The Wind that Shakes the Barley Cools My Tea Too

LA doesn't do October. Its inhabitants have long since forgotten any such month; only in Starbucks might our subconscious entertain whispers of leaves, scarves, or boots.

I worship basic bitches.  After a week's grace period following the release of Vogue's September Issue, they plum their lips and pepper their lattes with pumpkin spice.  For those of us sorting through any seasonal fog, they hold the keys to world order: Cinespia is out.  Persimmons are in. 

Without the basic betch, you don't know it's October until nearly November, because only day-by-day are you one degree farther from sweating the bed, one tick closer to closing the windows, until the one morning you wake up with your socks still on.  

Drive down Crenshaw or up to Weho for a pumpkin patch, venmo your friend thirty bucks for some hay and artisan-carved pumpkins, paparazzi pen and all.  

Seasons are change, and that forces you to hold onto common themes. But my common theme is avoidance of nostalgia (it's a swamp and a trap) and of over-preparedness. I heard recently that depressed people are stuck in the past, anxious people, the future. 

Thus, presently, a wind beckons, and my greatest internal struggle is my wrestling with the notion of purity.

I didn't grasp until my twenties that purity is tied up with control. There was a long time that I thought purity from a general standpoint ought not to be celebrated, but that it was all okay if I'd like to lead my life with it in mind --- after all, the point of autonomy is doing what I want to do, and I see/saw myself as "clean." At whatever time it was that I decided this, I didn't label my behaviors or thought processes as 'pure' per se, but only through reflection have I realized that that's where my head was. We can also call it the all-or-nothing approach, the "not that kind of girl," life, the "I am really principled" thang, etc. 

Do you have a friend who would rather die than kiss someone she doesn't particularly like? I mean that in a near-literal sense. She actually cannot for the life of her envision kissing someone who doesn't meet her every ideal of kissing partner. This is purity in action.

A little bit of that might be good, or at least for me, frankly, impossible to tone down. Paint over unwelcome graffiti unless you fancy yourself a street art docent.

Then one day you aren't fitting your own ideals, nor are any of your friends, and nothing is making any sense anymore, you aren't having fun.  So you indulge. Your indulgences get the better of you, and your guilt, like kudzu, suffocates you.  Your dear friend lives this way, she chases Plan B with a bagel after a $60 date, why again?  Aren't we mature now?  Aren't some things supposed to be getting easier, especially for those of us who aren't even near parenthood? What is chicken and what is egg?

Why is this even a problem in the first place?

Because women like me and your friend are pure because we are pat on the head for being so. When we dance with dirty knees, people aren't as sweet. Dented cars are better targets for hit and runs. Brief forays to what seems like the edge of the universe don't always end up well, and we remember that scene from Grease when a man isn't answering our questions: "Men are rats, listen to me, they're fleas on rats, worse than that, they're amoebas on fleas on rats. I mean, they're too low for even the dogs to bite. The only man a girl can depend on is her daddy." Maybe not for the words, but the sense that all we've got is a lady girl's lap to collapse into, or perhaps our own bitter tea, when it seems that our ideals have retreated farther away from us once again. We are plucked hen, bruised peach, wilted flower, stained tablecloth.

There is no just being a woman, we are either the girl to take home to mom, or crazy girl.  We're put-together or a mess.  Deserving of your attention or just a memory, with your roommate's ridicule on the side. The only girl who dances between the two who's left to text another day is a manic pixie. So long as she has wax to burn, she's golden.

But wait!  There's a happy ending here because the sun is setting and I'm not in any mood for twilight ghost stories!  You heard it here first: there's a happy ending because I paid for this website, you townie, and it will read what I command:

You aren't pure; you weren't meant to be. Anyone who thinks otherwise is not someone you can satisfy, which isn't why you're here, anyhow. You're here for your own means to your own ends. As an end in yourself, you wilt.  It's no sin to indulge your pleasures, and that pursuit requires exploration that will frighten some unwilling to give themselves what they deserve, too. Forgive and bless those fools, and bless you, but you're looking at all the wrong things for direction. You aren't the fussy white tablecloth, you're the bread on the plate. You're not the peach, you're the pit. Forget that clucking hen (love her though we do), and you aren't her feed, either.  You're the garden, long after Adam and Eve left. Your face is sun-kissed, scarred, whichever you prefer, and it's brave, so reflect the world in your steady, shameless gaze. Wash your feet when you come back inside.  Dry your tears and come down from your mountain, Zhuge Liang.  We both know that a life's greatest tragedy is not to go unloved, but rather, to go unknown.

Nevermind that the view from your shower window, a blue haze, remains unbroken.  Felix culpa.