A Strange Land

It seems quite obvious to me.  Despite the fact that you might consider yourself an intrepid individualist, if you are doing anything with a herd of people doing exactly the same thing, you are not an individualist of any stripe.  You are a lemming, a herd.

I used to love this poem by Jenny Joseph.  It captured my rebellious side, captured my desire to be even odder than I truly am, then to flaunt that oddness in face of all those who worship fitting in.  Of which, as I live in Los Angeles, there are quite a few.  Alas, the Red Hat Lemmings (ladies) have ruined the poem for me.

 Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

by Jenny Joseph

I own a red hat.  I have owned it for far longer than the Red Hat Society has existed, but alas I have relegated it to the back of my closet.  If I wear my red hat I am asked “Are you one of them, those ladies with that poem.”  So, black hats with huge brims, white hats, bush hats, feathered hats are all worn with dash and aplomb, but the red hat carries too much baggage.  It no longer signals a certain verve, an intrepidly independent streak.  Instead red hats have degenerated to the status of a fashion cliché.  Red Hat Society teas, conventions, cruises, tours all filled with noxious ladies in red hats and purple dresses.  I cannot conceive of anything more antithetical to the sentiments expressed in Jenny Joseph’s “Warning” than to have it associated with a herd of women all doing the same thing, looking the same way.

I guess I am going to have to stick to wearing other hats, at least until all the Red Hat Lemmings have found their cliff.

Ah hah, I got you.  You thought that this post was going to be about Corned Beef.  That lovely stuff of deli afficianado delight sliced thick or amazingly thin as you choose, then piled so high between two slices of rye bread that a civil person would have to utilize a knife and fork, which , of course, none of us do.  Well, it is after a fashion, although I know relatively little about Corned Beef coming, as I do, from a somewhat ethnically inpoverished background.  Rather this this is about growing old and staying young and the connections in between.

 My husband, when parked at a deli, is fond of inquiring of the compatriots then present “Who makes your favorite corned beef?”  Then, often before they have a chance to respond, he tells them “You favorite corned beef tastes like the stuff from the deli you went to when you were twelve.”  There is a truth in that, or a truth of sorts, believing as I do that truth is largely relative and maleable.

Perhaps much of who we are, of what feels right to us, is set by our experiences when we were young.  How much of our perception of well being as adults comes from how closely we can now approximate our youth?  No, not all of those insecurities and inadequacies that tormented ones childhood and teen years, but the good things.  The memories of food, security, health and youth. 

This all came to me, other than occasionally being queried about corned beef, when I noticed that I was no longer as limber as I had been, as I remembered being in that long past youth.  I had spent years in my youth during high school and college doing ballet and jazz dance.  Being limber, flexible and strong, was what feeling young meant to me.  Now, creeping past fifty, I was beginning to get stiff.  Oh, nothing major, I could still touch my toes, even in three inch heels, but clearly no longer the smooth ease of movement that characterized my decidedly un-wild youth.  Steps need to be taken.  The situation cried out for rectification. 

So, for the new year, Pilates is the answer.  Yoga would serve as well, but according to some Pilates is dance based, so the movements and language are more familiar.  However, the methodology is perhaps less important than the end result.  Means versus ends, ends versus means we shall see.  A different truth..  A question remains grammatically though as to what the verb would be, or perhaps it is the gerund.  My grammatical comprehension is failing also along with the vanishing flexilibity, but admittedly grammer was never a strong point.  I am Pilating, or am I Pilatesing.  I am confused, but that isn’t news either.

With regard to Corned Beef I am even more confused.  Corned Beef always came with cabbage in my family and was pretty much boiled to death.  Not much there that would explain my husband’s passion about it.  Although, admittedly, as with me his passion isn’t for Corned Beef, but rather for youth and that previously ingrained sense of well being.