197. “Life, friends, is boring,” vs “The glories of the world struck me, made me aria, once.”
November 7th, 2009 § 3 Comments
It’s seventy degrees out! I need to get my poontang outside. I’m so grateful for this sunshine, especially knowing that I have five solid months of winter ahead of me. I’m talking about days when I’m giddy if the weather forecasts highs in the single digits. This isn’t the outfit I wore today to dilly dally in the sun today, but I wanted to post my fixation with white dresses in the form of this perfect cotton dress from Permanent Vacation (there is a very chill picture of a nice horse on their website right now.) Here’s another dress I wore a few weeks ago when it was in the 70s.
I think I look angry because sometimes, I’m angry! I got the dress from my favorite vintage thrift store in San Francisco. Sometimes, I have dreams that someone placed a burrito with extra guacamole and extra spicy salsa from Mariachi’s Tacqueria in San Francisco and also four heaping tacos with extra cilantro from the outdoor taco stand on 24th and Treat Street that no longer exists, and in the dream I keep trying to shove the burrito into my mouth, but because dreams are assholes, I never get to taste a single bite, and sometimes in my dream I go into my favorite thrift store in San Francisco and I see racks and racks of beautiful white sundresses and I try to pull a dress off the hanger but the dress falls to the floor or it won’t budge or whatever, but no matter what, I can’t seem to get the dress into my hands. Anyway, that’s how much I love the tacos and vintage dresses in San Francisco. All of this is to say this white dress is from the vintage store of my dreams, and it ties in the back and has really pretty embroidery on the bust. Here’s a close-up:
All of this white makes me think of John Berryman‘s pessimism (or is it just flip optimism) and the line, “It was wet & white & swift and where I am/ we don’t know. It was dark and then/ it isn’t.”
Or how about, from Dreamsong 14:
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatedly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have noInner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
Whenever I read that poem, I always think of the Le Tigre song, “The The Empty.” I remember being so moved by that song when I first heard it. I probably listened to it twenty times a day for half a year. There’s a lovely interview with Kathleen Hanna in Index Magazine where she talks a bit about the impulse behind the song lyrics:
I’ll watch Adam Sandler movies, I’m not above it. But at the same time, I couldn’t get into it. I felt like I had no sense of humor. And I didn’t even see American Beauty, because I knew it was going to be about this middle-aged man and this woman who, because she has a career, she’s like cutting off his penis, and therefore he is forced to have fantasies about this 16-year-old girl. It was the same with Election. I kind of like Reese Witherspoon, and she played a really interesting character who’s this control-freak, perfectionist person, but then it was overlaid with all these adult men fantasizing about adolescent girls. And I was like, it’s the same in every fucking movie. The fact that people like this stuff makes me feel really alienated, so I don’t feel like a part of popular culture ever. In our song “The The Empty,” that was the point — “I went to your comedy club and I didn’t laugh at any of your jokes” — feeling that sense of alienation and thinking we have to make something that we think is funny.
Thankfully, right now my heart is pretty full. I’m really excited about the items I just posted to my Etsy store, and also the items I’m working on uploading today. These two long-sleeved dresses are my favorite right now:
Crazy beautiful bell-sleeved velvet burnout cocktail dress from the 60s/70s.
Crazy cute peter pan collar long-sleeved plaid dress (to open presents in!)
The 30s/40s blue silk dress I showed you guys earlier this week.
My favorite skirt this week. And also a pink ruffle shirt and mustard cardigan that I couldn’t help wearing out just once (to buy groceries!)
And guess what else has been at the source of my full heart? I have a new model for my vintage store! She’s one of my best friends, and one of the finest, most supremely talented writers I know. The cherry on top of my awesome blossom flotsom sundae? My vintage dresses love her so much. The evidence:
Lipstick red 80′s dress. I’m pretty sure Kelly Taylor wore something like this at some point in the first season.
I made her wear all of my flirtiest cocktail dress. Here’s the backside of an off-the-shoulders, 80′s lace cocktail dress!
This lace dress and all the other dresses are available at my Etsy store: Unhappybarber’s Vintage
I’ll try to show less of my mug and more of hers as I keep adding things to the store. I’m bursting at my badly thought out metaphorical seams to show you the rest of the photos, but I’ll try to restrain myself and only give you this sneaky taste, for now, of my beautiful friend and the clothes she modeled for me.
Also, if you are in a sunny place (internal or external,) you’d be a fool not to listen to the Toots and the Maytals.
As Meggy would say: You’re welcome.
Love, Jenny
I always love the randomness of your posts, and your outfits are so cute. That Permanent Vacation dress, oh dear!!
And the Kathleen Hanna quote is wonderful. I wish I would have been cool enough in high school to have known about her . . . That quote would have made me feel so much less like an outsider!
Rhiannon! Thank you so much–for some reason I just can’t think linearly and I end up writing about every single spiderweb of thought in my head. In high school, I listened to the most embarrassing music (still do!) and I wish I had better idols back in those days (like KH!)
I think I first heard about Permanent Vacation through your blog, and I fainted with envy over all of the dresses…and ended up ordering a dress from a mildly sketchy Swedish website. So THANK YOU for introducing me to them.
åh i love this blog