Mirror Mirror on the Wall

The other day I had a revelation.  I was standing in my bedroom wearing an adorably mismatched set of underwear, rifling through the closet to pick yet another perfect outfit for work  (the posters in our break-room suggest that fasionistas like use must “wear the brand well”).  I selected to a jacket with interesting seams and colorful bangles with idioms engraved on the inside (my favorites – dive in and a place in the sun), and as I set all the pieces out on the bed I stopped, noticing the reflection in the mirror on the wall.

My reflection.

It’s not that this morning looked any different than any other.  I have a steady routine now: usually working the same day-time shift I rise at the same time, eat the same breakfast, and go through the same wardrobe selection process.  And the mirror certainly isn’t new.  I use it every day to decide if the shoes I’m wearing compliment the outfit I’ve assembled and which pieces of jeweley sit just right.  It’s just that this morning I happened to notice my body, my self.  First, I leaned my head close into the glass, dismissing the few tiny eyebrow hairs growing back where they don’t belong and observing my face.  Its roundness, now covered by faceframes and bangs and the decisive chin.  I followed the few freckles down my face and neck and stepped back to observe them and the rest of my body.  White polkadots on black hugged my chest and below that purple elephants paraded across my hips.  I looked, like always, at the space in between.  Turning to the side and forward again, putting my hands over my hips like a camera-trick, the same one I have always used.  I turned to the back, rising to my tiptoes and looked behind me, readjusting the elephants and smiling.  Turning back to the front I stood, hands on hips and burrowing my toes into the carpet, staring at myself for a moment longer.

For the first time in I can’t remember how long, I recognized my body.  I’ve never been one with much feeling for my own body.  I wasn’t an athlete (though I’ve always been told I’m built for it), and unlike many of the interesting people I know, I’ve never had an eating disorder.  In fact, my body never seemed to react to much of anything; for a solid six years I was exactly the same weight regardless of what I did or didn’t.   I’ve never seen my body as a sacred temple or considered myself such a bombshell beauty that my frame demanded more than a glance here and there.

In college I grew so gradually into a different body and a person that I hardly noticed it until it was done.  Frequently I’d look in the mirror or say on some green-carpet night I don’t even recognize myself anymore, but I was never quite sure what that meant.  I gained some weight and hardened in a hundred other ways that made me into a person I honestly didn’t even understand. When I looked in the mirror, I couldn’t say a single thing about the person who was staring back at me; I didn’t know her and wasn’t sure I wanted to.

A sister said it best the other night when she referred to that girl as Reactionary Rachel.  She said they knew exactly why I did all the things I was doing and loved me in spite of it, knowing that it was all some kind of Newtonian law at work in our cornfield of a universe.

Looking in the mirror that mundane morning, I saw the girl I used to know.  Not just the college self who shed five or ten pounds, but the girl I once was.  Sure there were bangs (for the first time since the third grade) and a few more lines, but the eyes I saw were my own – just a little deeper.

I can’t even put my finger on what once was lost and now is found, but I know I was blind and now I see myself.  And that, my friends, might be the most incredible feeling in the world.

“When we discover that the truth is already in us, we are all at once our original selves.” – Dogen

yours.Rachel

Gonna Slap That Look Off Your Face Like Life Don’t Hold You No More Mystery

Friday night.  Rain sheeting horizontally for the second Friday in a row, and we were watching it pound the glass and drinking our martinis dirty. When the third arrived, sweeter than us, she ordered sangria.

There was a sportscaster in a box mounted on the wall, his bushy beard bouncing as he gesticulated about something we couldn’t hear over the happy hour din.  A couple next to us crossed their legs towards each other as she drank something pink, delicately.  The woman behind us was turning 50 – her friends brought her a fuzzy tiara and the only man with her shoved his way to the bar for the finest liquor his Bloomfield money could buy.  The the bartender, in half as much makeup as the hostesses, was twice as beautiful.  A man in his 30s sat alone at the bar.

