Talking Tuesday: Ontology and Telos

I've been pondering how to write this all day, and not really knowing how to start, so perhaps best to start in the middle and work outward.  I should also say that this is very short and preliminary, and probably is going to be something I'm noodling through for a long time, so don't take any of this as definitive, but rather the start of a long conversation.

On a recent phone call with a dear friend, I said, "If my 30s were all about ontology, I think my 40s are going to be about telos."  She laughed, but understood what I meant.  Long-time readers will know that I've written a fair bit about the ongoing existential crisis of motherhood, and I think I spent a lot of the past decade trying to parse that.  Who am I?  What am I made for? What am I doing?  These are the basic questions of ontology.  Becoming a mother brought a lot of those questions to the forefront for me, and I thought a lot about them (mostly through the Twilight series, but a number of more serious books as well). 

While I'm not sure any of us can ever definitely state that we know the full depths of our selves, or that we've completely sorted the basic ontological questions, at a certain point, I think you can start to say to yourself, This is Who I Am.  Maybe it isn't a particularly articulate ontology, but you begin to have light on the darker corners of yourself, and can sketch more of a whole picture in your mind.

Lately, however, I find myself occupied with questions of telos.  Telos, in some ways, is a far bigger question, but it naturally follows the ontological ones.  Ontology asks "what," but telos asks "why."  Why am I here?  Why am I?  Where is the meaning of everything located?  I sense in the larger culture a nihilistic impulse that is hard to resist.  It is hard not to feel despair, easy to find no meaning in the day-to-day grind of life. 

I could write fancy pat theological answers to those large questions, and the theological answers are good and right: we are here to pursue God, to find our life with Him, to seek the beauty in creation, to find salvation.  But those are amorphous, and difficult to get a handle on somehow. 

Seek peace and pursue good.  That is something repeated a lot in the services of the Church, and while maybe still not concrete, a good thing to hold on to.  But then the next question is: What is good?  How do I find peace?

I used to be able to answer these questions without hesitation, without question, with theological certainty.  But I find as I've experienced hard things, and then even harder things, that I have less certitude than I did previously.  Perhaps that is normal and part of the course of things. 

I do know that the answer to those questions is located outside myself, and within the Church, and in seeking I will find, but man, the road is long and winding.  I suppose the way to find them is to excavate the truth in the Liturgy (I've had a post brewing about this for some time), to stay present with the texts, the rhythms and musical phrases, and let them sink down deep into me.

The past few years I've sung the Hymn of Kassiani during the Holy Tuesday Bridegroom Matins at a local parish.  (It is the only time during the liturgical year that this hymn is sung).  The parish is Slavic-oriented, but the priest broad-minded, so he has graciously allowed me to sing it Byzantine-style.  Sung in Byzantine chant, it is probably one of the harder pieces of vocal music for a singer to master.  The piece slides between two tones, one minor, one major, with lots of "in between" notes; staying within the musical phrasing and not losing the meaning of the textual phrasing is a feat.  I always go into it with fear and trembling.  But the text always haunts me, the great lament of it that seems to rise up from my bones, particularly toward the end.  There is a great stillness that seems to accompany it, as the sound rises to the top of the nave.

Perhaps the way toward telos is to be mindful and remember those moments when something buries itself into your soul, and gives you a hook to hold on to. 

Blue Heather Doocot

I finally finished my Doocot sweater!  This sweater was a constant game of yarn chicken, it must be said.  I had six skeins of denim heather Swish (worsted) in my stash that I wanted to use up, and thought this pattern might just make it, but ordered two more skeins just to be safe. 

I got most of the body and sleeves done on those eight skeins, but ran out in the middle of the ribbing in early December, and had to wait quite a while for the final skein to arrive. 

Then it was the holidays and I didn't have time to pick up this project until last week.  I finished the ribbing on the bottom and the neck ribbing in fairly short order and then spent an hour or so seaming the sleeves on day last week. 

I wet blocked it, but didn't aggressively block the ribbing so it has a more fitted look than the design suggests, which I prefer.  I probably could have made a size one and been fine, but the two is good.

