measured steps
Oct. 7th, 2006 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmI decided that today I am 34 for real, and on my way into work went to Neera Saree Palace to buy a choli and petticoat for a saree that was a gift from a former coworker. It was a tiny expense and a pleasant exercise, but one I had to work hard to give myself permission for, for reasons I am not entirely clear on.
I have never felt such hesitation regarding my wearing of Japanese clothes, but then I grew up with my mother wearing kimono and then lived with a white man from Okinawa, so I guess I never felt that weird about it, except that time at Yale when I had straight black hair and got mistaken for part-Japanese by an exchange student in the dark of a dance as I was bopping around to Like a Prayer (which really is a fantastic pop song). When I think of that now (I was 15), I am accutely aware of how really stunningly beautiful I was that summer, in a way that chances are you can only be when you are 15. Anyway, in the light, when his friends realized I was just white, they called me a liar to him, eventhough he didn't speak at much English as them, they just wanted me to hear.
There are a lot of places I really want to travel -- Japan, the Nordic countries, New Zealand, India, Australia again, Morrocco, France. Chances are, I will mostly go alone, because part of the point of travel for me personally is that it is a little difficult and a little lonely. Some of this came up in passing last time I saw my parents and they said, "You don't really want to go there, do you?" in the same tone as my childhood -- "You don't really want that toy, do you?" "You don't really want to be sexy, do you?" My parents hate the dirty, difficult world (i.e., everything that is not a few neighborhoods in Paris, Manhattan south of 96th street or possibly Canada (they've never been)) and are under the delusion that having celiac disease will somehow keep me from it. They also never ask about any but my professional associations now that they know I am queer and poly. They also no longer pass on my cousin's invitations to sushi dinners.
Clothes are one of my greatest pleasures, and profoundly useful to me both as an actor and a writer. I first saw the world by learning the right way to walk in different stores -- Bergdorfs was for smaller, sharper steps that seemed to click across even carpetted floors as opposed to the gangly stride stuiable for Norma Kamali; Kimono House demanded a coy grace. I was an uncanny child, flirtatious without meaning to be in the way that I constantly tried to earn the good grace of others by proving I could exist in their world. It was always and is always, a profound pleasure to me. I do wonder what sort of demontration it is I'd be looking for though in someone proving they could exist in mine.
I have never felt such hesitation regarding my wearing of Japanese clothes, but then I grew up with my mother wearing kimono and then lived with a white man from Okinawa, so I guess I never felt that weird about it, except that time at Yale when I had straight black hair and got mistaken for part-Japanese by an exchange student in the dark of a dance as I was bopping around to Like a Prayer (which really is a fantastic pop song). When I think of that now (I was 15), I am accutely aware of how really stunningly beautiful I was that summer, in a way that chances are you can only be when you are 15. Anyway, in the light, when his friends realized I was just white, they called me a liar to him, eventhough he didn't speak at much English as them, they just wanted me to hear.
There are a lot of places I really want to travel -- Japan, the Nordic countries, New Zealand, India, Australia again, Morrocco, France. Chances are, I will mostly go alone, because part of the point of travel for me personally is that it is a little difficult and a little lonely. Some of this came up in passing last time I saw my parents and they said, "You don't really want to go there, do you?" in the same tone as my childhood -- "You don't really want that toy, do you?" "You don't really want to be sexy, do you?" My parents hate the dirty, difficult world (i.e., everything that is not a few neighborhoods in Paris, Manhattan south of 96th street or possibly Canada (they've never been)) and are under the delusion that having celiac disease will somehow keep me from it. They also never ask about any but my professional associations now that they know I am queer and poly. They also no longer pass on my cousin's invitations to sushi dinners.
Clothes are one of my greatest pleasures, and profoundly useful to me both as an actor and a writer. I first saw the world by learning the right way to walk in different stores -- Bergdorfs was for smaller, sharper steps that seemed to click across even carpetted floors as opposed to the gangly stride stuiable for Norma Kamali; Kimono House demanded a coy grace. I was an uncanny child, flirtatious without meaning to be in the way that I constantly tried to earn the good grace of others by proving I could exist in their world. It was always and is always, a profound pleasure to me. I do wonder what sort of demontration it is I'd be looking for though in someone proving they could exist in mine.
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no subject
Date: 2006-10-08 01:18 am (UTC)Japan is great alone. The Nordic countries I imagine would be great alone, but I've only been with others (unless you count Iceland as a Nordic country, in which case I've been there alone and it's fantastic.)
I actually prefer working abroad to leisure traveling abroad. Somehow I feel like I get to know a place better then.