This week the smell of sweat at its premature peak of sourness has replaced that of cherry blossom and dusty summer zeal, and by the time the linden trees deliver their addictive yellow marvel that would justly need a more accurate name than the generic ‘flower’ – one that should extirpate that slightly saccharine prettiness and romantic trauma-drama-flower-power – , my olfactory sensors shall hopefully cut their eye-teeth and allow me to regain elan in recognising each natural stage of the richest season by smell. On the other hand, blue eyes always have the hardest time accommodating to the feeling of hardly bearing a flashlight that continuously jeopardizes the main attribute of that babbling pair of jelly spheres – seeing. But the sun quits being that pervasive and irreverent at times, giving space to wreaths of clouds gently enfolding over the sky like candy floss over 90s faded denim. And while I was gradually losing my physical self to my favorite drug – silent contemplation of fugitive images which I still can’t fully comprehend, let alone describe, reality stroke in my most vulnerable nook, reminding me of how that of whom we do not speak always finds paths to overbalance our awfully fragile (in)sanity.

50 minutes later, I was wrapping a cold towel around the fluffy flesh of my daughter’s perfect pink body, then packing her in a second towel, green and slightly rough at the edges, then I searched the episode of Bugs Bunny’s 51 and a half anniversary on youtube (the dance of that skinny hare usually cheers her up immediately), trying to temper both  her terrified screams and my muddleheaded horror and anxious countdown of minutes left to the next thermometer check, to see if her fever fell at least one bit under 39.6 degrees C. I don’t think I ever felt quite as bad as yesterday evening, and that’s nothing compared to how she must have felt, not being able to understand or verbalise the state she was in, at the brim of fiery unconsciousness.

All that my clueless mind needs to super-glue to its layers of undesired experiences is Bugs Bunny’s final line, at his 51 and a half anniversary: “Oh gosh, I’m sooo unimportant!” – and if we remove the bunny-eared sarcasm in it, it’s probably the naked truth one can surely tell. Play this on repeat and make it your bedtime prayer: I am so unimportant, so bloody unimportant, and take care of those that are important to you first, because I have an increasingly acute intuition that it’s the only way that you can actually grow out of the curse of everlasting insignificance.

 

*Wearing self-made top (yes, I bold-ed it, how pathetic. The point is that I can make similar items on order, just ask for it at 5inchmemories@gmail.com – a timid start for the growing pains that my design activity shall have to overcome, step by step), thrifted skirt, Jeffrey Campbell litas, Topshop bag, vintage earrings, Swatch watch, Six sunglasses

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This morning I felt the first 9 AM chill of summer under my skirt, while on my way to the busiest crossing in town; I was wearing casual nude socks and sandals with polka dots, and with this well-fated pair on my side, it couldn’t have been anything but a perfect start for a mawkish wandering in search for an absolutely harmless simper. Later, I passed by high boxes of flats crammed with disillusioned people, like me, who probably would have panicked much more than I did if they had noticed how fluid their brick coverings, painted in colours that resemble vomit in its various states,  had become in the heat of hasty summer. I discovered that I’ve forgotten a lot of things over the past two decades, but I haven’t yet purged that corner of my memory that stocks the most uncalled-for information, such as random names on the yellow labels of most of my thrifted clothes, names of crappy actors, models, tram schedules when I typically avoid stepping in those lugubrious rusty cans on reels more than twice a year, but at some point, I was over-enthusiastically recalling those details that somehow diluted my continuously amplifying fear of becoming a person always sliced between extremes –  pathos overflow vs. fugitive unconcern, fulfillment vs. abject despair, too much teeth on display vs. too much salt on my cheeks, thanks to the water that sometimes gets organically out of track and springs from the corner of my eyes, cascades of hacking words vs. hampered silence, overwhelming dog days in this frigid town vs. emasculating cold that calls for hallucinating labour to preserve one’s jugular intact, blue skies vs. black dreams. Thank God that I can still see beauty that blossoms against all odds in this ludicrous pantomime of strayed souls over-worn with an excruciating search that has long lost its object. It was a truly bright day.