I'm actually quite chuffed with this sweater--it turned out way better than expected, and I'm now rethinking my plans for the Quince and Co. chickadee yarn I bought in December with a gift card from last Christmas!  (Although, given my tension and the fact that I knit this with supposedly worsted weight yarn at 22 stitch gauge, I'm not sure what the chickadee fabric will look like.  Swatch, swatch, and swatch again!)  The chickadee is about the color of my scarf, for reference.

My original plan was to make another Carbeth pullover, but I think I like the versatility of this weight of sweater, and would like to make a cowl-necked version out of the Chickadee yarn which means dropping the front neckline slightly.  In the meantime, however, I have something else I need to work on first, so I can consider my options while I finish that project. 

The green wool skirt is another recent thrifted find; I thrifted a Sag Harbor wool skirt earlier this fall and love the way it fits, so I've been watching ebay and snagging a few more in other colors as I find them, since I know the size is good.  

This one is longer than the other three I have, and I originally planned to take it up to match the just-above-the-knee length of the others, but I'm kind of digging the midi length for this skirt, so I think I'll leave it.  My only regret is that it doesn't have pockets (the other skirts do) but I feel so snazzy in this outfit, I don't even care that much.  I'll take that for a win!

The amount of petersham I cut off the waistband edge.  I left the full length of the waistband, however, in case I need to let it out again in the future.

 I also took in my rust cord skirt yesterday, because I'm really missing it in my closet.  The best way to have done it would have been to completely reconstruct it, but I knew I'd never get it done if I had to unpick everything, so I did a sort of lazy alteration that will do for now.  I took the waistband off the back of the skirt, and then pinched out half an inch or so down the center back from the waist to the hem.  

I pin-basted, checked the fit, pinched out another half inch (for a total of just over an inch), sewed up the seam, finger-pressed it to the side, and then reattached the waistband and resewed the hem.  I really need to redo my whole skirt sloper, but that is a project for another day.  (I also want to see where my body "lands" so to speak, since I've been up and down and up and down for the past 6-8 months.  The alteration I just did can be undone again if need be).

The Depth of Ourselves

Longtime readers will know that we live in a small house with inadequate built-in storage (read: basically no closets), and that managing the stuff of six people occupies a greater amount of my time than I would really like.  Too much "stuff" stresses me out, and frankly, I think it stresses my kids out, even though they still want to have new things, and have a hard time letting go of some other things to make room.  I have two children who are legit hoarders and their stuff just has to be gone through regularly to cull out the hair clippings, random trash from the playground, school papers, and other "treasures" they squirrel away.

The first few years that we had kids, the gifting at Christmas was a bit insane.  Don't get me wrong--I'm grateful that we have so many relatives who want to love our kids with physical gifts, and I know there are lots of kids out there who don't get any presents at all.  That said, my kids couldn't even process all the stuff they got, and since the fill-and-spill stage of play seemed to last FOREVER, it felt to me like it was just more stuff I had to pick up all the time.  One of my children always seemed unhappy on Christmas day, no matter what the presents were, and it was just so frustrating to me.

A few years ago, I decided to simplify things and do three gifts only--a book, a pajama, and a toy.  I realized that my kids were unable to handle surprises at that time, so they picked out exactly what they wanted, and each of the grandparents chose which of the three things they wanted to give the kids, and we gave the final gift.  (There were always a few little extras from aunts and cousins and friends, but just having the three main things was helpful).

It worked okay for a couple years, but I realized last year that things needed to shift (we substituted an "experience" for the book last year and the kids got a year-long membership to LegoLand).  This year, I decided throw the whole system out the window and let the kids pick out a number of toys each.

Why? I realized that my unhappy child was unhappy because that child feels good when there is a big pile of presents to open.  This child didn't want to have to choose just one thing, or two things, but felt guilty when unable to make a decision because the want was so strong and the stakes felt so high to make the "right" choice.  (I understand this feeling well).

