Most Fashionable Reader! Zelda has dragged herself out of The Treacherous Abyss and has pulled herself to her feet to, well, face her demons head-on by writing about some form of some sort of journey into hell. Zelda is not one to rub salt in her wounds, Dear Reader, but she does have a fondness for rubbing alcohol.
James Joyce! Zelda has missed you so! Also Ulysses! Zelda cannot wait to go farther with you! Maybe even third base! And Vivienne! Zelda has missed you more! Zelda has missed you most!
The video below is something that has made Zelda feel better lately. It is a sweet little song — Zelda had forgotten about it until she heard it whilst getting her hair styled last week. Zelda feels the lyrics would have been a tad more cohesive, however, had Anna Nalick written it when she was a little older. Ah, well.
“My God! It’s so beautiful when the boy! Smiles!”
The writing on the wall
Fade past the unglazed mug, the shampoo commercial, the Still Life with Waterfall. Fingers blunt with cold. The sound of an old film. Aspirin tablets, chicken salad sandwiches. Extension cords round the room like lions. The smell of the weak, the descent of their last end –
Well hello! Welcome to this Missive of Fashion! Zelda realizes that it has been quite some time since she and the Most Fashionable Vivienne have written. Zelda is writing to you, Most Fashionable Reader, to reveal that she and the Most Fashionable Vivienne apologize for this travesty. Zelda is here to tell you, Most Fashionable Reader, that she and the Most Fashionable Vivienne will soon return to grace the presence of their very own blog. She and Vivienne are also here to tell you, Most Fashionable Reader, that you will not be disappointed when they do. Zelda and Vivienne will return to TheHyacinthGirls.com on the First of October, 2008. At present, they are getting quite comfortable in their alter-alter egos: Vivienne as Bette Davis, and Zelda as Joan Crawford.
Would you, Most Fashionable Reader, like to have a peek at what Vivienne and Zelda will be working on during the month of October? Here it is:
Don’t call it a comeback, Most Fashionable Readers; Vivienne and Zelda have been here for years.
Zelda knows, Dearest, Most Fashionable Reader, that she must write a few more poems to reach her goal of 30 FaOuLiPoWriMo [Fashionable OuLiPo Writing Month of Fashion] poems. Zelda has been rather tired lately because of lack of nutrients, as she has not gone grocery shopping in a while and is forced to scavenge her pantry for forgotten packets of Raman Noodles and dusty boxes of instant pudding.
So until Zelda goes grocery shopping and restores the nutrients in her body, Zelda must leave you, Most Fashionable Reader, to consider this:
Consider Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in The Departed. Consider his perpetually furrowed brow. Consider his propensity toward violence. Consider his height and his scowl. Consider the curve of his shoulders. Consider that he orders cranberry juice at a bar, which suggests an attempt to refrain from drinking alcohol, which suggests a previous unhealthy relationship with alcohol. Consider that he has identity issues. Consider that he has many issues, period, but consider that he is still more mature than any man his age that this speaker has ever met. Consider that, after verbally sparring with his appointed psychiatrist, he asks her if she’d like to join him for a cup of coffee. Consider that she says yes. Consider that this speaker would say yes to a cup of coffee with Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in The Departed, too. Consider the slim chance of happiness for this most fashionable speaker since the only man in the whole world she feels she can love is a fictional creation, one who doesn’t even make it to the end of the movie. Consider this, Dear Reader. Consider this.
Most Fashionable Reader! Since Zelda shamefully admitted to being Shamefully and Highly Unfashionable as of late, Zelda has discovered that it is quite therapeutic to reveal secrets of shame and great sorrow. So. Today, Most Fashionable Reader / Reader of Fashion, Zelda will reveal, for the first time publicly, one of her secrets that she deems Incredibly Shameful.
But first! A preface to the Secret of Shame! Let Zelda tell you, Most Fashionable Reader, that she has no problems talking about most anything that has to deal with her personal issues. Now, don’t get Zel wrong — she is NOT the type of person who goes up to strangers and says, “Well hello! My name is Zelda, and I am a sober alcoholic who has battled depression and anxiety all of her life! How are you doing this most fashionable evening?” Zelda does, however, have no qualms with discussing her issues when she deems such a discussion necessary.
