trying to find corporate wear amongst my regular wardrobe & monitoring seasonal changes

this year i have had a secret theory that if i don't set out to buy any corporate wear (i.e. only work with what i already own, rather than buying any work-specific clothing) that there is no chance that i will be staying in an admin job for life. ..in a way of saying to myself that if i don't make any serious decisions regarding my line of work, then it will only be a temporary life filler, though if i go out of my way to buy things for work then i am settling down into it for good.
i think.



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this morning i was going through my box of lovely things that people have written to me over the years..i culled some of the rubbish from years gone by, laughed, grinned and cried.
some things to throw out after posting here (imagine 13/14 year old excessively bubble-print handwriting):
Thurs 9pm (LOL)
hey rachel! what have you been up to? im watching the biggest loser! JOY..lol! we haven't wrote a letter for ages n i love getting ur letterz! LOL they are so hot! i tink i just love writing letters! lol oh n i didnt get 2 keep your last letter cos it got wet! :( so i had to throw it out! :( lol :) so how were ya holidays mine were good! i just done the same ol same! which u no is movyz, sleepovers, shopin n that! oh n i went 2 seaforth for a few dayz! omg..where have you been lately! oh..have you been @ band camp? cool! i tink you were..lol..i duno! if ya went..was it fun? hope so! oh i cut out the pic in the paper of you n ___! itz so hot! LOL just jokin! but i kept it! lol :) hu ya lovin? im goin out wit ___ but ya might tink his gross! lol we been going out 2 dys! lol please write bak! love ya xoxo
(so insulting, and not even consistent with the forced spelling. i'd only kept it up until now for the painful / surreal factor)

(note the following has Xs at the bottom of question marks rather than the regular dots)
hay rachy
omg how r u? me juz cruisin these days. so tell me hu u lovin? u no how BRB gotta fly love ___ ps i will do ya a betta one 2nite promiz!
(the 'how' rather than 'who' is intentional in my case)

hey gorjus! sorry i haven't wrote back 4 a few dayz but ive been busy! lol! :) so wat are u up 2 on the holidayz? ill prob just be hanging wit friendz and my bestie (___) frm Airlie Beach might be coming up n we might (well prob will be_ going 2 seaforth! lol (theres nufin funy but yea) :) so r u lovin neone? i duno if i am! cos ___ (do u no him?) well he asked me out! n yea i thought he was kinda hot..but i sed maybe! n then i found out he stil had a gf in gr8 but he was gna dump her! but she found out he asked me out! n then there was some jerry springer sh*t there! lol so itz all messed up! n last friday night ___ was trying 2 get me n ___ 2 go out! but it neva happened ! lol :) hehe :) so do u have msn? i tink u gave me yours but slak 2 find it..lol..but mine is elmo___@___ so elmo___@___ hotty! sory i sed it agan but the first one was abit messed up! lol :) we shuld so do something on the holidays ay! well my num 49___ if ya dont already have it n my mob number is disabled ! lol :) but mum buying me new mob on thurs/friday this week! YAY :) lol its gna be a flipflop but wont have a camera :( sory my writing is mesy by the way! lol :) well i'll cya later! pls write back b4 skool ends & pls ring me! love ___ xoxo

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the following was a flyer in an end-of-senior-year 'stress kit' that i received from Bond university:
'dear Rachel, it may be hard to think of the big picture at the moment with final exams stressing you ou and life decisions looming. this is a small care package to help you get through the final year 12 stretch. inside you will find peppermint tea to calm your nerves, a box of smarties because they say you are what you eat, a pen to write down your ambitions, a stress ball to ease exam tension, sunflower seeds to encourage you to get outside for some fresh air, and a party blower - you'll know when its time to use this.
and remember, when it all seems like too much, be sure to keep perspective. whether you see yourself as an international diplomant, self-made entrepeneur, or defeding the rights of others, every individual has the potential to achieve something extraordinary.
i'm here if you have an questions about your future career.
best of luck.'