We talked through it all in the weeks before Christmas, as each child sorted through what they wanted on their lists, and I saw that I had to let go of this vision of "simplicity" at Christmastime.  (This has been part of a larger picture of me letting go as a parent.  I have made a number of shifts in my thinking in the past year about how I want to parent my kids, and letting go of unrealistic expectations, and living where my kids are at is one of them.  I don't always succeed, but I'm trying).

My concern these days is less about the accumulation of "stuff" and more about the why of what they want.

Do they want a new toy because they just want it, or do they want it because they think it will fix something inside them that feels bad?  One child in particular struggles with this, and we've talked a lot about it over the past year as we've struggled through it together.  Every opportunity for gifts and purchasing has come with a conversation about why the desire for this thing is so desperately high.  Often it is because this child feels bad about something, and can't stand to live in those feelings.

So we are working on living in the bad feelings, and not using "things" to make the feelings go away.  Because actually, the things don't make the feelings go away.  At least not for good.  Sure, they might go away for a little while, but as soon as the "new toy" shine is off the thing, the bad feelings are back, and the desire for a new thing to fill that bad-feeling place is back.

This has been a hard lesson for me to learn over the years as well.  If we are really honest with ourselves, I think most people living in this late capitalist period do this in some way or another.  I'm trying to learn to live in the bad feelings and go through them instead of trying to smother them with stuff or drown them with food.

At the same time, however, I don't want my kids to feel so deprived that they make reckless financial decisions as adults or spend their lives chasing things instead of building relationships.  It's a fine balance, to learn to live with less, make do and mend, to value and use what you have, but still feel that you are worthy of receiving love from others in the form of physical things.  Because gifts do speak about worth louder than words sometimes.   There's a reason why Gary Chapman identifies gift-giving or receiving as one of the five primary love languages.

I suppose what it really comes down to is exploring the reality and depth of love: what it is to love another person fully, to meet their needs how and where they are, and to affirm their worth and value in lots of different ways.

~

{It is Philip's day today, and while I'm certainly thinking about it, I have little to say about it today.  I'm unwell and emotionally exhausted, and I can't poke around inside myself to see what I find.  Thirteen years is a long time.}

Happy Christmas!

I've posted this one before, but it never gets old.

So here we are, finally at the end of the Nativity Fast.  To be honest, the Fast seemed to go quickly this year, more so than other years.  Probably because I spent the first three and a half weeks of it nursing sick kids!  There were plenty of challenges in the Fast, however, as is usually the case.  

This seemed to be the Fast in which Toilets Did Not Behave.  We have issues with our plumbing anyway, because it is the city, and apparently no one in this area vents plumbing stacks, ever, and heavy rain seems to make things a bit worse (and there was a lot of rain this month) but I do what I can to mitigate things.  In any case, our second floor toilet required quite a bit of intervention this past month.  Thankfully, it seems mostly resolved now.  

In related plumbing issues, the down pipe from the shower in that same bathroom has a tendency to work loose on the u-joint at the bottom (the pvc screw that attaches the joint to the pipe above gets loose) and then leaks into the kitchen, but thankfully we have an access panel just below that join, so I can tighten the pipe screw as needed.  So there were a few leaks to deal with this month.

This isn't even all of them.

The girls spent the past two weeks busily making things in their room, and hiding their presents from prying eyes.  There was a truly impressive stack of cards and things to unwrap!  

Boo made me a little boat out of wood and painted it himself with watercolor paint--I'm so impressed.

Multi-colored on the sides.

And since I'm sure you are dying to know what I wore yesterday, here it is, all thrifted except the tights and hat: cashmere sweater, cotton undershirt, wool skirt, wool tights, dansko booties, and handknit beret from a couple years ago.  I wish I could remember what size needle I used for this hat, because I really like how it fits and haven't been able to replicate it on subsequent hats using the same pattern.

I've lost a bit of weight this month, and my corduroy skirts are all too big and look pretty sloppy.  I've already taken in the blue and green ones once, and I confess, I'm not looking forward to altering all three again, as I think I shall have to take them completely apart and start again.  I thrifted some Sag Harbor wool skirts recently (of which the red skirt above is one) and I plan to use one of them as a block to alter my Anne Adams 9481 flat pattern, since it clearly needs adjustment.