* Wearing TinaR shirt, courtesy of TinaR, thrifted skirt, Asos sandals, H&M socks, vintage jewelry

 

 

 

If my resigned disgust with filthy urban behaviours and sticky clams of dumbness generously dumped as souvenirs by potent mouths ingesting shit and spitting it all over again, in a surprising diversity of shapes and textures, should ever join hands with my wholesome greed for a life free of all unnecessary trauma and despotic butchers of affects, I would probably move in a house like this one, with one window, no door and a roof made of glass, and I would eat dandelions for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I’d lay naked on a dusty carpet and let the sun fondle my translucent skin, paralysed with blessed indifference, and ask the blasted bricks whether my skirt looks well with those shoes and whether I would ever be empty enough when I come to an end.

 

*Wearing Zara sweater, vintage skirt, Asos sandals, random earrings & sunglasses

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve read an article today, which advised bloggers on how to deal with the likely-to-occur-every-once-in-a-while writer’s block, and then I followed quite a number of tips from there: I took a short long walk, to let some provincial wind blow my sick thoughts of rotten self-pity away;  wrote something completely random, mentioning all the crap that I don’t like about today, including the fucking place in which I happen to be right now; read some more crap about post-modernist amateur poetry and the marvels of hang-overs for those in search of their artistic delusional persona ; set another deadline for this post (for the past three days or so I’ve set the same deadline, and broke it each time: it was ‘no later than today’); went to a new café instead of the usual one, because the ‘usual one’ is about 60 km away; found a lot of new and completely unappealing characters here, wearing their hair fried up with hair spray and their eyebrows painted in grotesquely stylized black curves; got high on caffeine and beer; listened to a couple of encouragingly up-stirring songs, jumped around the bathroom as I was trying to make my hair look the tinniest bit decent; bought myself a pair of orange flatform sneakers; did everything else I could think of, except for writing this post: ate all the food I could find in the house, unveiled my hips each time I passed by the mirror and covered my open mouth in horror and disgust, addressed all of my unfinished businesses with my greedy life-eating fears, forced myself to cry only behind cat-eye lenses, sent some annoying emails, indulged in a large quantity of luckies, counted down seconds and minutes, discovering the fact that this might be the most pleasant activity one can engage in, when feeling this fucking hopeless.

I still have a ton of both trivial and awful things to say, but when I step out of the house and see how displaced I am in this hell, I start craving for a six-barrel shotgun to aim at all those who can see nothing beyond a pair of hardly enduring eyes and a checked dress with frills at the collar and hem. And what do i get instead? – the bone that my confidence can still chew one is that of: ‘you’re gonna make it, you’re gonna suffer’. I therefore am exactly like everyone else is.

 

* Wearing self-made dress, Asos sandals, zara top, vintage earrings

* Photos courtesy of  the talented Noree  ( former highschool classmate, now studying photography in the UK )

 

 

 

 

 

 

While days are getting longer and shockingly brighter, a perfidious state of incertainty is getting increasingly adept at hitting me exactly when I begin trusting the fact that nothing can possibly go wronger than it did a couple of years ago. It’s just like turning your eyes to the sky, possessed by thankful bliss, free of worthly doubts and anticipatory sorrow,  just to later discern a weird object above you, at first like a falling star, then as a couple dozens of smaller ones, but as they get closer you see that they’re more like diamonds, and the more they approach, the happier you are: the sky is making you rich! But soon it dawns on you that the heavy bucket of precious stones with rough edges was dumped over your head with sheer perversion, and by the time you get back to your senses, they hit you in the head so badly, that you find yourself shattered, mingled with left-overs from a decadent feast of fake Gods.

In the midst of all this, indifference is the act of those with stark stomachs, while the character I usually play goes a long way down the road of cowardice and selfish despair. When all this drama starts feeling real and your first impulse is to cast all the blame on everyone else that drives your life around and upside down, you can be sure that the problem is in you. And those shattered stones are yours to keep and use to your own liking.