We were seated, the waiter was cute.  Each of us smiled extra wide and batted our eyelashes a little as we ordered.  Brushed metal and wood surrounded us, minimalist in spirit – fresh enough to feel like we might be somewhere far from here without being a mockery of itself  (a la the Rainforest Cafe or Margaritaville) .  The topics of “work” and “school” were dismissed quickly, and my pinot grigio arrived.

The sweetest of us had asked for directions to the restrooms, and we the other two looked in our own directions in the kind of blissful silence that only best friends can enjoy. I smiled, grabbed my glass authoritatively, and issued a proclamation.   Let’s make a pact. I said, raising my glass and eyebrows.  That we’ll never get old and boring.  That we won’t give up.  That we won’t turn into those shells of people who play by all the rules and who do the same thing day-in and day-out, only to be disrupted by heavy drinking and talking about the good old days.

We agreed we’d stay interesting.  That we’d keep learning and growing and believing in changing ourselves everyday.  And whether we move in together in Boston and take on the town or write letters and meet in fabulous cities with our sisters, we won’t get old. And boring.  The third returned, dittoed.

Dinner arrived.  Interesting, fresh, classic yet unique.  We finished and embarked on a roadtrip to surprise one more for dessert.  At the time it didn’t occur to me to ask her to join in on the pact,  but I suspect she made hers long before ours.

Who’s with us?

“That’s the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up.”  -Walt Disney

yours.Rachel

Leaves, redux.

The problem with growing up is you don’t have time to update these things anymore. And simultaniously, you don’t see the people you love everyday (every minute of every day), so updating these things becomes increasingly important. Moral of the story – this is accurate, but not always up to date. Once I finish my midterm of death I plan to be back here (read: after Thursday) so stay tuned.

But a status update: I Love Fall. I love the leaves turning vibrant colors everywhere – no matter where you’re going and how much you don’t want to be there (or even how much you do), there’s something powerful about feeling like the world is on fire around you. On a bad day it feels like one big bird being thrown to the suburbs (Look at me – I’m alive! I’m not boring yet!), and on a good day it’s like the world is burning with the same flame that’s inside me.

things are fine. The leaves are burning and so am I, so everything’s alright.

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!” – Jack Kerouac

yours.Rachel

25428 Revolutionary Road

Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning.  Actually it’s more like most of the time.

Some of it is the schedule.  I’m working 30 hours a week as a wage slave to the fashion industry. And though I like talking to women about heels and the “vintage vibe”, ass kissing and customer service are surprisingly exhausting.  Add onto that my three classes, and the monumentous amounts of work I’m getting from one of my classes specifically (there’s a blog post to come psychoanalyzing my professor, I assure you).  Plus I agreed to help coordinate an event for our church and community kids – I expected an attendance of 50-100, but the estimate we’re currently working with is 400.   Many of these are firsts – it’s the first time I’ve worked this much and gone to school, the first time I’ve planned an event this large, and the first time my pseudo-intellectualism just isn’t enough.

But I don’t think that’s what really disturbs me.  For a girl whose motto is I’m fine – I’m always fine, survival isn’t really an option – it’s an assumption.  Of course I will keep it together.   I’ll apply lots of concealer and smile at work, I’ll prostrate myself for the academy, and my adreneline will keep me focused on the finite details of my event.  And more than likely, I’ll pull a 3.5, earn praise from my church peers, and customers will continue to ask me how I manage to be so perky at X time of day.

What scares me is the feeling that even though I’ve changed scenery, I’m in exactly the same place.  Granted, my life here includes high-end (window)shopping plazas  and ethnic food, but it’s empty.  I did the math last night, between presentation preperation and hot-dog dinner number crunching, and concluded that I’m spending 60 hours a week doing things I really don’t care about.

And what makes my stomach fall farther than my toes is how easy it is for me to do it.  How disgustingly well trained I am.  How good I am at playing by the rules and how used to being chipped away at my soul is.  It hardly even phases me when I feel like my heart is dying inside of me because the feeling is nothing more than deja-vu.  Since infancy I have been taught the practicallity of dilligence, like we all are.  My family has bosted that brand of liberalism that values literature, art, and passion, but we want to put it back on our bookshelf when we’re finished with it.  Things like adventure, ignorant pursuit of ideals, misery and love on fire have no place in a world of pracical conventions.