Part of me is also concerned that I might alter the skirts only to find that they don't fit again after the holidays!  (But I'm also trying to get into a mindset of eating in the middle of the lane all the time, and not swinging to extremes during fasting/feasting seasons, so perhaps it is good to solider on with alterations).

 

But that is a project for another day, since I am very tired today, and fighting a cold.  So I plan to do little things, but mostly just rest.  We are having Piglet's birthday meal tonight (his birthday is Christmas Eve, and he decided a few years ago to wait for the meal until the 8th to have non-fasting food!), but it is easy since he wants Shake Shack and ice cream.

The kids received a number of lego sets for Christmas, and I have to think about storage for some of them.  (I have a pretty good storage system in place, but several of the sets are rather large and require some re-jigging of the system on my part).  

In the meantime, the sun is shining, the air is crisp and cold, and my to-do list is manageable.

 

Decade End

I'm fond of retrospectives (I am an historian after all!), so I like all these decade reflections that are going around the Internets.  So without further ado, here's mine.

Jan 2009

2009: One-year-old Piglet finally started sleeping at night and taking a regular afternoon nap.  Finished and published my first novel.  Started my stamping business and a blog about my crafting endeavors.  Opened an Etsy store and took on custom invitation and book-binding orders.  Traveled back to Moscow to introduce the city and country to my family.  Became pregnant with Boo in August after more than a year of fruitless trying.  Spent the fall on homicide-inducing progesterone treatments to keep the pregnancy going.  My maternity leave ended and I decided to withdraw from my PhD program.

May 2010

2010: The city received 80+ inches of snow between January 1st and March 1st and the city more or less shut down for 6 weeks.  Piglet got better at hailing cabs than me.  My beloved grandmother died in March after a long decline with Alzheimer's disease.  I was unable to attend the funeral, and I still regret it.  Boo was born in May after a long labor and a lickety-split delivery.  We take a family trip to Ireland that is delightful and attend a family reunion in the Twin Cities over Thanksgiving.  My allergist here throws up her hands in despair and refers me to an allergist in NYC.  Begin regular trips to the city for food challenges in the fall, some successful, some not.  Became pregnant with Birdie in December (surprise!)

August 2011

2011: A difficult pregnancy with Birdie and one of the hottest summers on record, including six weeks of a so-called heat dome over the city, was followed by her birth just ahead of Hurricane Irene at the end of the summer.  Piglet started preschool and Boo still refused to walk or talk.  Birdie spent the fall in and out of doctor's offices and hospitals, falling further behind developmentally.  At the urging of a friend, I start a second blog (this one!) about raising kids in the city in a small house.

March 2012

2012: I wean Birdie at four months as she continues to decline and is borderline failure to thrive.  She begins seeing GI and pulmonary at the children's hospital where she is finally diagnosed with significant airway malacia with GI involvement.  She is put on a medication regimen that requires an erasable marker and a spreadsheet.  She is inpatient again for a week after Pascha.  She begins twice-weekly PT and OT, and by midsummer she has started to catch up to her peers developmentally.  I am finally diagnosed with gastroparesis after struggling with various symptoms for several years, start on a weight loss journey in the late spring and lose 30 pounds over the summer.  I dive deep into vintage style. 

August 2012

We take a family trip to Austria in August that puts me off traveling with Birdie for a long time.  Piglet is also diagnosed with airway malacia in the fall.  Illness has become the norm in the household.  Become pregnant (surprise again!) with Ponchik in September, but don't realize it until nearly the end of the first trimester in the late fall.

May 2013

May 2013

2013: Ponchik is born by emergency c-section at 36 weeks following preterm labor and placental abruption.  I have my best recovery ever, and Ponchik is an easy baby but extremely attached to me.  Piglet finishes kindergarten and starts first grade and Boo finishes his first year of preschool and starts the second.  I am totally burned out on stamping but continue to keep my demonstratorship current through the end of the year.  I am sewing most of my own wardrobe and some of the girls'.  I take up knitting again and make a few little things for the girls.  I consolidate my blogs and keep writing here.  Birdie has febrile seizures during a respiratory infection in the fall, and continues to be in and out of hospital.

