Shaved Meats, Piled High: How Should a Person Be edition
I joined Twitter in 2010. My original avatar was a close-up photograph of the top of my baby daughter's head; purplish and bumpy, it looked like a tumor. I didn't think I would ever use the account much.
Ten years and thousands of tweets later, I tweet daily. For a stay-at-home writer, social media provides a sense of camaraderie. We didn't actually have a water cooler at The Sun, but there was a coffee shop across the street and it was common for small bands of co-workers to take afternoon breaks to walk there and back. So Twitter has been like that daily walk to Donna's for me.
My feed has always been largely frivolous, with intermittent outbursts of earnestness. Lately, that has become more problematic. Or "tone deaf" as someone commented. And the thing about Twitter is that tweets appear in isolation, so it doesn't matter if I cite Ruth McKenney's writing about planting lilacs when when the world is going to hell, circa 1938, or retweet Melody Cooper's thoughtful op-ed on how to be an ally. A free-floating image of a cheese plate can seem pretty "let them eat cake." Or, I guess, "Let me eat cheese." Also, I imagine it's great fun to scold people right now.
In late March, I started a project of sorts, detailed in the previous Tiny Letter and this piece for Glamour. At a time when everyone else was dressing down, I started dressing up. Why? In part, I think, because I'm a contrarian. In part because it boosted my spirits and, when I began thinking of the posts as micro memoirs, the practice helped me finish a novel, my 24th.
Almost from the start, there were occasional sniping, snippy comments. But since the death of George Floyd and the (essential) national fall-out, in which protesters have attempted peaceful demonstrations only to be met with violent tactics by police, the silliness of what I'm doing is more likely to be called into question. It's been a conundrum, let me tell you.
I had decided in mid-May to end my daily selfie practice this week. I submitted my novel on June 1 and, after a series of silly theme weeks, chose to document seven "real" days, showing what I actually wear to go about my life in South Baltimore. As I am writing this, on Friday, June 5, there are two days left. So here's today's outfit, in which I will record two videos to promote the paperback release of Lady in the Lake.
And here is a close-up of the bookshelves, which prompted more questions than the clothes ever did. One is mine, one is my spouse's; it's pretty easy to figure out which is which.
Here is the closet, about which there has been much speculation. The previous owners created this "wardrobe" alcove, which isn't properly insulated. Please note that I share it. (I took a photo of the other side, proving this, but it's just a closet. Believe me, I've had bigger. Feel free to isolate that quote as you see fit.) The vanity at the window was my mother's, a place where I spent a lot of time as a child, playing with her makeup. The paper airplane mobile hung over my daughter's crib.
Yeah, I have a lot of clothes. Being the same size for 30 years, give or take, being in the same house for 18 years -- things amass. I had all these clothes, I started wearing them, it made me happier. And in this horrible, horrible year, I have come to accept the paradox that I am personally happier than I have been in a long time. Look, I'd trade my small personal contentment to undo every awful thing that has happened in 2020, but no one's offered me that bargain -- so far.
In fact, I have begun to confront the hard realization that I was pretty depressed and unhappy for several years, but I couldn't bear to admit it. I came to that conclusion when, as part of this project, I began putting together sets of photographs in which I modeled outfits I had worn before and asked, "Who wore it better? Laura then or Laura now?" The overwhelming evidence was that "Laura then" looked . . . gray, like a light had been snuffed out. Even if the photo showed salon-styled hair and full make-up, the person in the photo did not look sincerely happy even when smiling. Oh, she would have told you she was happy. Or, more likely, she would have used the curious phrase that she was "not unhappy." After all, how could she be unhappy? She had a good career. She was healthy. She had a daughter and a spouse, also healthy. She didn't have money troubles. It would be obscene for such a person to be unhappy, right?
I've been reading to, and listening to, a lot of Brené Brown. Late to the party, I know. She often cites the Jungian concept of tension, which reminds me of a favorite quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald, about the ability of the first-rate mind to hold two conflicting thoughts without going insane. The world is a shit show and I am unhappy about that. I want to make the world a better place and I am trying, but to detail the ways in which I try -- blech. Yet I am also trying to be grateful -- another Brownism -- for everything good in my life.
The highlight of my week was the dinner I made Thursday night. Pre-COVID, I was an inefficient shopper because I could always pick up last-minute ingredients at neighborhood grocery stores, all a short walk away. Now I make a weekly menu plan, shop on Sunday mornings, and consider it a moral failing to return to the store. So when I realized I didn't have what I needed for Thursday night's dinner, I improvised. Digging through my crisper, I found four ears of corn bought for Memorial Day, then somehow forgotten. I Googled my way to a recipe for corn salad, for which I had most of the ingredients. True, my cherry tomatoes were almost past their prime, I had to substitute blue cheese for feta, and I had only half a lime. But, man, my family loved that salad and the also-improvised Sloppy Joes.
Another paradox: My family has spent more time together in the past 12 weeks than we did in all of 2019 and while I yearn for developments that will allow our country to "reopen" safely, I know I will miss these slow, orderly days in which we have dinner as a family every night. My daughter was born in 2010; from 2014-2019, her father made almost 40 hours of television, none of it in Baltimore.
It's going to be a long hot summer. The United States has a history of long hot summers. I hope this one will bring lasting, seismic change. But I also hope you realize it's OK to be grateful for what you have, to know moments of joy as the shit show rages. To put on a pretty dress, to throw your kid a birthday party. Take a simple task and make it hard, if only because it turns out you have the time to do it.
Conversely, if you have what feel like small troubles, the kind that don't add up to a hill of beans in this crazy world, don't feel bad about feeling bad. That's another page from the Brené Brown playbook, the concept of comparative suffering. Brown argues that empathy isn't finite. I argue that if you don't have empathy for yourself, you can't really have it for anyone else.
I'm not leaving Twitter. For one thing, I don't want to be guilty of flouncing, a concept that I just read about this morning . . . on Twitter. I know there will be time again for jokes and frivolity on social media. Just this morning, Twitter asked me if I wanted to join "Seinfeld" Twitter. I do not. But I'm glad it exists.
xxoo, ll