Daytripper

I ran away on the bus today - Newtown and Kilbirnie, looking for a specific Crown Lynn pattern and avoiding second hand bookstores and vintage dresses (I have too many of both). I read De Beauvoir's the Prime of Life where she discusses how she embraced Katherine Mansfield's concept of the Independent Woman and I was reminded of how fabulous it is not to owe anybody your time but be purely self motivated in terms of where one goes, what one does. How nice it is to be selfish and completely focussed on one's self... Something I find easy to lose sight of while fawning over various male-types. De Beauvoir's independence involved her rooms, yellow covered chairs, pot bellied stoves, teaching in provincial cities, drinking and hypothesising in cafes. AND, further in the Inter War Parisian vein of things: I'm reading a biography of Peggy Guggenheim who was apparently terribly bored with existentialist Paris when she visited after the war. Also reading the Diaries of Anais Nin: Nin bitches about Guggenheim's relationship with Max Ernst (Guggenheim and Ernst were married in New York during the Second World War... exiled from Paris like Nin). Both also at least played lip service to the Independent Woman. And again, I'm taking all this with a grain of salt... complicated relationships with men and friends and family both. So my Independence involves: Roydon Tam 'O Shanter; Royal Doulton Bamboo; buses and thus various Newtonian crazies; bridal shopping with Jessica and listening to a fantastic-hilarious elderly shop assistant tell her life story; and smoking pot in the doorway of Bex and Al's place while drinking tea out of Bex's gilded porcelain china.