April 2014

May 2014

2014: I do a lot of reading and writing about post-modern society and technology and culture, and begin a long deep dive into textile and clothing history and the historical reenacting sewing community.  The Vanderaas have another reunion in Minnesota that summer and Ponchik is a velcro baby the whole trip.  Ponchik finally weans in the fall at 18 months (my longest nurser!) and I feel free to stop making nursing-friendly clothing and return to dress making.  Ponchik is also diagnosed with airway malacia and asthma, and spends a day or two at the end of December in hospital for a respiratory infection.

June 2015

2015: I did a lot of vintage sewing and some historical sewing.  I started doing Project 333 in the summer to get a handle on my wardrobe and style.  My husband joined the ranks of the clergy. Around the same time, I embarked on another weight loss journey, which involved working out at the gym and counting calories.  I was making good progress until my EoE flared in a big way and I suddenly could eat only Cream of Wheat and baked potatoes.  The Pope came to town in September and I spent a tense couple of days alone with the girls, with a possibly perforated esophagus, waiting for the security perimeter around my house to open up enough to allow me to get the hospital for an endoscopy.  It turned out that my esophagus had shrunk to less than 8 mm in diameter (normal is 18mm or more), and thus began the endoscopy/dilation journey that would last until summer 2017.  Birdie's health continued to be precarious.

July 2016

2016: Birdie landed in hospital with sepsis in March, and had one of the scariest breathing episodes I've ever gone through with her in July, and our pulmonologist referred us to immunology in the fall, where she was diagnosed with a mild immunodeficiency.  She started a new medication regime that was nothing short of a miracle, and passed her normally sicker-than-sick, respiratory crisis-after-crisis months in a manner befitting a normal kid.  I started sleeping for more than two hours at a time for the first time since 2010, and began the long task of assessing my other kids' emotional needs and pursuing needed therapy.  My own health continued to be precarious as I continued to have dilation endoscopies about every 12 weeks, with the consequent recoveries and problems associated with them.  My diet was up to five items, all white, all soft, all boring. I finished my 18th century working woman's costume and gave a presentation to Piglet's class in the fall.  I realized I was moving beyond the vintage world, both stylistically and sewing-wise, and tried to figure out what was going to fit my life the best.  I wrote a bit about body image and thought increasingly about how our culture contrives to make women feel terrible in their bodies.

Feb 2017

2017:  Pursuing therapy for the kids became my main priority.  I had dental surgery that further complicated my food life.  By late spring, my throat was stable and at 16 mm, and I realized I needed to address my dietary deficiencies and relearn how to eat.  I decided to try a keto(ish) approach, and started that in June.  I lost some weight, felt better, and was eating more foods again, but couldn't manage anything that was dense or stringy like bread or meat.  I started writing my second novel in June, anticipating having all four kids in school in the fall, and eager to get back to a professional life.  I actively grieved the things that come along with having special needs kids (but didn't write much about it because I couldn't, and still can't).  We visited England on a family vacation in the summer.  I continued sewing and knitting, trying to refine my style.

April 2018

April 2018

2018: My food life improved dramatically, when I discovered I could eat bread and other dense foods again, and in the fall I successfully passed a chicken challenge, and was able to incorporate poultry back into my diet after a decade's absence.  I had a breast cancer scare in the summer and now have to have an aggressive check every year.  Work on the novel continued throughout the year, and I had a messy over-written manuscript by December.  I slowed down considerably on sewing, as my style shifted and I didn't know what was going to replace it.  I started feeling the changes of being in my late 30s, both ontologically and physically, and thinking about what it all meant.  I continued writing about body image, and thinking about how to feel better in mine.  I began seeing a family therapist with the kids and it made all the difference in the world.

June 2019

2019:  I wrote about this year already.  My food life is still complicated, and probably always will be, but I'm okay with that.  My body went on a hormonal roller coaster in the late spring; I've probably entered perimenopause. I'm still trying to sort out what I think about it. 

