Do you ever consider what your clothing says about you? How much time do we spend fussing over how we look? I know I’m pretty laid back because I’m a blue jeans girl. My husband teases me that you can take the girl out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the girl.
I was reading poetry. Guilty, I know I do it all the time. I came across a poem by David Ignatow called Coupling. In the poem, he remarks on the importance we place on clothing. I chuckled thinking life would be a lot easier if we did all wear the same thing. In my childhood, we wore uniforms. At the time I hated it but thinking back it removed all stigmas about incomes because we all looked the same. There weren’t the obvious signs that you see in today’s world between the endowed and less endowed.
Life would be a heck of a lot easier without the stress of the perfect outward appearance, don’t you agree?
Against The Evidence, Selected Poems 1934-94
Wherever he looks, standing still in the city,
are people born of coupling, walking in gray suits
and ties, in long dresses and coiffed hair,
speaking elegantly, of themselves and of each other,
forgetting for the moment their origin,
perhaps wishing not to know or to remember.
They dress as if having been born in a clothing store.
They were born of men and women naked
and gyrating from the hips
and with movements up and down
and with climactic yells,
as if losing their lives
in the pleasure and so glad,
so wildly glad.
From this rises the child
from between the wet crotch, blood and mucus,
He stands upright and pronounces himself
humankind and steps from bed and clothes himself
in a gray suit and from the next room of birth
steps a woman in a long dress. They meet
in the corridor and arm in arm walk its length
in search of one room, empty of inhabitants
but prepared for them.
lyncrain 