I’ve reverted to my old vices of calculating plane and train tickets in my spare time, and I’m realizing that the purpose of travel in my life was twofold.  Part of me was running, both from something and to something.  I was escaping a world where I disliked not only what lived around me but what lived in me, and I was also running to places that made me stand pidgeon-toed with my hands behind my back – places and people that made me feel like life means something.  I’ve known this for some time.  What what I have been less forthcoming in acknowleding is the balance I sought in the people I fled to.  One of my favorite things about my favorite hosts is their ability – in ignorance or courage – to fuck up.

I’m developing an unbelieveble respect (and irrational jealousy) for the people I know who have had the balls to take their own life into their hands.  People who left places when they could see they were destroying them – because I stayed.  People who got involved in incredibly stupid things, got burried, and had to dig themselves out the hard way – because I’ve always been too smart to do something like that.  People who have pulled people into their lives and dragged them down – because all I’ve done is push them away.

I feel like I’ve spent the last four years becoming something I hated and then un-becoming it.  And it all happened inside my head.  I’ve got scars but no stories.

And here I am.  It’s a Saturday night in the suburbs, and between work on a paper topic and assembling a flyer, I’m shreiking at the top of my lungs but not a sound is coming out.  And the pragmatist in me is shreiking too.  What can I do to stop this, change this, make it so my life isn’t just an exercise in endurance.

And the most frightening thing to me yet – I don’t have a damn clue.

“Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.” - Revolutionary Road

yours.Rachel

I Wear My Heart on My Bag

For my birthday I got the perfect present.  So perfect that only I could have picked it out for myself (and talked the sales woman into giving me a 20% discount because it was the floor sample).  A tote, candy-apple red patent leather so shiny it almost glows, from Kate Spade.  If I was Holly Golightly, Kate would be my Tiffany’s.  The best part (aside from the snappy purple lining) is the words imprinted on the front; “Don’t kiss me now, I’m busy.”

I like Kate Spade not only esthetically, but because I appreciate her sense of humor.  Sandals with lobsters, owl coin purses, and Christmas cards with neon colored jungle animals wearing reindeer antlers.  She tends to produce elegant witty and sometimes quirky pieces that I adore, and sometimes she takes the words right out of my lips.  It got me to thinking what other words I might find her taking from me and printing on fine papers or handbags in the future.  They might include:

Don’t kiss me now, you bore me.

It’s true.  I do have a trunk filled with shoes.

Sod off,  I’m dancing.

Sugar-coated sarcasm is the new black.

That which doesn’t kill you makes you interesting.

Don’t lie.  You like that your parents like me.

I only do epic on days that end with “y.”

Speak softly and wear 4 inch stilettos.

Save yourself, then we’ll get dinner.

not that I’m as witty as KS.  But I’m honest?

“The average American girl possesses the valuable qualities of naturalness, honesty, and inoffensive straightforwardness; she is nearly barren of troublesome conventions and artificialities; consequently, her presence and her ways are unembarrassing.”  – Mark Twain

yours. Rachel

Because Color for the Black Bear is a Synonym for Age

In the ‘burbs by the fire is a good place to begin a song about a brown bear and her other brown bear friends.  Doing all the kinds of things that sisters just might do, hoping in their next life times they could be like black bears too.

There they are now, speaking without claws or tooth – each of those were left in the days behind, of youth.  There they were just sitting around the burning fire sharing stories of their times – the brush spots, the brambles, and how they made their dimes.

The wine was spiced, the laughter loud, stars shone above without a cloud.  Marshmallows burnt, the wine was spilled, and knees pulled in as the night air chilled.

Toasts were made, cake was cut, we laughed about all our ruts.  And though we never painted cardboard we know it’s not too late to start, learning that night that apologies are another form of art.

The simplicity of solitude is a hard thing to perfect; stealing happiness from loneliness is not a simple theft.  But each of us are learning, searching far and high and low -  happy this will be here always, in our hearts it’s true we know.

And yes, it is lovely to have a sister thinking of me.   Because when they think, they are thoughtful, when the love they are love-filled, and when they run they run the fastest and spin the Earth right on its axis.

Color for the black bear is a synonym for age; if I were one then I’d be in my cinnamon phase.  And here I am at 22, the decades weigh a ton, but evenings just like this one are a little burst of sun.

yours.Rachel

LEAVES!

Last week I came home from work and walked into the bathroom, eager to wash the smell of money and cardboard crumbs off my hands.  Half of my mind was engaged in planning recipes and the other half was caught by the exclamatory title on the bottle of hand soap.  Minimalist in design, this bottle was an opaque rectangle with a small picture printed at the top and, in all caps and bold print “LEAVES”.   I chuckled to myself, picturing the marketing team who probably branded this: 4 people sitting in a room with the walls covered with colored paper mapping ideas and consumer traits.  Samples of the soap scents sit in the center of the table and Sample A is passed around the circle.  A stern but stunning woman in stilettos keeps the meeting running while two designers in tight jeans and shirts screen printed by their friends doodle furiously in their notebooks and another man wearing a button down unbuttoned at the top without a shirt underneath exclaims “what if we called it – LEAVES!”.  Brilliance was agreed upon, and the Bath and Body Works scent LEAVES was born.

For the next few hours, I couldn’t stop laughing about the LEAVES in the bathroom.   It might have been the unusually simple title; compared to Warm Vanilla Sugar, Sensual Amber, and PS. I Love You (what do you think PS. I Love You smells like anyway?) LEAVES stands on its own.  But, more likely, I suspect what curled my lips into a smile was the surprisingly exclamatory tone; my house is decorated almost entirely in cream, and nothing really exclaims much of anything except lack of exclamation.

That’s kind of the feeling I’ve had about this summer.  I’ve enjoyed it I guess, but it’s been relaxing more than epic.  I’ve gotten some much needed rest and sun and time to get my ducks in a row, but I’m finding there isn’t much to write to any of you about. And frankly, I keep forgetting things like A) I’m going to start grad school in a week and B) 15 months from now (if not sooner) I’ll be shaking the dust of this town off my feet and starting a totally new life in some yet undetermined place intentionally far from here.  The complacent relative-contentment of here is rolling along, creamily, like the green lawns roll into one and other.

But in a few places there are leaves beginning to change.  Fire reds and golden yellows crowning a few small trees and a handful of leaves fallen at the base of some of the larger trees.  And when I spot these little colorful patches on walks with my dog or driving to and from work, I shout LEAVES!  to myself, remembering that though the thermometer says 75degrees and the manmade subdivision hills are the same manicured green they’ve been all summer, autumn is just around the corner.

Today my text books arrived.  LEAVES!  And my boss asked how my classes where going and I answered that they started next week.  LEAVES!  And my other boss told the new hires she’s not going to let me go and that I’m headed for corporate.  LEAVES! And I’ve got contacts I need to catch up with from my jobs past, and I need to catch up on what’s happening in the field.  LEAVES!

“Just like autumn leaves we’re in for change.” – TV on the Radio

yours.Rachel

Including but not Limited to…

As I said, I’ve been cleaning.  I’ve tossed most of the cards without notes (remember that if you want me to keep your correspondence to my dying day) and the doodles I don’t understand anymore, and the room is looking great.   Some things are headed to my god-of-a-garbage-man and others are being placed into decorative boxes, but there were a handful of things I came across that seemed worth mentioning for one reason or another.  They include…

Several letters written between me and my fair-haired cousin (I didn’t even remember that we wrote to each other!), most of which were in pastel milky pens on pink and purple polar bear Lisa Frank stationary. She constantly apologized for not writing sooner and asked frequently for my advice (I’m a year older).

