black
I can't really explain why I have chosen to wear black or how long I will continue to make this choice. Though, I suppose it will be at least long enough to justify the shopping I've done.
I do occasionally geek out on tradition, but I don't embrace tradition simply for its own sake.
I can say that in the aftermath, color felt wrong. Wanting my outside to represent my inside, I craved the emptiness and despair of black. I wanted to mark myself so that the people with whom I interacted could see my state, my in-a-fogness, my dropped-out-of-timeness.
I'm not in that place anymore. I've re-entered time, and the fog is lifting.
But I'm still choosing black.
Beginnings and endings are different sides of the same coin. The tragic end of my marriage is also the hopeful beginning of a phase I can not yet name. I miss Adam terribly, but at the same time I am intrigued by the possibilities ahead of me. My practical self is incapable of wallowing, but forging ahead too quickly would be folly.
Limiting myself to the plain emptiness of black is a call to dwell in my grief, to inhabit the liminal wilderness between end and beginning, to slow down.
It is like a fast from color.
I do occasionally geek out on tradition, but I don't embrace tradition simply for its own sake.
I can say that in the aftermath, color felt wrong. Wanting my outside to represent my inside, I craved the emptiness and despair of black. I wanted to mark myself so that the people with whom I interacted could see my state, my in-a-fogness, my dropped-out-of-timeness.
I'm not in that place anymore. I've re-entered time, and the fog is lifting.
But I'm still choosing black.
Beginnings and endings are different sides of the same coin. The tragic end of my marriage is also the hopeful beginning of a phase I can not yet name. I miss Adam terribly, but at the same time I am intrigued by the possibilities ahead of me. My practical self is incapable of wallowing, but forging ahead too quickly would be folly.
Limiting myself to the plain emptiness of black is a call to dwell in my grief, to inhabit the liminal wilderness between end and beginning, to slow down.
It is like a fast from color.
Ah, Kate.... I think of you often as I make my way slowly through a book of poetry by Gregory Orr, The Book that Is the Body of the Beloved. It is about love, loss, grief, honoring the sacrality of existence--that which was and is and will be.
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