to be sorted later #12
in which you probably want to avoid me at Target this month
It’s back-to-school time, which means relatively little to me as a childless cat lady spinster auntie supreme. That’s not exactly true, though: for me, a standard visit to Target in mid-August often turns into a happy trip down memory lane of childhood annual back-to-school shopping at the Target in Anderson, Indiana with Mom, Nannie (my great-grandmother), and my brother Jay.
Oh, how I loved back-to-school shopping! New notebooks and binders and planners and pens! During the summers, Mom would take us to Nannie’s, and then we’d go to McDonalds, where Nannie would always, always order a Filet-O-Fish, and afterward, in early- to mid-August, we’d also go to Target and stock up for school.
Recently I was at my brother’s house in Indianapolis and the girls showed off their new backpacks and lunch boxes, and I got maybe a little too excited by Araceli’s tie-dyed Jansport. What is it about a new backpack? Polly’s was great, too — a floral pattern that also coordinated perfectly with her new lunchbox. They are the coolest girls in the world. The world.
In August, I also often find myself remembering the final back-to-school shopping trip, before I left for IU in 2002, going with Mom to Indianapolis to get anything and everything that could fit in my shoebox of a shared dorm room. We got in a huge fight in Best Buy searching for microwaves, of all things, then not 30 minutes later in the Target aisles were laughing hysterically, Mom doubling over in her scooter, readjusting her oxygen. I can’t tell you what we were hysterical about, not because I don’t remember it — I do, perfectly — but that’s between us.
I remember being 18 and equal parts mortified and indignant when children would stare at Mom’s oxygen tank, or when she’d put the scooter in reverse, BEEP BEEP BEEP, and drawing more attention, oblivious to anyone’s stares. She would still insist anyone looking at us was looking at me, not her. You know, because according to her I was the most beautiful and interesting girl in the world. Eye roll.
Oh, to be mothered! She was so exasperating and she loved me so much. It was a lifetime ago, but I had it, I had it. This Saturday I was in a haze in Target aching over this memory and let out a deep sigh, timed horribly and impeccably with one of the most handsome men I’ve seen in real life turning into the same aisle as me. He looked at me in confused alarm, and backed out of the aisle. (In my head: the BEEP BEEP BEEP of the scooter, in reverse; Mom laughing hysterically.) I practically ran my cart — loaded with kitty litter and Meow Mix and cat treats, naturally — to the women’s clothing section, trusting Handsome Horrified Man would not show up over there. I was feeling deeply annoyed by this turn of events right as I made eye contact with an older woman looking at herself in a mirror, holding up a necklace. I smiled at her as we met eyes in the mirror. She asked my opinion about the necklace, seriously, as if I held the answers. “But is it too long?” she asked. I felt like that mothered 18-year-old girl again, confident and loved and exasperated and trusted.
“I think the length is perfect. It’s really pretty,” I told her.
As I was paying at the register a few minutes later, I saw she was in line behind me. The necklace was dangling on her cart. We smiled at each other, again, like we were in on a secret.
I walked out, past the scooters, past the mothers and daughters, out of my memories, into the present.
Wait, what the hell are we doing here? Here’s what I’m sorting through, when I’m not being a weirdo at Target.
What I’m Sorting Through, Currently …
Weeping at the Movies
Phil and I saw “Sing Sing” yesterday starring Colman Domingo, and it’s one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen. I couldn’t stop crying? Like, at one point, I thought I was going to have to excuse myself from the theater. It’s about a group of incarcerated men who are in a theatre group at a maximum-security prison, staging their first-ever comedy production. You can read more about it here, but I’m begging you to go see it! Take yourself to the movies. I’ve never been so fucking moved by Hamlet, and that’s coming from the person who now watches “Station Eleven” every January!
“To die, to sleep – to sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub, for in this sleep of death what dreams may come…”
Discovering Gwen John
You remember my quest, of course? *Whispers* I am discovering new-to-me women artists this year! Of course you remember, my faithful reader! Read more here and here and here.
My latest “discovery” is the artist Gwen John. The Tate posted one of her portraits on Instagram: “Young Woman Holding a Black Cat” with a quote of hers, and I was hooked. I started Googling and learned she was often overshadowed by the artist men in her life, including her brother, Augustus John; her friend, Rainer Maria Rilke; and her lover, none other than French sculptor Auguste Rodin. (I’m learning I might like Rodin’s lovers more than him. And he had a few, okay!)
Gwen also loved women, too, and left Britain to pursue an independent life as an artist in Paris, working sometimes as an artist’s model to maintain a room of her own and continue her art. (Did I mention I recently re-read A Room of One’s Own? Timely.)
I needed to know more about Gwen John and how she managed to live out my bohemian artist fantasy life back in the early 1900s. I requested Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris from the library. I was the first and only person in line. What great luck. While she lost me a bit during the devout Catholic years, I found her life fascinating, her portraits of women (including herself!) and interiors of rooms gorgeous and detailed and layered. I loved picturing her in her tiny rooms in Paris, and practically cheered when I got to the part of her buying herself a bungalow in Meudon in the 1920s.
To conclude: if you ever hear of any Gwen John exhibitions, in any city (Paris preferred), please tell me immediately.
On Repeat
“What do I want to do this year? What do most people do in a year? What do the birds do? What does it all add up to? What does it mean to love writing? What else can I do? What happened all summer long?”
— Sheila Heti
previously:
to be sorted later #11
It’s that time of year where I’m constantly thinking of the opening line of The Bell Jar: