Poetry & Pushpins

~ The Writings of S.L. Woodford

Poetry & Pushpins

Monthly Archives: January 2014

My London Look

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Fashion, Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

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England, vintage fashion

When I wake up in the morning, I know that I shall have a good day if I dress like London. No, not dress for London–though with my penchant for tweeds and classic tailoring, I wouldn’t mind that at all–but like London. Like its architectural aesthetic.

A.A. Gill, a British writer and critic, once compared wandering through London’s streets to opening a drawer in an old house , “where so much was put away for safekeeping and then forgotten.” Gill’s metaphor is spot on to me, capturing both the city’s structural persona and why it influences me so.

London is always changing: it is a sleek, modern place full of the international, the brilliant, and the rich. But, that sleek modernism also comes with a heavy accent of sentimentalism. Even as it changes, London keeps old bits of itself around: Roman roads, the Georgian columns of Saint Paul, the pock-marked buildings of the blitz, the British Museum’s dusty and priceless spoils of Empire. London wears its history, and the triumph and pain that accompanies it, in an elegantly eclectic mess. A mess only London can make.

London gets its soul and its cohesion from the way it wears its personal history. No other city could perfectly imitate that–it wouldn’t have the same stories to draw inspiration from.

And every morning, as I open my closet, I think of London. In a haze of sleepiness and artistic fervor, I put on a wool skirt that was once my mother’s, a leather corset belt I bought after months of waiting for it to go on sale, a silver tank top I purchased as a graduate student, an argyle sweater with tiny, punk rock holes, created by an unfortunate infestation of moths, and a pinstripe blazer with bright yellow elbow patches, sold to me by two rocker chicks as they swigged white wine and giggled about Mick Jagger’s sex life. Each piece that I put on my body is a memento of my life experiences. Reminding me of where I’ve been and accompanying me as I try to become something new.

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Train Windows

27 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life), Religious Exploration

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Christian community, countryside

A backyard full of large rounds of wood, deer grazing on clover beside a graffitied wall, a blue tent sitting among the not yet decomposed autumn leaves: I see the strangest things from the windows of trains. Perhaps I get to see these intimate and odd images because the people, the landscapes, the animals, right outside my window forget that I’m looking. Trains move fast. Plus, it’s easy to miss things when books and electronics and conversations distract you.

This month for HartfordFAVS, I get to write about one of these strange window encounters. Who would have thought that a blue tent, sitting in the quiet of deep winter, still among autumn’s leaves, would make me think of how God chooses to show us presence in our daily lives.

You can read the piece here:
http://hartfordfavs.com/2014/01/26/blue-tent/

A Sloane(ish) Ranger

22 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Fashion, Pushpins (Daily Life)

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England, vintage fashion

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A week ago, from across the pond, it finally arrived: My very own copy of The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook.

First published in 1982, this was England’s answer to America’s The Official Preppy Handbook. A book that sought to pinpoint “What Really Mattered” (WRM) to the English upper classes, outlining everything from the proper contents of a girl’s jewelry cases (lots of gold and pearls, easy on the costume stuff–like Art Nouveau) to the proper animal companion for fashionable London town houses and countryside manors (the Labrador). Diana, the then hot, young Princess of Wales, or PoWess in affectionate Sloane speak, clad in her high-ruffled collars and pearls, was the Platonic ideal for the hard-core Sloane.

Flipping through the pages, I am treated to black and white snap shots of crisp, English tailoring for the men and flouncing, floral ruffles for the ladies. The Sloane style in general is a bit too soft and demure for me–I look horrid in pastels–but, I’m drawn to a look called “Baby Legs,” popular with the younger set:

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From: The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, page 29.

The essence of “Baby Legs” is blending preppy wardrobe staples with a 1980s punk sensibility. A delightful example of how a young woman can take an old, accepted style of clothing and transform it with subtle, yet arty flair to suit herself. It’s rebellion with diamanté.

But, the real joy for me comes not from the pictures, but from the prose, which simpers and sparkles as it articulates WRM to its ignorant reader. A few of my favorite excerpts so far:

“Your clothes shouldn’t suggest what’s underneath them. Except for the generous official Sloane bosom at parties.”

“The Rangers’ favorite bit of the past is the English eighteenth century…The nineteenth century is when the Bad Things came in: industry, towns, new money and the wrong kind of legs on furniture.”

“She would not wear Art Nouveau jewels (too way out) or Art Deco Cartier, which might remind her of a Bolter in the family.”

Hysterical. Hysterical in an understatedly catty way that makes me think of Victorian diaries and Jane Austen-esque drawing rooms.

I have no doubt that The Sloane Ranger will be an excellent asset to my library. A book that I may read seriously one day and ironically, the next. I shall definitely draw fashion inspiration from “Baby Legs,” but I shall never see the harm in wearing Art Nouveau jewels.

White Space

15 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in The Creative Life

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grief, the creative process, writing

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There it is.

That horrid white space.

Again.

Balls.

It’s bright blankness blazes out from my laptop screen. It stuns my eyes, muddles my chest, and makes it hard for me to draw breath. I’ve never been stabbed, but it surely couldn’t be worse than the grating panic that currently slices through me.

With much effort, I look away from the screen. I think about friends, tea cups, climbing trees, George Harrison (circa 1965), today’s to do list, fuzzy quarter horses–anything to ease my stiffened body. Finally relaxed, I look back, determined to write another sentence, no matter what horrible memories it may trigger.

And I write, sometimes fluidly, sometimes tentatively, until the white space overwhelms me again.

Writing isn’t always this hard–yet, when I write about Mom’s death, this is the norm. Does it surprise me? Not really. Mom’s death was unexpected and horrible and shocking. I loved her very much and miss her doubly so. But, I’m not someone who is terribly keen on public displays of emotion, especially if those displays leave me snot faced and red-eyed. So, my words become my tears. I prefer keeping my grief quiet, sentenced, and away from the immediate judgement of others: making the white space my solace and my hell.

In the white space, I get to make sense of Mom’s death and find the hope to move forward. That’s the problem. Mom’s death doesn’t make sense to me. She was a perfectly healthy fifty-six year old woman. So, I am left to construct a fiction, a story, that can sooth the pain the confusion leaves me. It’s hard to build a foundation on top of an ever spiraling void.

Still, when I am persistent, I get lucky. Out of its blankness emerges sentences, images, and ideas that do comfort me; and, if I’m really, really lucky, comfort other people. If that’s my reward, why should I stop confronting the white space? I can’t. I won’t. I’ll just think about George Harrison’s soulful eyes and fuzzy quarter horses and get back to typing.

Reflections of a Rose Skeptic

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Poetry, Romantic Botany

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botany, poetry

The vase is blue, its clay swollen with an abundance of fresh flowers as it sits on a hewn stone windowsill. The winter day outside matches the stone’s cold, grey hues, covering the window in a stark backdrop of mist and fog: a deep contrast to the roses–fresh, voluptuous, and white–that tumble from the vase’s wide mouth. Arranged among the flowers are rose hips, calling out to the drab day with rotund shouts of yellowish-orange.

The presence of rose hips in the bouquet pleases me, Rose Skeptic that I am. In general, I find roses over-lauded by culture. I’m not seized by love’s beauteous rapture when I look at a rose’s soft, flouncing petals. Instead, I think of nondescript male poets, feverishly comparing their beloveds to a blooming rose whilst also bemoaning the day when, like the blossom, her youthful beauty will shrivel and die and their love will be no more since she will either be: a.) Not hot or, b.) Totally dead.

Ugh.

Such romantic fixations on the young flower miss the rose plant at its most powerful, at its most giving. After summer comes the fall and the frost. A rose doesn’t shrivel and die after a frost, the plant just changes form. Ice and chill slice away shriveling petals. Then, at the tips of its thorny fingers, the plant bears a bright and bulbous fruit: packed with vitamin C and anti-inflammatory properties. It is this incarnation of the rose that provided vitamin C to English children when the Germans blockaded their island in World War II. It is this sepia-tinted flesh that enables arthritics to reclaim movement from stiffened limbs…

Not too shabby for a plant whose “beauty” fell away with the frost.

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Life Force

01 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Fashion, Pushpins (Daily Life)

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history, vintage fashion

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“Sarah, do you think you will wear this?”

A hand small, withered–yet elastic in its joints and tendons–darts into the periphery of my right eye’s vision: at its finger tips, a glint of lush purple-red. I put down the butter knife I am using to make a sandwich.

“What is it, Grandma?”

“It’s my mother’s wedding ring.”

I take the ring with its high golden Tiffany setting and hold it in my left hand, the kitchen’s afternoon light catches the large ruby at the ring’s center, sending the stone into glittering fits of red. This was the ring my great-grandmother wore on her wedding day. The ring she kept on her bedroom dresser for most of the Depression, because she didn’t want the suds and grime of her extra cleaning jobs to ruin it.

I turn the ring to get a better look at the stone’s cut, and another reddish flash shouts from further down my hand: another ruby, jauntily tilted in its golden Art Nouveau setting. A ring that belonged to my other great-grandmother. A much-loved piece of jewelry she wore daily from high school graduation until her fiancé replaced it with a fine, large diamond in a band of platinum.

“Yes Grandma, I think I will wear it. Thank you for passing it along to me.”

Gently, I slip my new ruby ring onto my left middle finger, two different rings rest side by side. Yet, both bands share the unquenchable fire of the ruby, glittering eternally in each setting’s center–a purple-red hue that surely matches the purple-red blood flowing through my finger’s veins, through the veins of my Grandmother’s wrinkled hands.

A life force that endlessly sparkles with my family’s DNA.

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