apples to oranges

It’s difficult to resume something (even something as scattershot as a personal blog) after two years, but there is actually some continuity at work here (false blotch or not).

One of the last entries I wrote was about my Bubbe, who I think about several times daily but who is particularly present in my life in the fall. Yesterday, I threw away a coat that had some significant holes in the lining and was thus of no further utility, but before I threw it out I found her pin that I’d pinned to it ages ago. I held it in my fist like an amulet and looked up at my reflection in the glass – I have my young mother’s face and my young grandmother’s body. I’d spent so many years telling myself I wasn’t beautiful even though I always thought both of them were. That fundamental disconnect of self-perception that hangs between logic and emotional resonance has always been a stumbling block.

My drive for self-perfection has always led me to try to find comparative benchmarks, most of which are false hooks that pull me off stage left when I need to be centered.

I pulled a few pages out of one of my old journals the other day so that I could have a blank book in which to (rip it up and) start again. I do this periodically. It’s not the newness that I need to fold into my fist, it’s the consistent practice.