Lacy, Lacy Bras, or, A Bus Writer
”I’m just
standing in underwire heaven and babbling like a crazy person.” This is,
surely, Lorelai Gilmore’s one-liner from season four’s The Reigning Lorelai (s
4 ep 16), and it popped into my head the other day, while I was riding the bus
to town, on my way to work.
I was
thinking about writing something about one of my favorite things in this
wonderful world, expensive couture bras, and was in the middle of collecting
ideas in my head library, some favorite bra-memories, interesting or funny
facts or stories on bras, and thinking about some bra-related lines from my
favorite shows or movies, when I of course immediately thought of Lorelai.
What is
more interesting, though, is the following, totally unrelated matter, that
popped into my head right after I had mentally ear-marked the line and resolved
to find out which episode, in what season, in what circumstance.
A short
while ago, I was sitting in the audience at a literary event, and one of the
writers present, sitting in the small panel discussing speculative fiction and
science fiction in Finnish literature, made an off-hand remark, after having
several times begun her stories with “I was sitting in the bus, thinking about
it“, how by the sound of it she considered herself to be a real bus writer, and
how lots of ideas came to her on bus rides to town or back.
I
immediately related and connected to her term and description, and waited for
the nonexistent Q&A -portion of the evening to begin, just so that I could
tell her what a great name, and how I, too, made use of the daily bus rides in
order to make notes, or mull over an existing thought, or just let the ideas
come. I especially loved how she explained her stories in such hands-on,
natural and spontaneous way, as if she hadn’t yet contracted a case of the
norman mailers, to which many renowned writers often fall prey.
The idea
of a bus writer got me thinking of the purest bus writer of them all, Jim
Jarmusch’s fictional character Paterson, in only the best damn film of 2016 of
the same name, and if you didn’t catch it in theaters, shame on you! Paterson,
played so beautifully by Adam Driver - I was overwrought for weeks after,
day-dreaming of marrying the poor guy - is a bus driver in the town of
Paterson, New Jersey, has the deep and exquisite soul of the purest poet,
is a huge fan of the famous man of the town of Paterson, the poet William
Carlos Williams, and sits at nights in a small cleaning closet turned into a study,
on the basement floor of his humble house he shares with his drop-dead gorgeous
woman and her vicious dog, writing his own lovely poems in a small journal.
This journal is his dearest belonging, and he has it with him on the bus as
well, and when he goes to sit on a bench outside to have a solitary lunch,
watching the Passaic Falls while he eats whatever silly things his woman has
assembled, he takes out the journal and works on his poems there, too.
Paterson
lives a very simple, even slow, life, doing his manual work, writing, walking,
watching, and listening to people around him, and by the smallest of hints we,
the audience, sort of induce he has been in the armed forces in his time,
perhaps in war, and so has now the rare ability to enjoy the quiet life, not
sweat the small stuff, and appreciate everything around him. In other words, a
very enviable place to be.
I never
had a lot of money, even before I gave up the full work week to write, and
while sometimes being poor has bothered me, I guess for the most part, I have
come to terms with what I’ve got. Of course, being a typical woman, I suck at
handling my financial affairs, and by the end of the month am, without
exception, basically eating the rim of one of my many hats.
There is,
though, the annual getaway I seem to need in the most desperate way. After
dealing with the house work, which I do not hate, except window washing, oh and
mopping, the day-to-day life lived mainly around the house all year, and it’s a
nice house, my man has agreed to let me have my way a lot, since I’m the one
who spends so much time home anyway, I develop a feeling in the spring, that
come summer vacation I need to get out of the house or I’ll start taking
hostages. It’s not that I hate my life, quite the contrary, but I think it is a
very universal need to just be elsewhere, even for a little while, to air one’s
brain a bit, to see who it is that we have chosen to live with, I know in my
household, with our totally conflicting timetables, we sometimes forget, and
just recharge. You know the feeling well, everyone does.
What I am
saying is, I guess I related to the character of Paterson so much because
mostly I feel like I, too, love living the simple life, and don’t mind that
things are the same every day. Actually, it makes me trust my surroundings
more, if things are the same. And I feel that it is an absolute condition for my
writing, to have steady routine where I can let my mind roam free. Once a year
is enough for me, to seek change, and even then, it isn’t so different: the answer, to me, is always, always, Paris. Paris,
for writers. Paris, the divine. Paris, the romantic shot in the head. Paris,
who never runs out of character or interest. What little money I have, it all
goes to pay for the trip to Paris. What incredible luck to have met someone in
this life, who totally agrees on the necessity of Paris once a year.
The bras,
on the other hand, are a guilty pleasure. I can’t afford them; yet, as it goes with
guilty pleasures, I always seem to be able to cough up the funds, if I see
something extremely gorgeous. Happily enough, the spending spree could be aimed
at a more ill-advised direction; pretty underwear isn’t something spouses frown
upon, in my experience, like ever.