 

* Wearing vintage dress, Mango jeacket, vintage jewelry, H&M socks, Asos sandals, stupefied expression & harmless boredom – source unknown

 

 

 

 

 

I know how spring looked like all these years, with leaves and flowers exploding in trees, glad to get their coat of shivering life back on, with noisy tides of people flowing on alleys, their faces enlivened by some weird enthusiasm and hopeful eagerness, happily overtaken by an unexpected flash of sunlight and relief from the blank burden of winter. I know how mornings feel like in March and April, when the kitchen window looks just like honey and when coffee tastes best on the windowsill. I remember how the first walk with my legs bare feels, and how hiding my coats in a dark corner of my closet seals away a season of livid thoughts and high peaks of emotional poverty. Yet I always forget about the wind.

It hits me in the face and chest and rumples my clothes and makes me question my ability to stand on my own feet, it makes fun of my hair, like a hairdresser on acid trying out all possible ways to tangle my blonde locks  into turbulent cascades of gold, flowing up and down and all over my cheeks, sticking on my sore lips and whipping my eyelids with playful spite. It slows me down when I long to fly above the ground, it shrinks my pride and trembling figure, it tries to steal away the things I hold on to, lurrs me into places I’ve never been before, promising to catch me if I dare to leap into the most deceitful desires. It blows out the the sturdy patience that has kept me from destroying the priceless grain of trust that I somehow found, after endless years of silent storms in my guts, and turns big words into a bigger parody.

Now I have to learn how to dance with it all over again, neither walking against it, nor letting myself carried away by it.

 

* Wearing Zara sweater & T-shirt, thrift trousers, Jeffrey Campbell boots, vintage earrings

* There are still a few more days left to enter the TinaR giveaway – more details HERE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I had to stick to one dress for the rest of my life, it would have to be a very special one, in the first place. It would have to have all my favorite colors on it, and know what future colors I would fall for, so it would have those too; it would have polka dots, checks, small flowers, big flowers, paisley and stardust print; it would have layers of lace, chiffon, white cotton, velvet,  and maybe some tulle; it would have to cover  my ass well in winter, and also let my chest breathe freely and bare my arms gently during summer; it would have to smell like daisies in spring, and like apple & pumpkin pie during autumn (with just a hint of cinnamon); oh, and a collar would be welcome, as well – make that a peter pan collar; detachable, of course; I sometimes like myself a generous decolletage, so that I can make it very clear that I have no breasts really, so I’m far from attractive, actually.

I’d wear that dress on a hill, running down so fast, that I’d feel I was flying; I’d wear it behind trees, hiding from bees and wet kisses; I’d wear it on the street, walking to places where people look at me with such ambiguous curiosity; I’d wear it at the theatre, where I’d always fear of cold and empty halls, and end up instead stolen by peculiar emotions, laughing with tears, crying without them, feeling all sad and satisfied and a-fucking-live; I’d wear it on the train, while impulsively trying to hold my breath and stuff a pair of blue headphones in my ears, then finding a piece of heaven on the curves of a plain that can truly teach you how to belong to all worlds and seasons, and to none at all, at the same time; I’d wear it with my unconsciously happy face, exemplifying how sheer joy, retarded fear of facial expressions and childish artlessness can coexist between the outlines of the same tired face; I would have to wear it at work too, but work is something I don’t like to do in narrow places with lightheaded people; I’d wear it at home, while washing dishes and cooking meals whenever I felt an imminent threat of love & happiness overflow that I wouldn’t know how to handle; I’d wear the same dress whenever I had to deal with my unbearable weaknesses, a fight that always ends up with coffee (no sugar or milk, as usual) and discreet sobs; I’d wear that dress whether I liked it or not, whether I wanted to live forever or stop living, in certain moments that later get left out of my personal mythology; I’d have to get used to being looked at like I was wearing a different dress each day, when it would be so damn obvious that I would only wear it upside down or inside out or play with its rich layers and smart construction, but at the very core, it would be nothing more than one dress. My own.

 

*Wearing TinaR dress, a light coat / dress from a small Parisian boutique which can still be smelt on the fabric, vintage clutch, brooche & earrings, Biba Bijoux ring, Jeffrey Campbell shoes

* Photos by Diana Cilian

 

* Don’t forget to enter the Tina R contest – you can win an item of your own choice, from a brand with both a history and a bright future in the making! Leave a comment in the previous post and visit TinaR to choose from a wide range of versatile pieces in their Spring Collection!