November 2019

Whew!  I barely recognize the person I was ten years ago.  I am curious to see what the next ten years bring.  It's been a funny odd decade, that's for sure. 

Happy New Year!

Year End

This time of year is always a bit odd for me.  I've been observing Russian Christmas on January 7 for the past 14 years or so, and it still feels bit a off, in part because my kids are all in school now, with a winter break keyed to Western Christmas on 12/25.  It's been a number of years since we traveled to either side of the family for Western Christmas, and so these two weeks tend to feel like suspended animation.  (Also, I miss my family something fierce during this month, and am usually in a melancholy sort of frame of mind as a result). 

This month has been marked by a lot of illness; Piglet came home from a trip to the monastery over Thanksgiving with a fever and a cough, which then spread to the other kids in turn.  The kids' school also had several similar viruses running around, plus a stomach bug.  So the weeks of December were punctuated by sick kids at home, weekends wondering if we needed to take a child to the ER, antibiotics, steroids, and interrupted nights. 

On the last day before the winter break, Piglet came down with another fever.  A scary fever.  I don't scare easily when it comes to medical issues; I've seen too much in the past eight years to panic regularly.  But that fever.  Man. 104.4.  In my mind, that is seizure territory, because for Birdie, it is.  And febrile seizures mean ambulances, and years off my life.  The grey hair on my head didn't come from nowhere.  But for Piglet, it meant misery and delirium and fever interventions that seemed to take ages to kick in. 

Finally, after several hours, two different fever meds, a warm bath, and several wet washcloth applications, his fever got into a range that I no longer felt scared.  He fell asleep and so did I.  On Saturday, he saw the doctor and was diagnosed with pneumonia and placed on antibiotics.  (It also convinced me I need a new stethoscope, because I couldn't hear it on my old one at home).

Any plans I had for the winter break have been placed back on the shelf for reassessment on a day-to-day basis.  It's okay, actually.  I'm exhausted, and long school breaks are usually pretty stressful for me.  Having kids who are still recovering is probably a best-case scenario at this point, because we can have a relaxed schedule, and just take the days easy. 

It is the first time in a long time that I've felt at leisure to have lazy days.  I've been more at ease during the day these past few days than for a long time.  It is pleasant to be with the kids and doing my things while they play with legos, sing Gaudete, watch holiday movies, and make craft projects.  (That's not to say that they aren't fighting in frustrating ways; that's to be expected.  But the overall tone of the day is much more pleasant, and anyone who knows me in real life will know that is a big change). 

These past weeks have been a time of reassessment for me, of thinking about the year gone by, and considering the year to come.  I started the year feeling unusually anticipatory.  New Year's Eve had given me a sense that something was going to happen in 2019.  I was open and curious about many possibilities of change.  There were perhaps glimmers of things to come, but nothing substantiated. 

As I approach another New Year's Eve, I confess to feeling somewhat deflated.  I wonder about the things I attached significance to, thinking they portended something, but turned out not to (at least not at this writing).  Was I just delusional? 

Nothing has really happened this year.  Sure, I finished my novel, and submitted to a publisher, but it is languishing in limbo at the moment.  (Perhaps I'll hear one way or another in the spring).  I started sketching out the next book.  Sewed some clothes, knitted some things.  The kids finished one school year and began another.  The summer was what it was.  I turned 40.  Digging in with the emotional lives of my kids is one of the constants of my days, and I remain committed to therapy with all four of them, plus my own.  My shoulders ache with the weight of it all.  I've perhaps learned a little bit more about being a parent and a lot more about the extent of my own brokenness. 

But mostly, life just kept on trucking. 

Perhaps that is what it is right now.  Just the slow and steady putting of one foot in front of the other, of setting aside the optional and cosmetic for what lies beneath. 

Talking Tuesday: Fear and Clothing

Image via

Sometime in November, on the good advice of Lynn at American Age Fashion, I purchased Cintra Wilson's book, Fear and Clothing: Unbuckling American Style.  The book did not disappoint.  It was my first foray into Wilson's work, and I found her bracing tone enjoyable--hilarious at times.  (Her take-down of Washington DC style had me rolling on the floor). 

