Thursday, April 14, 2011

Grooming and Age 1001:6


I wrestled with the Exercise Devil this morning, after checking my email, Facebook, cell phone, and cats. All of those diversons except the cats entailed sitting down, and as we all know spending more than 50% of the day sitting down is an independent risk factor of heart attacks. (Didn’t know? Get wired, baby, it’s a breaking claim…) So I beat down the Devil, yet again, and prepared to walk.

I prepare for walks as quickly as possible, because I am easily distracted by the callings of a thousand small voices as I head towards a goal. This applies to all aspects of my life. I am random and abstract, and carry the torch for all of us who defy linear and concrete.  A little concrete is good.

I was distracted from my goal of leaving the house by the prerequisite act of dressing for 50 degree weather. The transition to above-freezing weather has been recent and my wardrobe is still in flux. It has been in flux for years. I rummaged around my tiny unkempt coat closet and found an ugly knit earband, which serves to keep my ears warm, and deflects the need to fix my hair by substituting a windblown and efficient look. I wrestled (love wrestling) with the urge to tuck my jammyshirt into the knit exercise pants I had slept in, thereby eliminating unnecessary other risk-taking excursions through the house for regular clothes that would look much better if I opted to get a coffee and do some more internet at the publicly public Bean Coffee House. This decision was worked out with the compromise to pull over the jammy shirt a crocheted brown vest, which I invented a few months ago sans pattern, and do not wear out into public, but which is nice and long and very warm. If it showed through my jacket, it would look like regular clothes.

The vest was lying in the basket where I keep potential crochet projects. The nice earwarmer I had started in crocheted ribbing a few months ago was also lying there and looking up at me, so I picked it up. It only needed another 20 rows to go to be a much nicer earwarmer than the one I was wearing, so I gave it a good 5 minutes before admitting I’d be longer finishing it than taking a walk in the ugly earwarmer.

I returned the fine but unfinished earwarmer to the basket, and as I turned to go opened the blinds covering one of the cats’ favorite viewing windows, which faces an active bird feeder and the unfriendly neighbors, both of which provide amusement for mes chattes. Completing my 360, my view fell upon my guitar, Betsy, who never complains and has a beautiful voice. I wanted to hold her and stroke her and sing just one song before I took off on my journey to the end of time and the known world. Twenty minutes later, I fished out my cleanest looking of 2 pairs of tennis shoes and put them on. At last, the door was before me and the dirty dishes behind me. Wait, teeth—I brushed them in case I got run over in the street. I don’t expect my underwear to get knocked off in the event of a pedestrian/car faux pas, but my teeth are out there.

Then I walked. I walked and walked and my soul was lifted and I avoided the coffee house and the whole ugly fashionista disasta thing. But the effort to not frighten the residents on the street led me to speculate on walker fashion.

A few days earlier on a walk, as I was skirting the edge of the business district on my way back home, I had walked up behind a woman. I ventured to categorize her a Little Old Lady as I approached, for two reasons. One, she was wearing a simple Gumball Pink carcoat which fell straight and solid from her short shoulders to mid-thigh, no fuss. I haven’t seen what I would classify ‘carcoats’ for a long long while, and the general cut is not current fashion, although I consider it classic. “Classic” means “as old as me but still highly functional.” She looked comfortably warm as she walked slowly but steadily down the walk ahead of me.

My second reason for categorizing the woman Little Old Lady was that her thinning, short gray hair, no traces of a vanity dye job marring it, had a bald patch dead center back. I dread someday developing a bald spot. We define good grooming and sex appeal by hair, although of course sexuality is a conglomerate of health, vigor, and disposable income as well as hair. At least men who lose their hair can claim a testosterone overload, since hair loss is associated with testosterone rather than estrogen. Or, so it was strongly suggested in the TV series starring a bald Telly Savalas as Kojak.

I passed my new Best Distracting Thought on the right, and said gently towards her ear, “Nice day for a walk, huh?” to avoid frightening her as my younger, longer legs overtook her. She jumped only a little, and responded with a strong--nay resounding-- “Yes it is.” And as I passed her, I loved her for her Gumball Pink carcoat, her honest bald spot, and her strong voice. She goes on my list of Future Me Models.

Today, overcoming the Devil on numerous levels and being a creature of habit, I was walking along the same stretch of homeward-bound sidewalk. I heard the whisper of footsteps behind me, and felt a rush of wind on my right. A woman who looked about 15 years younger than me was jogging by, and didn’t give up so much as a glance. She looked serious. She had on a nice French Blue stretch exercise jacket, no cuffs, straight and uncomplicated to her hip. She wore black knit jogging pants, a black knit cap with hair neatly tucked under, and clean white tennis shoes with, I thought, a patch of French Blue in their design. I noted that she was pear-shaped, with a butt too big for her knit pants. 

Being personally given to signs and symbols and interpretation, I was struck with a sense of the Random Abstract Universe in this incident. Just a few days earlier, there I was condescending about a Little Old Lady on the hoof.  Then voila a few days later I get passed on the same right side, at the same place, by a younger woman in the height of jogger fashion, who undoubtedly noted my Molson Muscle and my ageing sweatsuit hoodie. Whoa.  But these are the kinds of visions I have; I don't get the dream-picture kind. My signal moments are all a waking snapshot, with patterns ringing bells in a continuous non-verbal loop. My belief is that visions are available to all of us if we care to see them. I care.

I cannot say in words what the vision meant. I followed and passed an older woman, noting especially her hair and coat. A few days later, a younger woman passed me, and I noted her hair and coat. I often feel sandwiched in time and thought between my mother and my daughter: somewhere in the middle, observing the coming and going of womanhood and life. It is not a bad thing, nor a good thing. It just is. 

I expect to meet me on the street anyday now. Its random and abstract, and I love it dearly.





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