Basics

I haven't really posted anything about sewing in a while, since--well--probably in earnest since before Oregon . . . in all fairness, I doubt anyone wants another run down of my sculpting scraps into a swanky, borderline hooker bra, the abuse I'm giving my serger with a well crafted raglan after another, or of the hilariously obscene things I add to the crotches of my jeans and say while making them (okay the fly details are just drop dead jovial, and I will not apologize for kisses on my fly, compasses, or xoxo labels).

Yet . . . I've also found myself making more basics and eschewing the need to deviate from classics, tried and true, and what I know works.  Why?

Part of that comes from the six or so weeks I spent out left last summer.  I left New York with a backpack, a carry on, and one well-crafted suitcase.  In two months--during insomnia hours--reading and pinning notes on the capsule wardrobe craze, and then I spent several days combing through my closet and drawers pulling out everything I love for summer.  Then . . . well, then I went through again and made piles of research worthy, bike worthy, and layering worthy pieces.  I checked in with a suitcase at 49 pounds, and I never ran out of clothes.  I had a coffee cup, a small bowl for my rings, a couple travel guides, some favorite tea from Turkey that I lived on for a spell, yarn for two projects (that I ended up not doing in favor of knitting yarn from Oregon and--well--going on prolonged bike rides induced with a cider haze), and some other odds and ends.

Leaving Corvallis, I stood with one suitcase, one backpack, one carryon, and one lunchbox filled with Tillamook yogurt.  

In Iowa I picked up a striped tank, that  . . . I wore the hell out of it.  And in Oregon I caved and bought a black skirt, dress, and two tanks.  Why? four weeks in and I wanted something "different."  Yes, I know.  I bought black for something different.  Rebel I am.  

My leather sandals left tan lines deeply ingrained on my feet, that you can still see the memories of them in the trailing depths of winter.  My runners have just found their way on my feet again, after too long on the reserve (mainly compliments of one inhaler resulting from my having to loose my damned cookies in order for folks sporting white coats and MD titles to listen to me), the black denim shorts I toted were put back together no less than three times . . . as, well, they really weren't meant to be worn four days of the week, on extended bike rides, and pretty much lived in.  Oh well. 

The point of all that: we use less than we need.  I've been whittling down the closets, as I see dresses I never wear, shoes looking sad without a date, and just odd things out of my color array.  Yeah, look in my closet and it's pretty much a black on black parade.  That being said, much like those fashion mags tried to instill on the teen and twenty-something mind the basics of the closet make life that much easier.  Though, the older we get we tend to wear the same things from comfort, ease, design, and guarantee.  Yeah . . . there's a guarantee you know your girls aren't going to give a dancing show mid day, your waistband won't be a tourniquet after lunch, and your toes won't be bleeding from torture by 930am.

Hence, jeans, and bras, and baseball tees . . . in various alterations to cover the normal everyday to the lounge wear of having eaten too much at lunch and needing to hide that insanity.  Don't tell the others, but that black and grey number is probably my favorite.  

Though, I tend to think of myself as more than an a basic bitch . . . the basics of sewing are often more than just the function pieces to toss on with a blazer, boots, and run free.  Sometimes when you find yourself in a charcoaled state so damned deep you turn the heat down as your internal rage warms the building.  So, as I pick back up at running--and tonight it's a round of fucking kickboxing--in between an excessive amount of student essays and query emails I scribble notes for a presentation, one book review, and crank out a tee shirt.  

Tee shirts are like a comfort food, perhaps.  They always have a place.  

Among the tees, and basics of not-so basic silk camis and jeans, I've forced myself to mend the pile of things on the back of a chair.  Flannel scraps and wonder under fix popping bra wires from my abusive wear, a glass of wine and some thread corrects a cashmere wrap leftover from the first single life, and the pair of boyfriend jeans that I wore for a week and then ripped out the sides to make smaller . . . as the details and kit were far too good to let them falter to the Goodwill pile . . . They've got at least one alteration left before I'll cut the cord per se (that's the before picture).  

Mending, as most will say, is the bane of existence for those who wield sewing machines . . . it's tedious, boring, and requested by everyone from someone who has seen you naked to the guy on the corner who sucks his teeth while he talks and most likely imagines you without a shirt on.  

These basics, then, in this regard serve as an escape--a forget-me-not if you will--from the charcoal laid, saturated with starter fluid, and lit on fire like Coyahoga River in 1969.  When you find yourself frightened, alone, having been told that you "aren't afraid of anything" in a patronizing cast off way and then find yourself tossed aside as a second-hand joke you wake up in a state of shock.  When I left my husband I made bras and leggings . . . and I spent two weeks in Eastern Europe.  The second week of that, what I haven't told most, is that I got an offer for a full time position.  I was standing in my Warsaw hotel, the first night there, having just gotten back from sushi and with a fresh bottle of vodka.  It was mango.  I had already tried two lemon ones, one "from the east," and there was a murky colored vodka that I still don't want to know what the fuck that was.  

Any who, it was an offer for a school in the Caribbean, without a salary offer (I was laughed at and told that wasn't for me to ask I would be told later), and the length of contract was sketchy.  While Tanfer poured the first round of mango vodka, after yelling at me that drinking it straight was a path straight to death (I might have said something about having Polish blood, she swears I said it in Polish . . . but I can't be certain), I read her the emails and told her about the interview the month before.  There are so many crazy details that I can't even begin . . .   Over the second drink--somewhere in the 50/50 range--I turned down that offer.  The better part of the next week was an alcohol laced bliss of advacaat and various flavors and blends of Vodka.  And then I flew home mostly pickled, with my liver in my carryon, and a sense of abstract resolution and peace.    

There have been numerous trips since, and last year I found myself in the middle of negotiations with China (which I never applied for) and India.  I turned down China, and India turned me down because I do not have a penis.  Last year, Europe was a refuge from the final days of an abusive work environment  . . . But this week I jaunt to Switzerland.  It's only for a week and I certainly wish it was longer.  If I could stay I would.  Though, much like 2015 I'm heading to Europe with a wounded soul and defeated psyche.  Much like those jeans, bras, and tees are basics of my Gen Xer meets 40 wardrobe, I wonder if Europe is my own staple.  My basic, my reboot, my philosophical center . . . 

Another long-standing relationship has gone to the wayside, one that I held onto for far too long.  I don't have it in me to wax poetic on the man that was and the woman I lost along the way.  Instead, I pack a suitcase filled with jeans no one sees the inside of but me.  They are laced with details a lover should find but never does.  I've folded my tees in there, to lay over the lace underneath that a lover should see but never does.  And I pack my latest blazer in, since along the way I have to be professional.  Perhaps a lover would know what is underneath.  A woman who is more than the lace, who lies awake afraid, and faces the world alone not out of choice but out of design as there was never any other option.  

A woman who is more than that basics, of a basic wardrobe and a basic life.