Charm School

To be a hostess one must absolutely secrete elegance, be graceful, articulate and demurely accessorized, save for one garish piece that you picked up, say, in Africa. She should be able to select a wine and signature cocktail appropriate to the season and event. She should be equally astute at crafting a balanced cheese board and delegating responsibility to caterers and servers. Dancing, and more importantly, encouraging one's more timorous guests to dance is a highly valuable skill. Knowledge of flowers, stationary, and china is requisite. A quick wit, to highlight one's limited (not nonexistent) familiarity with myriad interesting topics (no religion! no politics!) will keep conversation as light and ephemeral as a pixie's summer couplings. Do not suffer bores or drunks; they must be deftly ignored until they remove themselves of their own volition. One's husband ought to be handsomely attired, gracious, but terse, so that one might say of him "Oh, _______ isn't really one for parties!" and benignly chasten his pragmatic preference for solitude. Children should be be dressed as absolute angels, make an adorable appearance within the first hour and then be sent with nanny scampering off to bed and better times in Sleepy Shire. A hostess must practice a smile that says "Welcome All, to this magical evening" and one that says "Goodnight". She is actress, director, and producer of the most marvelous height of human society: a soiree that makes one forget, for a time, impending, indiscriminate death.

Half Sick of Shadows

The Lady of Shalott
William Holman Hunt
The Wadsworth Atheneum
Hartford, CT













Inspired by an assignment for my Spanish class, I have decided to use my considerably more well developed English skills to unpack one of my favorite paintings.

In this painting the Lady is going mad or perhaps being murdered by her fate. She dominates the frame, wild haired, body contrapposto. Is she fighting the current that seeks to undo her or is she relaxing her posture, as a way of releasing herself to the inevitability? Is this a passive or aggressive pose?

Her notions strewn all over the room, chaotic. She is being bound by her own thread. We are witness to this fever storm as it is happening. It could all unfold as we like it.

Her other, sumptuous things, Japanese slippers, a silver tea service of a pasha or his odalisque are still points which serve to offset or even mock the whirling dervish of her skirts.

The masculine figures of antiquity and the feminine supplicant that adorn the walls of her room appear to be fighting for her life and praying for her eternal soul/salvation respectively.

Behind the woman a window. Through it, a knight on horseback and a river winding its way to a faded perspective horizon. Outside, the color is washed out, pale yellow green. The more you look, the less you see of that dreamy reality.

Perhaps this was how it was for her, this artist. What were her tools? The bobbins and baubles we see, but also a loom, a mirror, these are assumed, we must use ouu other knowledge and imagination to bring those items into the microcosm of her workaday existence.

She is vivid. She is barefoot. The sky is bright blue above her curls. She is dancing against death.

.........................................................................................................................................................................

Read the Tennyson poem.

Not To Fear

We are getting married. Next October. It´s perfect, really. I love the idea of an October wedding. And now we have a year to acquaint ourselves better with the places and people of the Yucatan, to settle into a home, and plan a wedding there, on the beach, which is what we both want. Planning a wedding should take some time, but not all of it. I want it to be a glorious day. And now we can design a many days and nights event in which we proclaim and affirm our love and then drink copious amounts of tequila.

We will have been engaged for two years. Which I think is elegant. We spent this year in flux, and there were some trying times. We are closer than ever now and I look forward to evolving with Malcolm more this year. When we are joined in matrimony it is going to evince our devotion and unique friendship. It is going to be a still point in turning time. And a significant occassion will be made more so because of our diligence and meditation.

Not This Year, Part Deux

Where was I?

When we knew for sure we would be in Mexico for February we reserved in our minds Feb 17 as the date of our nuptials. Our friends and family could escape winter and would all finally meet at our new home on the beach. Unfortunately that was all we could do, having never been here, knowing no one, we took a leap of faith, and planned to plan a wedding ceremony and reception upon arrival.

And then our lived became blissfully complicated. The newness and strangeness Merida, our foreignness, experienced for the first time, a language barrier, all conspired to keep us busy. Even though we found a house we love almost immediately, we are still unable to move forward. We are prisoners of beauracracy, as we wait in our furnished apartment for ejido paperwork fromt he government.

from wikipedia: The ejido system is a process whereby the government promotes the use of communal land shared by the people of the community. This use of community land was a common practice during the time of Aztec rule in Mexico.
It was not until the colonization of Mexico by the Spanish and other European settlers that this practice seemed to disappear and be replaced by the encomienda system. The encomienda system was abolished by the Constitution of 1917, with the promise of restoring the ejido system. This, however, did not happen until Lázaro Cárdenas became president in 1934. The purpose of restoring the ejido system was to give land back to the people and provide more food for the community. Under the ejido system, the land is owned by the government and is supported by a national bank.

