not _ going

acting up **

[notgoing]

This is what I wear, when I know. I just know.

[notgoing]

HOUSEKEEPING

I am here: DARK BARS

And also here: pbpbbpbppb

Intending to do pretty much what I have always done here.

👋🏾

[achillesinhighheels]

[neoyorzapoteca]

Maya Angelou

[notgoing]

❤️‍🔥

[notgoing]

Do you remember sentences? Beautiful ones? Do you remember beautiful sentences? And do you miss them?

[thebluesthour]

tweeted excerpts from A Field Guide to Getting Lost, via Rebecca Solnit's twitter

[notgoing]

This is what I wear when I am in full pursuit. 

[notgoing]

This is what I wear when after almost two years of outrunning The Virus, it finally catches me. 

[notgoing]

Ronnie Spector taught me how to dress and how to long. To be unafraid to garland myself in desire. To enjoy loving fully and foolishly. To be soft and Black and a woman. To be a soft Black woman, yearning. Imagine living a life where you always get what you want? Imagine never pining? What a twisted creature you would be. Nothing The Ronnettes sung would make sense: 🎵 So when the stars are shining bright / I dream about the boy who’s gonna hold me tight 🎵 Ronnie’s voice wide and soft sings: 🎵 We will climb a mountain to see our wonderland / Maybe now you’ll understand. 🎵 And I feel full up with happiness for the boy I loved first. And this song made me feel it was a good thing to lose him and have this to dance to. Often I start my day with The Ronettes. Walking In The Rain. I Wonder. Why Don’t they Let Us Fall In Love. Is That What I Get For Loving You? So Young. Be My Baby.  Which is to start to the day celebrating my pining – cherishing the feeling of it trapped up in my bones. What a gift to make us feel young and in love every time and forever. RIPPP Ronnie peace, power, paradise xxx

[notgoing]

[notgoing]

This is what I wear when I get my first dose of The Vaccine. And for the first time in a year my anxieties about my body, your body, all bodies — what even are bodies? — subside.

[notgoing]

This is what I wear when The Universe throws me a lemon and I think “What! Another one? Maybe I’ll make sorbet this time!”

[notgoing]

This is what I wear when I realise last year I acquired my first official smile wrinkle — an occurrence too humorously ironic to be sufficiently upsetting.

[notgoing]

Has clothing ever broken your heart? More specifically, has losing an item of clothing ever upset you so much that you could only describe the loss as grief? What silly questions! Considering this year, the big things that have left me, and all that we have lost collectively (people, time, space, knowing, patience, sanity).

But the navy blue RNLI sweatshirt with the cute logo is a thing I lost this year that I refuse to get over. It is the only thing I have lost this year I thought I could eventually replace. Maybe that’s why it’s so sad. Or that’s how I made it sadder? It had the cutest logo, though – embroidered people leaning out of an embroidered lifeboat into embroidered waves. When I wore this sweatshirt strangers would lean into me and ask questions.

I wore this sweatshirt all the time or carried it in my bag just in case, a security blanket. I misplaced it somewhere between the school on quiz night and the pub we did rounds of tequila in to celebrate winning the quiz. This was the weekend before lockdown. Foreshadowing? 

I should be embarrassed to admit how devastated I was when I visited the RNLI shop today and found out that the item has been discontinued. It is a safe loss and so I cling to it. Unlike all the other 2020 losses, that might break me if I hold them too tightly. 

During lockdown I dressed up in defiance of having nowhere to go. Which made me dwell, dwell, dwell on the meaning of all my clothes. And look, look, look in the mirror for far too long. And I already knew that I like the way a woman looks best when she is looking at herself. But then I decided that I love myself this way too. Heralding my favourite loss of 2020: the loss of the fear of vanity.

[notgoing]

Buy yourself a holiday dress, though it is not yet the holidays and this year may yet have mourning left in it. Prepare yourself for joy, somehow. Though it has been a while. Limber up for it. Rumour has it: it's still out there, eager to be found. Rumour has it: 2021 is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. (My moon is in Aquarius, so is my rising sign. Also, I turn 40. So, I am fully braced).

All my best dreams begin with getting dressed. What I’ll wear and why. How I’ll sweep through the room and take what I’m owed. My clothes fall into three non-negotiable categories: Spy School. Your Funeral. Lonely Disco. Sometimes they overlap.

This Sister Jane dress I bought in a sale on Friday is Lonely Disco. To be worn for the first time on Christmas Day and then on New Year’s Eve. (I always do this splurge on something that I know for sure I’ll wear both days and make it a point not to be seen with the same people). It is roomy and warm. I will eat many cheeses easily, I will not be intimidated into putting on a cardigan. I will wear it with black platform heels.

The nicer I dress, the bigger I dream. This is why even at the heights of my depths this year I put on a pencil skirt and clean shoes. To go nowhere but my kitchen, to keep believing in believing, believing in myself.

[notgoing]

This is what I wear when I read the polls, watch the news and generally feel sick to my stomach about the “future”. 

[notgoing]

I’m on Tik Tok talking movies. If that is your thing, follow me: @pbpbbpbppb