A shirt I made which you can buy

And how I made it. With special guests: Two Young Men

I’m writing this in a Mediterranean resturant called Aroma, it’s in a strip mall in Hollywood. My girlfriend has a chiropractic appointment in the same building and I’m waiting for her. I feel like I “stumbled on a real little gem” (doesn’t take much for me to feel like this) (really all I have to do is leave the house.) This sandwich is amazing. The young men next to me are talking about the house one of the men just bought with his wife. It’s in the same price range that I can now afford (as of a couple weeks ago) and they’re throwing the numbers around in a casual way, as if you don’t have to have to wrestle with your soul for 30 years, forging your psyche in the crucible of public vulnerability until you write a potentially life-wrecking novel about being a middle-aged woman and break the silence around perimenopause to be able to buy a home in LA. The young men are tossing these numbers back and forth the way me and my friends talk about…actually I can’t think of anything that me and my friends talk about with this degree of mildness.

Now that the scene is set, we will go on a little creative jaunt that begins at an estate sale. Here I share my treasures, which cost about 20 dollars in total (I guess I like to talk about money too.) (DO watch the video or none of the rest of the post will make sense.)

The pink curling ribbon has so far been used on bday presents for child and ex-husband. The pretty pillowcase was washed and is on my bed.

I added picts of me and Sheila Heti and me and mom to the bulletin board.

And I added on to the drawing of a woman. She looked so intense and haunted, like she could light something on fire with just her eyes. I wanted to put that to use.

I’d been invited to design a shirt for Mother, Daughter, Holy Spirit, a fundraiser for The Trans Justice Funding Project, so that was the spark. Here is the finished shirt.

All the proceeds go to to support grassroots, trans justice groups run by and for trans people (trans leader readers: they give grants!)

Also I love pin buttons with text on them and have a pretty wonderful collection of them (future post). This isn’t even my first pin-button tee shirt, I made one for Uniqlo years ago. That was a benefit for…me. I needed the cash while finishing the movie Kajillionaire. It was part of a whole tee shirt collection. (I actually pitched them a totally different idea, the re-issuing of their woman’s suit, in different colors. I suggested it be called The Interview Suit and we make a series of little docs of women interviewing for different wierd jobs while wearing this suit. I liked the idea of an affordable suit for working women. I just dug up some of my references:

The last image is the actual Uniqlo suit that I'd found in the depths of their website

I remember there was a long silence on the call after my pitch, some whispering, and then a person from Uniqlo said, “We’re trying to find the suit on the website, we weren’t aware this item was still available.” God bless Yukiko Oyama for coming back to me with the tee shirt collection idea, something they actually could pay me to do.

Super cool and great to see that Couldn’t Sleep has been happening since 2019

Here I am, right now. This is a large. I’d go XL if you actually are a large.

These pajama pants are actually also from an estate sale. I wear them as regular pants, but everyone else sees them as pajama pants.

The young men are still talking about money – various investments and opportunities; I think money might be both their jobs. Here’s something that I didn’t buy from the estate sale – it’s a collage of all the things the young men could be talking about instead.

I’m throwing up a paywall here, but I don’t think most of you care that much about the clothes I got at the second estate sale, which is what’s behind there.

Good luck everyone! The tyranny is almost unbearable! Especially on top of the tyrants we are already battling every day in our personal lives, within and without. Really brings that into focus, which I’m trying to use for good. But I’m also a person who can’t sleep and when she finally does (dumptruck of sedatives), dreams of throwing pepper behind the bed. That’s the problem, I’m throwing pepper behind the bed all day long, so when it comes time to go to sleep…it’s much too spicy. Feels like burning in hell to be honest. But it’s a new day and a pretty one! The birds haven’t left us yet.

x

mj