I am a
heavy user of second-hand or thrift shops, and flea markets, and I have a knack
for surviving on next to nothing, if I feel I really needed the shoes, or
jacket, or whatever, but also the more one browses those kinds of stores, the
more one’s eye gets honed to find lovely things, and it isn’t the outerwear,
anyway, that breaks my bank account’s back. It is, as suggested all over here,
the beautiful lace underwear. And the bras? Never, ever, used. Always new, from
a boutique, where they bring the samples in the changing room for you, and you
never have to leave the scented, powdered boudoir, until after you have decided
on what it is going to be. I take after my mother in that I, too, have always
preferred colorful, complex bras over the simple black and white ones, and the
longer I have been in a position to be able to get my stuff from the boutiques,
the wider their selections are becoming by the year, and the happier a bra
owner I myself am getting to be.
I take
dear care of my things, too, and I can tell all you washing machine girls out there
(yes, I’m looking at you, Roberts), that washing my pretty delicates every
night by hand in the wash basin with Marseille soap is another therapeutic
moment of reflection for me. Shorter, sure, than taking my daily bus rides, but
still, it is something I just do, without thinking about it, and it really
takes my mind off my day job, back to the realms of my not so secret other
life, as The Narrator of Our Lives, as I, not at all pompously, declared to H.
at work just yesterday.
I have a
deep, yet at times, stifled, love for pink, ever since high school I think,
when I, fresh from rummaging my sister’s wardrobe without permission, galloped
in the school yard in light blue jeans and the pink, floral patterned sweater I
just adored, thinking I was the dog’s tuxedo, and of course I was, too! One of
the by-gone bras I have had over the years, one of the unfortunates that didn’t
stand the test of time, was soft pink, and it had embroidered red cherries on
the cups. It was my absolute Sunday bra, and I used it cautiously for some
years in my early twenties, before I gained a little weight so that it didn’t
fit me anymore, and I guess the work wasn’t first class, either, because I
don’t have it anymore. That is one of the graveyard bras I still pine after.
That is, except
recently, when I, after years of fruitless haunting, finally found a stunning
piece I needed to have in the worst way. It wasn’t cherries, this time, but
hearts, and I figured it is so lovely, and romantic, and I don’t really care,
because when a girl is going through shit, she needs some pampering.
I have
been having trouble sleeping, for over three years now, and as some of you may
have noticed, I am trying to overcome my sleeping pill dependency right now. It
is a roller-coaster, to say the least, because the sleeping pills were an
antidepressant as well, and while in my case it is sometimes impossible to say
if I am still depressed, or if it is just Tuesday, I feel the withdrawal
syndrome working, and it probably will, for the next few weeks, or months,
even.
So when I say
the brassiere purchase was really important to me, I am far from exaggerating.
To get a wide smile out of the girl, just hand her a tote bag with the word
Simone Pérèle on it. I have always reveled in the fact that by checking out my
attire, say, in a bus, one would never ever assume I was wearing a
hundred-and-fifty-euro Primadonna bra underneath. Just like from looking at
one’s fellow travelers one wouldn’t be able to tell who was thinking money, who
sex, and who a novel. I can just tell you, that if I had a sudden emergency,
and the Adam Driver -lookalike bus driver had to examine me on the spot, I’d be
all set, any given day.
I would
like to add, in case she ever stumbles upon this text, that had I had the chance
– read: why didn’t the organizers of the literary event organize a Q&A
portion? I never thought it was possible to have this kind of event and not
have a Q&A – in addition of telling her that bus writers were we, born to
be free, just like the fish in the sea[1], I would have complemented
her beautiful attire, a stunning short dress with tulle and frills, and asked
her if she was excited to see how they had tackled The Dark Tower universe in
the up-coming movie, and asked how long her bus ride takes.
Mine takes
about twenty minutes, fifteen at night, if the driver is anxious to have the
shift over with, and I feel, given the vast meta-dimensions and complexities of
King’s fantasy series, I have been cautiously excited after seeing some still
photos of Idris Elba as Roland, and isn’t it nice, if not entirely trouble-free,
to have King’s contribution to the world of fantasy, with his Old Western take
on the genre, what with the fantasy leaning usually so very heavily on
Tolkien’s world and nothing else?
Looking at
my question list here, I am having, quite wisely perhaps, second thoughts about
verbalizing them in front of an audience, where I felt I was subtly being in
picked at as it was, with my street clothes attire and my crazy three bags
situation, in a beautiful hall with the crème of the town’s literati sitting in
their designer blouses and expensive haircuts, sipping wine and laughing,
understatedly, in all the appropriate places. Being a writer is hard, having to
deal with these types of events all the time if one wants to sell some books. Being
in the audience with an unrelated list of questions is much easier.
Ladies: J.S.
Meresmaa, Salla Simukka, Johanna Sinisalo, you were all wonderful up there. But
I raise my glass to you, my fellow bus writer, Anni Nupponen.
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