Friday, April 20, 2012

mixing things

I watched Born To Die, and especially the parts where the singer is in a hall of art. She's sitting in a chair with tigers on either side. She's such an icon! She looks like someone off a goddess card. When she does this thing with her hands to make it look like she's smoking ["Let's go get high"] I could get sucked in. Then, I read in the news about women in combat school. That's a whole different style of dress. For some reason, it feels like I'm being a jerk, because I dare to combine those two things in the same paragraph. The woman as icon/lover and the women in uniform training for combat. It feels like I'm not supposed to do that. But then for some reason, just because it feels like that, I have to do it. I'm not the one in uniform. Nor am I the singer/icon. Singer/icon looks like a young southern woman to me. As if she could be a very distant relative, almost. And the uniforms are what men in the family would wear. The father has to go away; the girl wants to be like him, but grows older and doesn't want that anymore. But sometimes, she wears the old army jacket. It goes places with her; it covers her. Many years later, there is a fierce argument with sister over who gets possession of the jacket. With extreme resentment (at the time) the older sister forfeits, because that is what the older sister does. And the eventual fate of the jacket? Who knows? Who knows where it is now...

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