 

 

 

 

 

In the mist of every ordinary morning, eyelids still glued one to the other, unwilling to be separated so as to allow the indiscreet morning light perform a violent rape to sleepy eyes, my pleasant state of confusion is suddenly kicked off by a peculiar feeling of urgency that somehow manages to surprise me each time, as if I felt it for the very first time (again, I insist: it happens to me every damn morning!) and as if it announced a special day with less ordinary circumstances and mythical rewards, in the end. The same urge that drags me to the kitchen, takes over my hands, guiding them through a heap of strange, neglected objects that ease up my entrance to the world ‘out there’: a metal coffee pot, a plate upon which I am to spill a handful of cereals and soak it afterwards with just a bit of tap water, a spoon that I always find myself holding in my left hand, not knowing what purpose it’s supposed to serve afterall: put the raw coffee in the pot, blend the final result with milk, or eat the cereals with?! It takes about two and a half cups of coffee to realize that the only thing that will detach my aching self from the kitchen table and the pink laptop is a cold shower (literally) and an inspired choice of items from my wardrobe (most of yesterday was saved by a mixture of three different shades of green and an acid lilac one). It takes 10 seconds of water pouring over my hair and bony back and a quick blink of an eye to start planning my day frantically and to anticipate the too-well-known agenda: stress out at noon already, seeing hours pass by like a speeding car with a thick-skinned driver, spilling the dirty liquid contains of a slop all over my pretty dress and almost ruining my favorite shoes; run out the door at least one hour later than planned, spend the next one walking and then accommodating to the smoke and noises of a seemingly serene and harmless place, find myself thrown into another hurricane of roughneck emotions, a fight always sold out by a deceptive rapid dance of the eyes (window-screen-table-window-shoes-screen-hands-phone-window-screen-paper-cup) that, hand in hand with nervous quick sips of coffee and knocking heels loudly to the rhythm of music, might give away just the right wrong impression of me: yes, I do have self-control issues, over-achievement issues, time-management issues, but – no, you don’t want to hear me talking about that, and frankly, I don’t want to talk about it either, unless I am permitted to add an important note at the end: I really DO have it all under control! Most of the time.

And all while I was busy chasing myself and looking over my back  every minute to see who else might be chasing me, some odd thing occurs and short circuits my neurotic algorithm. I don’t even bother to pack my shitty plans and send them away dancing, I don’t draw the line and use the best of my decisional strength to say ‘that’s it! away with you, nerve-racking drives!’, I don’t even realize that it’s all suddenly just gone. It was last Saturday that I stopped thinking and started cooking a plain lunch – mashed potatoes and a dill sauce- for the little curly lady of the house, she ate a huge plate of it, and with great pleasure – which filled me with a joy so simple, yet so intense – it was the rawest feeling I’ve felt for a long, long while, as I’m used to having mostly ‘ghost’ feelings, constructions that I must decipher in order to clean up the mess they produce. Next, I spent my day in the same relaxed state of mind, cleaning, doing laundry, with the little one jumping besides me, trying to help out, and even though I tried -and hard did I try, really!- to exercise calmness and keep a healthy distance to all things that, as fulfilling as they may be when finished and sent out into the world, rip me to pieces when they sneak out and remain undone, left out on the traumatic ‘to do’ list, I still don’t have the guts to admit that life is what really just happens while I run like a dog chasing cars. If I did admit it, I’d have no more excuses.

*For the sake of simplicity and classy elegance, I tried to wear this very pretty shift dress from French Connection; pointless to say that I couldn’t resist styling it up in my very own way, so that the result is a bit further away from ‘simple’ than I had planned  wanted; Jeffrey Campbell boots, vintage bag and jewelry, Bershka coat, Carturesti book bag (I’d like to be buried wearing a dress in that shade of green)

 

 

Am I forgetting something? Just about everything I’ve previously said. Hop back in, on the rollercoaster. The higher you reach, the harder the fall is.