But! There is one thing that Our Dearest, Most Fashionable Zelda has revealed to less than a handful of people. Here goes, Dear Reader. Are you ready? Zelda cannot believe she is actually writing this down, but oh well: Zelda has Attention Deficit Disorder. That’s right. Zelda has ADD. Now Zelda knows, Zelda knows: it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Why? Well, because, as every book on Attention Deficit Disorder tells you, most people with ADD are incredibly creative! Hooray! Wow! Awesome!!!
But here’s the thing, Dearest Reader: Zelda doesn’t want to be known as a creative woman. When Zelda thinks of creativity, she thinks of windchimes made from thriftstore silverware, potholders made from bottlecaps, wreaths made from dried apple cores, etc., etc. Zelda doesn’t want to be a creative person who happens to have ADD. She wants to be a successful person who happens to have ADD. She wants a baker’s dozen of personal assistants, she wants to dictate confidential memos to her secretary, she wants a Range Rover the color of gunmetal, she wants an executive chair covered with Italian leather at the head of a boardroom table, etc., etc. This is why she found Delivered from Distraction: Getting the Most out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder so fabulous — because it gives profiles of highly successful businesspeople that include how ADD has helped their careers as well as the pitfalls of ADD.
Oh yeah! The FaOuLiPoWriMoFa [Fashionable OuLiPo Writing Month of Fashion] poem! Zelda has used a section of Judith Greenbaum and Geraldine Markel‘s Finding Your Focus: Practical Strategies for the Everyday Challenges Facing Adults with ADD entitled “How to Use Self-Talk as a Memory Aid” as her source text, and she curtailed each line.
Stop! Am I –
A quieter place. Too noisy in here.
Did I hear this time? Am I too
tired? Think. Before saying anything,
get angry, tense. What
is here? This.
Stop.
Stop!
Down the choices slowly and carefully.
I feel. I think.
Only concentrate. I’m finished.
We can go. I can –
Failing doesn’t mean. What
can I try again? Give up to keep trying.
Maybe I need this. Should I go?
The problem: the things
I need. If I go
slowly, solutions happen. Strategy
Careful Readers of the Blog might’ve noticed Vivienne’s conspicuous absence. Careful Readers of the Blog might also have said to themselves, Oh, dear. Vivienne must be going through “a time.” Careful Readers of the Blog would, indeed, be correct in their assumption that Vivienne has been going through “a time,” so far as Careful Readers of the Blog do not define “a time” as an enjoyable period of sunshine, lollipops, rainbows, and daffodils, or as a brief period of slight unfashion that can be cured by an evening with the Lifetime Network, Ben and Jerry’s, and All-Natural White Cheddar Cheetos. Careful Readers of the Blog, however, will probably realize that any “time” which prevents Vivienne from practicing OuLiPo must be quite a time indeed.
And, indeed, Vivienne has been buried in the rubble of an earthquake of Unfashion. Vivienne feels as though her very body, her very soul, her very essence — nay, her very WORLD — has been sucked into the mouth of The Nothing like so much spaghetti. Vivienne has been having the kind of “time” where she feels she has much more in common with a two year old collapsed in a sobbing pile of anguish at having been denied a cookie and throwing her favorite stuffed animal repeatedly against the wall than anyone else. Vivienne has been having the kind of “time” which results in her driving home at night listening to “Back in Black” at top volume and belting I-I-I-I go baaaccckk tooooo uussssssss along with Amy Winehouse at top volume while feeling jealous that Amy Winehouse has the sweet release of crank and crack and smack and whatever the hell else she’s smoking these days, also at top volume. Vivienne has been having the kind of “time” that results in her not only singing Amy Winehouse songs at top volume but simultaneously weeping at top volume, so that, by the time she reaches the gas station by her apartment, her carefully-applied smoky eye make-up has turned into the kind of racoonish wreck once made fashionable by the ever-fashionable Courtney Love, only she’s taken things one step further, as her glitter-specked black liquid eyeliner has stained her cheeks and tear-wiping hands as black as Amy Winehouse’s crack-crank-smack-stained fingernails. Vivienne has been having the kind of “time” that results in her not even bothering to spit-wipe the glittering black liquid eyeliner stains from her cheeks and tear-wiping hands before she enters the gas station by her apartment, and Vivienne has been having the kind of “time” that results in her looking the gas station attendant straight in the eye and saying, what? What? You got a problem? when, with cheeks and tear-wiping hands covered in glittering black eyeliner stains, she comes to the counter to purchase a bottle of red wine, an extra-large bag of peanut M&Ms, a bag of cat litter, and a pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights.
