“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” This Mark Twain’s well-known remark about the weather is something he actually never said, but what the heck! What native San Franciscan hasn’t heard this clever quip served up by a shivering, Bermuda-shorted sightseer on a fogbound Golden Gate Bridge?
The Flower-Power city is always a visit worth. San Francisco embraces me with an indescribable warmth even when usually windy, rainy and extremely cold in February. Glacial, fresh air turns me on though, it has the same effect as swimming underwater, it relaxes yet invigorates body and mind, so much that breathing turns into a sensual delight. Thus I normally wake up there craving for just one thing: run, run, run along my personal Vitaparcours by Fort Mason.
During my usually short but intense runs I analyse stupid things like for example, how horrifying TV content is in the US. This time I got to watch a site about a bunch of assorted ladies finding the right dress for their weddings. Since I’ve have designed some bridal stuff, the subject obviously interested me. Dresses were crappy ALL of them, it was more the wives-to-be’s attitude which caught my attention.
Tying the knot is an important event in someone’s life, I fully agree, but it seemed to me that those TV women tended to visualise the wedding as being far more relevant than the marriage itself. In fact, they seemed to be oblivious of the true meaning of a loving bond -any- and frivously talked about marriage as a form of achievement. Gown’s prices therefore went from 3,000 to 25,000 USD. Whole lotta bread.
My first thought was ‘Mimi, what the heck have you been been doing? Any of yours costs a fraction of it!!’ But while running I said to myself, Mimi, stick to your values gal, you design for people in love, you design for people who are able to commit; you design for intelligent people who care about healthy finances and have their priorities correctly settled and hopefully will get rid of the damn dress as soon as possible getting hot and heavy and passionately naked somewhere. Yeah, that’s what I envision, my whole clothing line dispersed on the floor of the couple’s nest. Love, not money.
I do hope to soon attend an Indian wedding, my best girl-friend there will possibly marry this year. Thrilled to be part of the entourage and perhaps be able to design something royal, classy, genuinely sensual and colourful for the most gorgeous bride ever. As for me, I’ve worn a number of such beautiful dresses, but never married in one of them. Effectivement, les cordonniers sont toujours les plus mal chaussés.
On March 20, 2014, The New York Review of Books published this poem with the article “India: You’re Criminal if Gay,”. The article was written by the poet’s mother, retired High Court Chief Justice Leila Seth. The trigger was the Indian Supreme Court’s killjoy re-instatement of a colonial anti-sodomy law that had been revoked in 2009. Vikram calls this “to undo justice.” His mother affirmed her love for her bisexual son and wrote: “The Supreme Court judgment means that he would have to be celibate for the rest of his life or else leave the country where he was born, to which he belongs, and which he loves more than any other.” Thus Seth divides his time between Delhi and a home in England that belonged to Metaphysical poet George Herbert, whose 17th century language echoes in this poem.
nohemidragonne.net 