 

 

 

 

After a year in which all fetes and holidays seemed not more than an unnecessary distraction and when the biggest and most cherished gift was the luxury of having many normal days, abundant in hours of work and preferably without the burden of less ordinary incidents, I got to expect the 8th of March (and the 1st, as well) with  both fear and controlled indifference  - a day when an incredible number of flowers were bought and forgotten in tall glass vases, when a lot of gifts where given and a lot of  ’thank you’-s were whispered by blossomed lips, on busy streets, behind office doors and in houses with enough emotional  luggage to fill museums for the unlucky lonely ones, most likely sharing their lives with the wrong person(s). I, like countless girls and women, also got flowers yesterday, and although they were in fact quite lovely  flowers and suddenly brought a lot of light and color to my room and tired mind, it was only due to a sturdy politeness that I resisted to the impulse of asking the question that has been grinding my thoughts this month: ‘What exactly am I celebrated for?’. Naturally, I ended up, as always, in company of my convoluted thoughts and with a slight choke in my throat.

Any intention of boring you, by summing up all the reproaches one with a propensity towards feminist convictions would invoke in their attempt to argue with the grounds of our society, dominated by male representations, is not exactly part of my plan. However, I can’t avoid mentioning the harsh perspective according to which all the atributes associated with womanly beauty are nothing but constructions meant to reduce the range of our potential to that of sexual incitement and motherhood. I wonder which one of us,  overruled by more or less personal desires or interests, hasn’t at least once felt constrained to fit the narrow male fancy? Exactly. So we are ‘overwhelmed’ with presents and big words of appreciation which beg us to continue performing the same act that got us here in the first place: use your ‘natural resources’ of beauty to their full potential, hide your weaknesses, speak politely and with utter delicacy, know how to keep the balance between fragility and silent power, bear your child with grace, then raise it patiently and love it unconditionally, even if that happens to confiscate the life you’ve had ‘before’ (they like to call it ‘sacrifice’, it has a strong resonance and a highly dramatic echo) and you find yourself abandoned in a story meant for two characters – or three, counting in the child as well, cook exemplary, keep a perfectly clean house, do not farth or belch and pretend you don’t ever use the toilet either (let alone leave olfactory traces at the ‘scene’), wake up one hour before he does and brush your teeth, so you don’t get him to mistake your ‘good morning’ by ‘bad morning..breath!’,  and if you manage to sneak a good career there, among many others, you should be praised as the perfect woman. Instead… you are really not! It might sound a bit too much of a conception combining the stereotypical 50s housewife with the addition brought about (or, in fact, allowed) by the 21st century, but if you leave all false pretenses aside(that is, if you step on your  pride and thus be able to point out the fakeness in which a woman’s life is so masterfully wrapped up in), you’ll see that, sadly, things haven’t changed all that much for us in a few dozens years.

Ok, so it seems that my innate indignation got a bit ahead of me, while on my long way to finishing this post, I must admit that it doesn’t all come down to a black&grey reality. There’s a thin line between nurturing the desire to be noticed ( and this isn’t typical of females only, men also practice seduction, and, as time goes by, they seem to be fast learners!) – whether by means of appearance or other ways of loud self-expression-, and being judged solely by the above-mentioned parameters, but it’s important that there is one! And there’s much more to the subject of ‘us, ladies, and how everyone else sees us’- precisely to the subject of how we want to be seen – , because I don’t think I only speak for myself when I say that, for example, when I dress up for whatever reason drags me out of the house, I do have in mind the particular image I want to leave behind, like the sweet scent of a sophisticated perfume (or the image I want to hit in the face with, like a rainbow-colored hammer – depending on the nature and aesthetic taste of the ‘spectator’), and that image is by far not meant for sheer seduction. I like to indulge in a type of self-expression that requires an external eye to either admire, hate or be puzzled by a presence hard to ignore – the reactions are always different, and that increases the excitement! I don’t seek some sort of validation from anyone, because I’ve grown to know part of my value and to make a clear difference between me and what is important to me and what everyone else finds or overlooks in me.