Which means that Vivienne has been thinking a great deal about probability. For instance: how, purely through probability, and seemingly without a choice of her own, she has ended up In Her Station — the gas station mentioned above, for instance, which works as a Fitting Metaphor. And Vivienne has been thinking about OuLiPo and potentiality, though not necessarily actuality. But Vivienne has been thinking about the part of probability theory which states something like this (all of Vivienne’s understanding of mathematics generally boils down to “it’s something like this,” by the way): how the probability of a sample set adds, in a sense, up to one. So Vivienne got to thinking about how there’s sort of a sum that each x in this kind of set adds up to. So Vivienne got to thinking about how this might apply to text: how, for instance, each word x in a certain position in a series of lines of text might add up to a poetic sum. So, Vivienne experimented with an invented constraint she is going to refer to as Sum Probability. She took the first word in the first line, second word in the second line, third word in the third line, and so on until the series ended and had to repeat, in a text to see if it would add up to a poetic sum. The text in question is one which also deals with probability: Alberto Moravia’s Two Women, later made into a Film of Fashion featuring that ultimate icon of all Fashionable Things Which are Fashionable, Sophia Loren, which deals with the ways in which two women’s lives are changed drastically by the chance occurrence of war. Here is the result:
Then Later –
Man’s walking and one –
many – they but are dragged
that people laden — that
in the weariest –
along which valley
national? — via mouthed -
say it – filled green. America
brings its power, motorcars
that — kind soldiers, armored
boughs — large curving of a pair
noticed — recovered. With dear
wind distantly — we too in
would– fire – come on – mine?
Out. Anti-aircraft is the only
clean. Be jumble — lawyers
apprehensive. Lieutenant –
Vivienne has spent much of her evening dealing with a great deal of UNFASHION (where are you, wise and benevolent spirit of Anne Carson, to save me from the UNFASHION?!). So much UNFASHION that she’s halfway convinced that the entire WORLD OF FASHION has been SUCKED UP INTO NOTHING BY THE NOTHING. So much UNFASHION, in fact, that she and Zelda just had a Most Fashionable Conversation of Rage in which many Fashionable Discoveries were made, which may soon reach the blog, but, in the meantime, Vivienne is so unhinged by the UNFASHION she was forced to face that she cannot even talk about it, for spreading such UNFASHION to the world would be a serious act of UNFASHION. And Vivienne detests UNFASHION. And Vivienne instead loves Fashion. And Vivienne loves you. And so she gives you a Scene of Fashion, from Wigstock 2000:
And so she gives you a Fashionable Pet Shops Boys AbFab Mix of Fashion:
And so she lets you in on one of the Most Fashionable Revelations of The Evening, which is that PATSY IS FABULOUS with this Sponge Osmosity created from AbFab clips. Enjoy, and remember, kids: BE FASHIONABLE AS OTHERS SHALL BE FASHIONABLE UNTO YOU.
Lacroix, darling. Lacroix.
Sweetie Darling The Stairwell
California lovely the roof off lovely
over it the road the road lovely
there used to be here your language
watch you foul you language I am
thin a bee is it where is it find it
we need more don’t leave right well
then a bee a bee is it a small hello
cut it off he’s very nice cut it off I have
to get out of here darling Mummy’s here
sweetheart I’m going to call the filth
the pigs just drink it sweetie no fabulous
no fantastic no I like this one no this
one is the one this one here what is this
sweetie we tried didn’t we we didn’t want is this
Vivienne will make a confession in order to provide this Fashionable Poemlogue of Fashion with proper context: Vivienne does not DO scary. I mean, she absolutely does not DO it, in any form: books, comic books, newspaper articles about ghosts and goblins, movies, television shows (excepting, of course, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for she knows that Her Future Husband Giles will always keep her safe), stories about men with hooks told around campfires during Girl Scout camp outings. In fact, Vivienne never joined said Girl Scouts, just because she knew said stories would be required, and she does not DO said stories.