A Xerox-ed picture of a devious looking chef named “Fester” whose mission in life was to teach us about the “Danger Zone” temperatures at which bacteria could infest our food.

A print-out email survey indicating that in the seventh grade I wanted to live on Cape Cod when I finished school, the person who knew me best was myself,  and given the choice between mud and jello wrestling, I preferred jello.

The soap opera, “Our Pathetic Lives” written by my friends and myself in seventh grade.  Inspired by one of our friends getting a boyfriend and including plenty of promiscuity, celebrities, teachers, freak hair-dying accidents, at least 50 different students from our school (by the end people we didn’t know were actually asking to be written into it), and totaling 11 pages of plot bullet points.

My confirmation bulletin with the verse I chose:  “He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Matt.22: 37-39

Notes between a one-time best friend and I, titled things like “Secret Note of Secretness”, “Thoughts on the Rachel Factor” and “President Bush’s Defense Plan #1, 2, and 3″

A note from the aforementioned friend foreshadowing the end of our friendship and apologizing for the reasoning I always suspected was there.

A half-time script from my marching band days beginning with “Drum major Rachel Tripp is your band ready?”

A program from the fashion show gala opening of Nordstrom at 12 Oaks.

A black and white picture of a male friend of mine bathing half-naked under a waterfall.  Sent as part of a birthday gift from a mutual friend.

and my personal favorite:

a card from a “Mike J” saying

For your birthday I really wish I could convey the depth of my feelings for you — The sublime, ethereal love… the raw undulating passion…  the tender rhapsodies of sweet emotion that emanate from my heart when I gaze upon your divine countenance! … but you know me, I’m just not that good with words!  Happy Birthday!

For the life of me, I have no memory of this boy.   ooops?

Pretend this list surprises you.

yours.Rachel

Maybe the Paper is Just Paper

The never ending cleaning process continues.  I’ve discovered (or perhaps more appropriately, admitted) that I’m a bit of a pack rat.  My sister and I share the same genetic fear that if we throw something away, a few weeks or months or years later we’ll have a need and we’ll kick ourselves, knowing that we used to have just the perfect thing.   The things I have an especially difficult time getting rid of tend to fall into 2 categories – the sentimental and the peculiar.  The first is fairly self explanatory.  Me being the midwestern brownie-baking center piece-making hair-that-curls-under-in-the-front-girl that I am,  I resist throwing away notes and ticket-stubs and crumpled up doodled on napkins that might bring a tear to my eye when I’m a white-haired lady to tired to leave my house.  Then there’s the second reason for keeping – peculiarity.  I find that I keep strange things because (you all may find this surprising but) my life is strange. (I was just kidding about the surprise).   A person with a life like mine never knows when you might need 8-inch plastic high heels, a headband with camel ears, or a small glass cow decorated with abstract colors.  Any of these might be just the perfect touch to an already surreal scene.  I mean really, if Salvidor Dali had camel ears, I’m sure he wouldn’t just toss them into the trash.

However, my logic has two flaws.  1.  Eventually, a lot of the nostalgia fades.  I hate to say it folks, but the doodles of inside jokes I did in 7th grade really don’t make much sense anymore, and while I can appreciate how funny they were at the time, they don’t have much entertainment power left in them now.  And, as my grandmother is daily proof, eventually even the sentimental stuff becomes more crap standing in your way.  (I thought 20 years of stuff was bad…try 76!)    And 2.  My life is epic with or without plastic shoes of porcelain cows.  I learned this traveling over the last 2 years, when things like this were the first to go from my 2 suitcases and a carry-on.  And now that I’m home, most of the stuff I have, though amusing, is relatively useless and takes up spaces.

For the record, I’m not ready to give up the camel ears yet.

yours.Rachel

Freedom Hangs Like Heaven Over Everyone

that last one hung longer than I intended.

Is it my promotion at work and my sister’s approaching departure for college that prompted the dramatic emphasis? Maybe.  But you know I don’t believe in things that are that simple.

I’m still alive, breathing and thinking, no worries.  More soon.

yours.Rachel