We´ll finish this up tomorrow, okay Chickens?

Not Bridal This Year

Sorry for my absence, chickens. I have been a little busy not planning our wedding.

It´s like this. When we got engaged last September we did not set a date. I liked the idea of a long engagement. I think it´s romantic and sort of classic too. I wanted to feel engaged. I wanted to discover what that means.

We did discuss a tentative date: Feb 14, 2007. We wanted to put personality back into Valentine´s day.

Fun Fact: Did you know that ages ago this holiday was a Roman orgy-in-the-woods holiday? Called Lupercalia, it commemorated the founding of Rome by Remus and Romulus who were suckled by a wolf mother. Yessir. Patricians and plebians alike chose name cards to decide with whom to play ¨find the gladiator¨. Thus, valentine cards. All true.

I digress.

Not Bridal, But Not a Feminist

Such a dirty word, so charged. I am not afraid of being one, I just am not sure this word has any real relevance or power in the twenty-first century. Kind of like libertine. Any man you know offended by being called a libertine these days? It´s a term on its way to obsolescence. And I´m not sure that´s a good thing. There are definitely too many women out there sabotaging the strides that were made during the course of the last century, from suffragettes to senators. We at Not Bridal are pro-choice. We are also pro-family and pro-progressive family. We are pro-working mom and stay-at-home mom. Personally, we are also pro-nanny. Old nannies with snaggle teeth and warts. But we don´t judge. Well, we judge, but about pettier, less political issues. Like your shoes. They suck. Change them.

This was a long-winded way of starting to say that I like being domestic. As I get older and due to my particular situation, in which, currently, my finace and I have assumed sort of traditional social roles. I like food shopping. I like using the term "the household budget". I like presenting him with dinner, looking sort of proud and sheepish. Please, don´t misunderstand, I am not a¨serve your man, crunchy conservative, promise keeper, betty crocker, back-to-the-kitchen" kind of woman. I would work. Sometimes I like working outside of the home. And I expect, at some point, I will. Because that´s the kind of model we´re creating here. It´s not based on an Eisenhower-era premise, or a DINK 80´s upward mobility thing, but something else. Something Not Bridal. Something technomadic.

Woman´s Work is an idea I was fond of as a teenager. Sewing, knitting, baking, all the things my mother didn´t do, but that I understood as important, useful and creative. I studied, from a cultural anthropology perspective, how woman make community richer through their skillful diligence. In many cultures, hunting, gathering, harvesting, tending the animals, mixing dyes, crafting bowls, the work of provider and artisan, was the jurisdiction of women, young and old. At this imressionable time I was also inspired by Nigella Lawson, foxy and buxom, a lover of food and the hearth. She made cooking lovely things seem fierce and smart. There has been a resurgence of late of knitting with groups like Stitch n Bitch meeting in cafes all over America and hipster chicks clicking their needles on the L train. A softening was necessary. In response to what directly preceeded us. We took our cues from our grandmothers and those before them.

I Would Be Remiss

And an unfaithful blogger if I failed to mention that I have succumbed to the shiny pretty wilds of a bridal magazine once or twice. But I always and swiftly regret it.

Exhibit A: Brides Magazine, whose cover girl in a strapless, pleated dress with a green grasses pattern on the bodice and matching groegrain bow is no question, is a glorious thing to behold. The face, is that of a Noxema scrubbed Vestal Virgin, with teeth whiter than her cultured pearl earrings, the pretty pedantic friend from college, the one who stayed in and read Hegel on a Friday night. Maddening, sort of, but fine. She carries a bouquet of Baby's Breath or something similarly ephemeral.

Inside the book are Ideas For Women Who Have Never Had One Before. An Idea, or... anything. Yes, most women's magazines are just as repetetive, obvious, and aim for the lowest common denominator, but within that genre there are at least options. Vogue, Elle, Jane at one point, succeed in injecting fashion photographs and silly sex tips with wit, etiquette, and intellect. In the least offensive of these pretty periodicals the smart readers infers a nod and wink at some level.

Never with these Wedding Tomes (Exhibit A itself weighs more than the cover model) who take themselves and the entire protracted process so seriously, therefore making the reader a ridiculous thing. It is all too straight, too straighforward, too homogenized and bland. You bore me.