There were moments when I thought Ms. Wilson walked right up to the line of being offensive, but she often turned it around by a very insightful observation about her own shortcomings.  The book is organized roughly by regions, and she visits many different parts of the country in her quest to understand the particular sartorial leanings of an area and what it says about the people who live there. 

Where the book really shines, however, is toward the end, when she turns her lens on New York City, her home for many years.  Her observations about how fashion mirrors larger social trends (for good or ill), how human labor is increasingly devalued, and the ways in which capitalism twists our desires are razor sharp.  I found myself dog-earring pages and nodding along.  

Writes Wilson:

"I figured out what was really bothering me, finally, in a sea of $188 T-shirts.  I felt something vital to mankind was being violently ignored to death.  The commodity that is currently the most undervalued thing on earth is the attention, care, and labor of individual human beings. 

When you devalue actual labor--when you falsify and fetishize a look of artificial work and legitimate heavy use in a garment--how does this corrupt our ability to recognize and value actual work?  The dignified patina earned by objects of actual use and usefulness?" (pp. 225-226).

She also makes a few interesting observations about fashion in the culture that I had not considered. First, she notes that there has been virtually no change in fashion for the past 20 years or more, putting our culture in a sort of strange stasis.  This may seem unimportant, given the state of the world, but fashion tends to reflect the larger state of things. 

By way of example, you can date early 1940s garments against late 1940s garments because the lines are so different.  Early 1940s were war years, and the garments are utilitarian, military-inspired, and defined by rationing.  Late 1940s are post-war years, and the clothing reflects the softer civilian milieu and the desire for things to get back to "normal."  You could never look at clothing in 1970 and compare it to 1980 or 1990 and say there had been no change!

The stasis of fashion speaks to our Internet Age, which seems to produce nothing new, but rather recycles cultural nostalgia, comodifying and flattening the original meaning of it until it means nothing (pp. 242-43).  Plus, as Wilson and other culture watchers observe, all the fashion ages are happening all at the same time--there is literally a sartorial niche for everyone, and if everything has a niche, there is no place for fashion to push the boundaries (p. 276). 

Historically, fashion has pushed lines, change boundaries, making conversation about who we are. If there is no boundary, if all the rules have been transcended, there is nothing to be avant garde about. Fashion has become an endless line of cash-grab sequels in the Hollywood model, and we know nothing ontologically.

More importantly, however, is how our late capitalist system has transformed our very selves.  "We have all internalized the pervasive message that the gratification of our immediate individual desire is our highest priority.  We have been subliminally trained to buy things we merely want, as opposed to the things we need--and to indulge ourselves even to the point of self-sabotage whenever we feel weak, unlovely, or unloved....Our will toward consumerism feels irresistible--because it is intended to.  As a society, we choose to remain largely unaware that our desires have been built for us, by experts who have become so insidiously successful at planting seeds in our minds that grow into giant kudzu-sprawls of unanswerable longing that by the time we act upon these desires, we are fully convinced that they were organically grown in our own psyches.  We rationalize big, crazy purchases as being investments in our better selves" (p. 281-282, 285).

With the loss of ontology comes the loss of telos: the end goal of our lives.  If we don't know who we are, we cannot possibly know what the point of anything is.  Who are we living for, why are we living?  What is the legacy we leave for our children? 

This sort of cultural nihilism weighs heavily on me, because I'm far from immune from its darker impulses.  It's like constantly fighting against a current--sometimes you just want to float for a while, and stop swimming. 

My kids are at a stage where it feels like stuff is just sliding through my fingers constantly.  They are growing too fast for efficient hand-me-downs, and knit fabric (most of my kids' clothing) wears badly and is difficult to mend nicely.  I feel the environmental cost of my every purchasing decision very keenly, and it feels like dropping pebbles into an ocean, trying to dam the flow.  (And I'm not even doing a very good job of it).  I'm so very tired. 

I suppose the best way to fight it is to continue to use what we have, thrift well, mend or darn everything I can, purchase fabric and yarn as wisely as possible, and hold fast to the more ancient rhythms of the Church year.