cheer myself up, in the dusty corridors and beige walls.
I used to feel the sacredness from the branding. A piece of clothing is a piece that's rare to me; I'd wear the clearance section with pride and a sense that my clothes were special. Not that I was poor; it's just that the weight of the cloth was heavy.
I buy clothes from an impression. I see you at a glance, and get impressed by your swagger. Then, I'll be like you. Thank you for the inspiration. I'm quite basic you know. I just have funny words. I don't have taste. I never wear basics though
Now I have the itch for something new, of something sacred.
I dress for you. I dress for the day I'll meet you again, a swampy cloudy day. And I'll wear something swampy and cloudy, though I don't know how you'll feel about it. You're so inflexible and dry, but your foundation is so strong. I want to cure your hardscrabble life.
Is it true that you have to spend two hours in the shower every day to become a pretty girl?