Therefore and thusly, Vivienne avoids Scary Books — including but not limited to Stephen King, Dean Koontz,The Goosebumps Series, and the Baby Sisters Club Mystery Series AND Mystery Diaries — like the plague of her subconscious that such books are. Therefore and thusly the second, Vivienne was quite shocked and surprised when, upon finishing the last sentence of Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, she felt herself overcome with a cold sweat and a feeling quite like a scream rising in the back of her throat as she realized, right then and there, that she had just read The Most Terrifying Book Ever.
Another brief digression: see, Vivienne often likes to visualize herself, in the midst of The Single Life, as herself living the life of, say, Patsy on Absolutely Fabulous, bumbling around saying unintelligible but nonetheless miraculously witty things, happily puttering about her apartment above the OddBins and making conceptual art out of empty vodka bottles, smoking fashionably in fashionable outfits and heels which would never be practical for pushing a stroller, and somehow maintaining a Fabulous Career of Fashion in the meantime. But then Vivienne remembers that Ab Fab is a comedy, and that the reason Patsy is so funny as a character is that the general population is glad that they are not her. And Vivienne feels that strange echoing sound of sadness within her, the same sound she heard amplified ad infinitum after finishing Housekeeping and realizing that, just as the characters drift, she drifts, and drifts, and drifts. For weeks — I am not kidding you — for WEEKS Vivienne awoke in a cold sweat, moaning and sitting upwards in bed after dreaming that her apartment was filled with stray cats and newspapers and wild strawberry stems — and Vivienne does not DO that kind of nightmare.
Anyway.
Vivienne has recently had a number of Experiences (she will, for once, exercise restraint in not giving The Specifics here) that brought this feeling back, and is bracing herself for tonight, when her subconscious will surely throw back at her those cats and those newspapers and that old car of an unidentifiable color. And so, for tonight’s OuLiPoPoem, I’ve done what is essentially a sacrilege, for, no matter how unspeakably terrifying it is, Robinson’s novel is also the utmost in perfection: I’ve performed line stretching with two sentences from Housekeeping.
Keeping
She was not inclined to move.
Her eyes inclined themselves
upwards, counted the stars
spackle-blown to her ceiling. She counted
each ceramic girl caught mid-twirl
by their molds. She thought she could
hear her hands complain, their soft
urgent wish to be wings.
She was stillness until she became motion.
She knew what chores to do. She folded
the tea towels, tidied the spoons sunk
in the silverware tray’s shallows. It occurred
to her that the window was a screen
on which her face was projected, distorted
but clear. She could hear, if not the particular
words and conversations, at least the voices
of people in the kitchen, the gentle and formal
society of friends and mourners
that had established itself in her house
to look after things. They took her towels
to their own homes, laundered them, baking
soda and water. They tucked sprigs of lavender
between silk slips and underwear. The shelves
shone dustless, each ceramic figurine
a good little girl, happily motionless
in her happy motionless dress. She envied them
Fashion alert! Fashion alert! Vivienne has just now, through the Fashion of Facebook, discovered that there is a band … CALLED THE FASHION! Vivienne posts The Fashion of The Fashion below:
Upon reflection, however, Vivienne is not sure how Fashionable The Fashion actually are. For some reason, she was imagining moody boys wearing eyeliner, sighing into the microphone like David Bowie, perhaps with his electric red hair and white face paint, perhaps with very tight pants, and definitely, absolutely with lyrics about the dangerous temptation to simply steer one’s spaceship into space and let the circuit die, the engine go — oh, I can hear you, Major Tom. Oh, I can hear.