As I was searching for an outfit yesterday morning, I witnessed an unlikely conflict between my raw intuition and sartorial hunger for spectacular outfits, for what I see as an assumed ostentatious celebration of womanhood in its most visual-appealing form. I felt that clothes simply don’t satisfy me fully anymore- besides from having a sadly short life ( a bad quality item only lasts a couple of weeks to one season, a decent one sticks with you for 3 or 4 years the most, and the more valuable, or designer pieces can, when well preserved and taken care of, last you a lifetime), they also usually have a short lived fashion relevance (ok, that’s less my case, because I choose not to take trends that seriously). I started looking for something more… certain, powerful, autonomous, something you can develop a steady relationship with. Jewelry! (Not the jewelry I wear all day long, cheap vintage finds from several unlikely places) Next, I was dreaming of heavy necklaces with fat gemstones , thrown carelessly over a random white cotton tee, huge diamond rings and chandelier earrings, pieces that don’t need to send any biased message, which are heart-breakingly beautiful even when resting in their dusty boxes, or forgotten on the tea table, or when lost between the sheats during precious moments of intimacy. Pieces that can speak so well of your past, when you hold them in crumpled, old hands, that you might either want to take them to the grave or leave them to your grandchildren, as tokens in which you hope they’ll decipher a small secret you’ve never told.

On my way home yesterday evening, I had already exhausted everything that I was fearing of, and, my mind released from the pinch of a very hard day, I was only wishing for a casual night in, near the person I’ve been missing the entire day, and, if I should be allowed to make a daring wishlist for this or any other day of the year – a priceless piece from a collection of jewelry that has recently caught my eye  and made my lust for jewelry even more intense- 77 Diamonds, check it out if you share my ‘hurtful’ craving! After all, I still don’t have a wedding ring.

 

* Wearing no-name jacket, Zara sweater, vintage skirt, bag and jewelry, Jeffrey Campbell shoes

 

* Pictures taken by Bernadette Demeter – thanks, B.! (I’ve been wanting to say that ever since I first watched Gossip Girl )

PS.  The following pictures are a proof that spring has – finally! – arrived, as I could walk around wearing no more than a sweater and jacket and feel damn goood about it!

 

 

 

 

 

Lace, wool and color block all over myself; rumpled skin on my hands that have the amazing capacity of cooling hot drinks in winter, by means of temperature transfer, and chipped neon enamel on my nails;

confusing pairings of fear and blind enthusiasm, tights and socks and more socks and sandals in mid-February, heart-racing anxiety and dead-calm when faced with impossible choices and dead ends;

broad smiles decorating good moods and impressive resources of ugly pouts and smashing curses, casual substitutes of throwing glass objects and mobile phones into naked walls – silent witnesses of my ups and downs on that damn ladder I have to climb all day long in order to prove my minute worthiness, the fragile, slippery ladder that has the  annoying habit  of throwing  me off balance just as soon as I reach its upper steps, causing a lot of pain in my ass bones, after landing back on the ground;

jumping and spinning and singing to the songs that make me glide into the sweetest rock&roll brisk sorrow, dancing in puffed skirts with bows and candy sticks, wearing shoes that hurt my feet and push up the adrenaline when I feel that I’m about to fall and sprain my ankle; occasionally falling from 5 inches above the ground, ruining a good pair of tights and causing other derisory damages to my stark knees;

parading around in clothes that exude the exuberant joy that I would be completely incapable of showing if, God forbid, my closet caught fire or be emptied by thieves with a good taste in fashion; occasionally planting small pieces of myself in long, winding phrases that probably few have the patience and interest to read, on this leaflet named Five Inch Memories;

crying the hell out of a sunny day, then blaming the red swollen eyes to a fictive conjunctivitis when suddenly bumping into a random aquaintance; a cursed obsession with the fatidic number shown by the scale – the one, possibly only, thing I hate stepping on;

food-phobia, automobile- phobia, thick-hair-on-girls’-arms-phobia, swimming-in-the-sea-phobia, sweaty-people-in-summer-phobia, official-phonecalls-phobia, hospital-phobia, ugly-shoes-and-flat-sandals-that-show-too-much-skin-phobia;

food addiction, 5 inch platform shoes addiction, Ipod, laptop and camera addiction; a blessed addiction to holding my little girl tight before sleep, and to the smell of her curly hair in the morning;

repeated attempts (of increasing intensity) to believe in God; not being able to feel completely awake until I hit the ground; giving too much credit to half-people, then being obliged to correct my naivety and flush them down the toilet; still looking for that mid-road between not feeling worthy for what I have and being hungry for a lot more.

*Wearing Jaeger sweater, vintage lace dress, Asos socks, Topshop platfroms & bag, vintage earrings