The Rambling

I know I should write about the wine industry here, and I know I have the one angle no one else seems to want to touch right now.

I know it will be controversial, too. And not very healthy for me. All good reasons to go ahead and write.

Yesterday I did a little search to see if there were any possibilites for
small business grants through government programs. There are, lots of them. For $500 I can find out all about them.

I want to sell the vineyard, lock up the practice, sell my shares in the family business, move to a place where I can walk everywhere I want to go, and find a new life doing something I never realized I would love.

I want to make friends with my father, who’s lonely, and frightened of losing his memory and his faculties, his eyesight and his driving license. He still hates me though, so it’s not possible.

My husband is a good man who needs someone more suitable, someone happy and secure. He needs a woman with a stable financial foundation and the ability to either look after every minute detail of his life herself or the ability to hire someone to do this for him.

We’re not the people we were when we met.

Fug Confusion

The Go Fug Yourself Girls are running their annual Fug Madness and this year they are gunning for Tilda Swinton to be the hands-down winner.

Normally I think these GFY girls are right on the money, but where Tilda is concerned, they seem a bit confused. With their usual list of celebrity targets and horrendous clothing, I can see their criticisms are spot on; but when it comes to Tilda, I’m not sure they “get” what they’re seeing–and I’m not sure they’d deny this, either.

a nice little crochet number

It’s because Tilda makes you wonder about how she’s put what she’s wearing together–who made it, what the intention and effort could be behind the design, how it all works and, more importantly, how it all works on her alone. Here she is, at almost 49 years of age, showcasing innovative British clothing design in a spread for AnOther magazine–she’s beautifully lit in these photos so her skin is luminous, and her height and structure perfectly showcase the concepts behind the fabrics, textures, and shapes created in the clothing. She’s iconic, and clearly she’s communicating the ideas behind the clothing she’s modeling–she’s not about the lure of the brand name for its status potential, nor is she using the brand name as a means of marketing herself.

(I hope those are actually her shoes)

Tilda’s what we all wish we could be–puzzling and provocative, never the “typical” idea of pretty or beautiful, but always stunning. And always the one you go home to think about for a long time, afterwards.

Tilda in Prada, Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala

There’s something about her colouring, height, and bearing that makes Tilda look great in a beige dress that would make anyone else look like an even more matronly Queen Elizabeth II if they’d dared to put it on (the brooch and flat shoes aren’t helping matters). I’m partial to the palette, though; and the shoes are undeniably beautiful, but the look stops there, for me (unless I can grow another six inches and lengthen into someone slender, and much more like David Bowie). I always get the feeling that Tilda’s dressing for some future Costume Institute collection at the Metropolitan, herself–that’s not something any old girl could pull off with ease.

Mirror

Just what has been so terrifying about the experience of you?
The Knowing. Facing that, about you. The way each word you choose penetrates and finds its frightened source in me. The merciless smile, the glance to ensure my pupils dilate and contract, as you speak. You are comfortable with the exposure you create, nonplussed at the flaying of skin, the mining of the open nerve. When I try to stop you, you pull me in with your tongue, details of eyes meeting, skin bared and stroked. Climax. You press your stories on me like soft lips, kissing here, brushing discreetly, here; your mouth sheathing sharp teeth undressed to bite the spots where the skin is thin.

You pull my secrets out of me with your own, whispered slowly to me like confidences. And then, when I have no choice left, you pull away.

Mortification, ailments from.

Silence, ailments from.

Delusions: Forsaken, that she is.

I will take some of the hair, the dog that bites me.
I will swallow whole flowers, filled to sheer petals with vitriol.
I will crunch my teeth together through yellow metal, arsenic, salt.

And be equal: eye level, above ground, breathing.