IN FACT, let’s all take a moment to reflect upon the following Undeniably Fashionable Fashion Beyond Any Other Fashion:
IN FACT, let’s all take a moment to, perhaps, take another look at that Undeniably Fashionable Fashion Beyond Any Other Fashion. IN FACT, let’s all take a moment to, perhaps, remember that moment in our childhood when our parents finally could afford cable and gave us the gift of MTV, and, upon a rare unsupervised moment with this new wonder, we began flipping through channels, and found this Fashionable Apex of Fashion broadcast over the air waves, making the very air itself an Air of Wonder and Fashion, and let’s remember that moment when Bowie’s anguished visage appeared on the screen, and his anguish became such that he could no longer manage playing the guitar, and, instead, stared straight into the camera — no, not straight into the camera, straight into your eyes — no, not straight into your eyes, straight into the Very Most Fashionable Part of Your Very Most Fashionable Soul of Fashion, and you could see the concern in his eyes, and the care, and the deep and intense yet gentle desire, and the love, yes, yes, even the LOVE in his agonized hand gestures, and something melted within you that would never ice over again, and you for the first time felt that Strange Tingle you would later feel every day in Geometry class when David came in and you caught a whiff of his Cool Water, that Very Strange Tingle that would never quite be the same or as glorious as it was, just then, with David Bowie directing all of his Fashionable Fashion through his Impeccably and Exquisitely Fashionably Kohl-Rimmed Eyes of Fashion at your soul, your Soul, your SOUL.
MAN. I need a cigarette now.
Oh, yeah. The poem. The following is a poem made with the constraint of homoconsonatism. The source text? The towns I passed during my road trip.
Museum of Appalachia
Laid on_____line_____cut
as a quay_____oh_____eker_____I’d go
cool_____I’ll hone_____raccoon evil_____lie
ice_____lain onto guard_____guest park
my same people_____chalk city
cove_____licks to prick
come_____be real_____undo
gaps_____joy’ll candy
haunt_____save_____I’ll
sit_____ink ice_____irk red
rare time_____not on roads.
You are currently browsing the archives for the Can you hear me Major Tom? category.
Blog of Fashion
Well hello!
Are you looking for poems?
Are you looking for fashion?
Are you looking for fashionable poems and poems of fashion?
Are you looking for poems, fashion, fashionable poems, poems of fashion, Courtney Love, Bret Michaels, Slash, and Brenda Dickson?
Then you've come to the right place!
The Hyacinth Girls welcome you to their blog.
It's very dramatic.
Posted by zeldafitzgerald 
Dearest, Most Fashionable Reader:
Consider Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in The Departed. Consider his perpetually furrowed brow. Consider his propensity toward violence. Consider his height and his scowl. Consider the curve of his shoulders. Consider that he orders cranberry juice at a bar, which suggests an attempt to refrain from drinking alcohol, which suggests a previous unhealthy relationship with alcohol. Consider that he has identity issues. Consider that he has many issues, period, but consider that he is still more mature than any man his age that this speaker has ever met. Consider that, after verbally sparring with his appointed psychiatrist, he asks her if she’d like to join him for a cup of coffee. Consider that she says yes. Consider that this speaker would say yes to a cup of coffee with Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in The Departed, too. Consider the slim chance of happiness for this most fashionable speaker since the only man in the whole world she feels she can love is a fictional creation, one who doesn’t even make it to the end of the movie. Consider this, Dear Reader. Consider this.
Most Fashionable Reader! Since Zelda shamefully admitted to being Shamefully and Highly Unfashionable as of late, Zelda has discovered that it is quite therapeutic to reveal secrets of shame and great sorrow. So. Today, Most Fashionable Reader / Reader of Fashion, Zelda will reveal, for the first time publicly, one of her secrets that she deems Incredibly Shameful.
person who goes up to strangers and says, “Well hello! My name is Zelda, and I am a sober alcoholic who has battled depression and anxiety all of her life! How are you doing this most fashionable evening?” Zelda does, however, have no qualms with discussing her issues when she deems such a discussion necessary.
