calm/storm/something

I realize I have been sort of glorifying in the frivolous lately - those who only know me through this blog, or have only known my shifts in identity over the year, which would be all of you, might think this has always been the case. In truth I've before closeted my frivolity. When I say frivolity do I mean femininity? I don't know. And why is femininity frivolity? Hmmm. Anyway for a while I tried to effect a plainer more butch appearance - my hair cut short like Renee Falconetti's in the Dreyer film, all my curls cut away, I made myself go weeks without make-up, when I took my author photo I wore a dour expression and a strict blazer. Although throughout this I was obsessed with make-up counters and strolling through London department stores, which I write to in the novel that's coming out.

But lately I have allowed myself to be more explicitly frivolous. I hope for more of this lightness in the next year. Although wonder whether that equals being a consumerist, does femme=consumerism, I do not know. Is the adopting of masculinity more of a refusal? In truth I am not even close to high femme, while letting myself get a pedicure once in a while - I have occasionally been called sir in public places because of my short hair, and when we were in  New York last a tranny hooker said "Hi, boys" to me and John, and at first I was insulted, and I didn't know why, but didn't know whether I was being called a "boy" or  a "boi" for the latter I was fine with. I guess a year ago I would have been more pleased, and lately I have been thinking more about being a girl - where for years teaching women's studies I wouldn't even let my students call each other "girls" ("you are women" I would tell them, but in truth, many of them were girls). But I don't even have a purse, I tuck my wallet into the pair of black jeans I wear every day, I don't wear heels, I avoid ruffles and any sort of metallic or pastel - so definitely not wholly femme.

Yesterday because our loft is filled with boxes and trash John took me to the fancy mall nearby at Southpoint, and I got a facial. The last time I got a facial was when my mother purchased me one the birthday while she was in the hospital - it was always a tradition, in the later years, she would send me to a spa for a facial and/or a massage or something on my birthday. Perhaps I stopped these feminine rituals when my mother died, for when my mother died, something of the daughter in me died as well...Although I do detest sitting through beauty treatments, manicures, anything, I get terribly bored and shifty, sometimes like what I am like during yoga. It felt good to be pampered, although I have extremely sensitive skin, and some sort of mask caused me to have a bright red stain on my cheeks that looked like I had been slapped, so I wandered around the fancy mall like that.  At night we went to a French restaurant that offered one vegan dish, which was luckily a very good vegan dish (roasted vegetables and a spicy lentil sausage) and drank cotes-du-rhone, and ate vegan chocolate birthday cake with my name on it John had bought. It was a calm and lovely day, which is the best day for me, a calm day, when everything feels lately as frenetic and urgent as the bright red chemically-induced slap across my face.

Lately I have felt more frivolous than usual, and I'm sure it's because of my reading of the Zelda biography and my immersion in the mythology. Learning of these women's lives make me relive them. I wonder if there is something there. I might go back to a mall to see Black Swan this weekend - perhaps the last of anyone - I've resisted this, because it so alarmingly Zelda's story - someone gone mad by their desire to be a ballet dancer, a mother who treats her daughter like a baby - or perhaps to me lately Zelda's story is every woman's story.