I’m getting my first AstraZeneca vaccine shot later this morning, and it’s got me thinking about life after lockdown. While we still have a long way to go, people are already making all sorts of predictions about what we’ll be wearing. (If this article and this one are any indication, get ready for a lot of sacks!)
Also, here’s a great comic by the inimitable Emily Flake on what post-pandemic life might be like for those of us who’ve gotten weird.
You’ve gotten weird, right? Just a little? Not as weird as, say, everybody else in your circle, of course, but you’ll admit that this past year has messed with your sense of self and your ability to deal with others? I hope so, because that would make you my kind of people.
Now the question is whether to let our weird selves pick our clothes. I’m still on a shopping fast, but I’ve been clicking on more fashion ads lately. And everything that has caught my eye is a little different from what I’d normally go for. My eyes are starved for interesting colour combinations, shapes and textures.
It doesn’t help that I’ve also been watching the Alexander McQueen documentary and now dream of spinning on a turntable while being spray-painted by fashion robots.
Alas, knowing me, I won’t have the guts to wear anything truly strange when things have finally opened up again—but I will make up for it with plenty of weird behaviour, I’m sure.
This poem will be me:
You Mean You Don’t Weep at the Nail Salon?
by Elizabeth Acevedo
it’s the being alone, i think, the emails but not voices. dominicans be funny, the way we love to touch — every greeting a cheek kiss, a shoulder clap, a loud.it gots to be my period, the bloating, the insurance commercial where the husband comes home after being deployed, the last of the gouda gone, the rejection letter, the acceptance letter, the empty inbox.
a dream, these days. to work at home is a privilege, i remind myself.
spend the whole fucking day flirting with screens. window, tv, computer, phone: eyes & eyes & eyes. the keys clicking, the ding of the microwave, the broadway soundtrack i share wine with in the evenings.
these are the answers, you feel me? & the impetus. the why. of when the manicurist holds my hand, making my nails a lilliputian abstract,
i close my fingers around hers, disrupting the polish, too tight i know then, too tight to hold a stranger, but she squeezes back & doesn’t let go & so finally i can.
:) Teresa
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