But here’s the thing, Dearest Reader: Zelda doesn’t want to be known as a creative woman. When Zelda thinks of creativity, she thinks of windchimes made from thriftstore silverware, potholders made from bottlecaps, wreaths made from dried apple cores, etc., etc. Zelda doesn’t want to be a creative person who happens to have ADD. She wants to be a successful person who happens to have ADD. She wants a baker’s dozen of personal assistants, she wants to dictate confidential memos to her secretary, she wants a Range Rover the color of gunmetal, she wants an executive chair covered with Italian leather at the head of a boardroom table, etc., etc. This is why she found 
might also have said to themselves, Oh, dear. Vivienne must be going through “a time.” Careful Readers of the Blog would, indeed, be correct in their assumption that Vivienne has been going through “a time,” so far as Careful Readers of the Blog do not define “a time” as an enjoyable period of sunshine, lollipops, rainbows, and daffodils, or as a brief period of slight unfashion that can be cured by an evening with the Lifetime Network, Ben and Jerry’s, and All-Natural White Cheddar Cheetos. Careful Readers of the Blog, however, will 
probably realize that any “time” which prevents Vivienne from practicing OuLiPo must be quite a time indeed.
glitter-specked black liquid eyeliner has stained her cheeks and tear-wiping hands as black as Amy Winehouse’s crack-crank-smack-stained fingernails. Vivienne has been having the kind of “time” that results in her not even bothering to spit-wipe the glittering black liquid eyeliner stains from her cheeks and tear-wiping hands before she enters the gas station by her apartment, and Vivienne has been having the kind of “time” that results in her looking the gas station attendant straight in the eye and saying, what? What? You got a problem? when, with cheeks and tear-wiping hands covered in glittering black eyeliner stains, she comes to the counter to purchase a bottle of red wine, an extra-large bag of peanut M&Ms, a bag of cat litter, and a pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights.
an invented constraint she is going to refer to as Sum Probability. She took the first word in the first line, second word in the second line, third word in the third line, and so on until the series ended and had to repeat, in a text to see if it would add up to a poetic sum. The text in question is one which also deals with probability: Alberto Moravia’s Two Women, later made into a Film of Fashion featuring that ultimate icon of all Fashionable Things Which are Fashionable, Sophia Loren, which deals with the ways in which two women’s lives are changed drastically by the chance occurrence of war. Here is the result:
Vivienne has spent much of her evening dealing with a great deal of UNFASHION (where are you, wise and benevolent spirit of Anne Carson, to save me from the UNFASHION?!). So much UNFASHION that she’s halfway convinced that the entire WORLD OF FASHION has been SUCKED UP INTO NOTHING BY THE NOTHING. So much UNFASHION, in fact, that she and Zelda just had a Most Fashionable Conversation of Rage in which many Fashionable Discoveries were made, which may soon reach the blog, but, in the meantime, Vivienne is so unhinged by the UNFASHION she was forced to face that she cannot even talk about it, for spreading such UNFASHION to the world would be a serious act of UNFASHION. And Vivienne detests UNFASHION. And Vivienne instead loves Fashion. And Vivienne loves you. And so she gives you a Scene of Fashion, from Wigstock 2000:
The Goosebumps Series, and the Baby Sisters Club Mystery Series AND Mystery Diaries — like the plague of her subconscious that such books are. Therefore and thusly the second, Vivienne was quite shocked and surprised when, upon finishing the last sentence of Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, she felt herself overcome with a cold sweat and a feeling quite like a scream rising in the back of her throat as she realized, right then and there, that she had just read The Most Terrifying Book Ever.
Absolutely Fabulous, bumbling around saying unintelligible but nonetheless miraculously witty things, happily puttering about her apartment above the OddBins and making conceptual art out of empty vodka bottles, smoking fashionably in fashionable outfits and heels which would never be practical for pushing a stroller, and somehow maintaining a Fabulous Career of Fashion in the meantime. But then Vivienne remembers that Ab Fab is a comedy, and that the reason Patsy is so funny as a character is that the general population is glad that they are not her. And Vivienne feels that strange echoing sound of sadness within her, the same sound she heard amplified ad infinitum after finishing Housekeeping and realizing that, just as the characters drift, she drifts, and drifts, and drifts. For weeks — I am not kidding you — for WEEKS Vivienne awoke in a cold
sweat, moaning and sitting upwards in bed after dreaming that her apartment was filled with stray cats and newspapers and wild strawberry stems — and Vivienne does not DO that kind of nightmare.