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the following get me through any weather:
Amy Winehouse - Tears Dry on their Own, He Can Only Hold Her
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Round and Round
Band of Horses - No-one's Gonna Love You
Bloc Party - One More Chance
Bluejuice - Head of the Hawk
Blur - Out of Time
Calvin Harris - I'm Not Alone, (& dubstep remix), The Rain
City and Colour - Sleeping Sickness, Waiting
Cold War Kids - Audience, We Used to Vacation, Hange Me Up to Dry
Coldplay - Amsterdam
Crowded House - Don't Dream its Over
Dan Kelly - Down to my Soul (Paul Kelly cover)
The Decemberists - O Valencia
Dispatch - The General
Echo and the Bunnymen - The Killing Moon
Editors - When Anger Shows
Elbow - The Bones of You
Elliott Smith - I Didn't Understand, Pitseleh
Elvis Perkins - Shampoo
Enter Shikari - Adieu
Good Old War - Coney Island
Grizzly Bear - Ready, Able
Gypsy and the Cat - The Piper's Song
Iron & Wine - Boy with a Coin
Jeff Buckley - Lover, You Should've Come Over
Joan as Police Woman - The Ride
Kings of Leon - Closer
Local Natives - Cubism Dream
The Mars Volta - Eriatarka
Mumford and Sons - Dust Bowl Dance
Okkervil River - Starry Stairs, On Tour with Zykos, Lost Coastlines
OneRepublic - Apologise (original / slower version, and i can't bring myself to spell 'apologise' with a Z)
Paul Dempsey - Your Lovin' is on My Mind (Paul Kelly cover)
Radiohead - 15 Step, All I Need, Reckoner
Robyn - Handle Me
Santogold - Creator
The Smiths - I Know Its Over
Snowden - Anti-Anti (Treasure Fingers remix)
Something for Kate - White, Reverse Soundtrack, Jerry Stand Up, Seasick
Spoon - The Underdog, The Way We Get By
Tears for Fears - Head over Heels
The Temper Trap - Sweet Disposition
Tim and Jean - Come Around
Two Door Cinema Club - Something Good Can Work (Ted and Francis remix)
White Lies - Death (Chase and Status remix)
Who Made Who - Space for Rent

a song about the Black Dog..

for some reason i had assumed this was about love until i read the lyrics - rather than listened to them.
really upsettingly hollow.

this old black dog is hounding me, it waits round the corner and hides in the trees. i feel the chill of something blown in on a breeze.
in the light of a cinema screen i hide; laughing i only feel empty inside. crying means nothing, i’ve nothing to say..i wish i could kick this old black dog away. the worst part is knowing my part in it all, yeah the worst part is knowing its nothing at all.
if i can pull myself together i’ll try..i can’t explain the tear that sits in my eye.

i try to outsmart him, but somehow he knows. wherever i am, that fucking dog goes. i’ll kill him the next time - i swear i won’t fail. i’ll kick in his ribs and i’ll rip off his tail.
the worst part is thinking it’s something it’s not..the worst part is thinking it might never stop. the worst part is trying to explain it to you. the worst part is knowing there’s nothing to do.

if i can pull myself together, i’ll try. if i can’t pull myself together..i’ll die.

maybe she doesn't know what 'orphan' means..maybe she just thinks it means 'home-proud'

the power steering on our family car number #2 has started to deteriorate in the last few days. i think its so interesting that some fluid has the relatively last say in the balance and control of a car and its steering. i think its even more interesting that this is very similar to the way in which our bodies' balance and stability is all more or less controlled by a small amount of vesselled liquid in our ears.

i probably could have summed this up in a single sentence.

Ricardo Tisci for Givenchy, 2009

..gets me every time.
and not just because the song kills me as much as the first time that i heard it.

and this on a lesser scale:


on a completely unrelated note:

my fashion portfolio for university entrance - at a glance

the following does not include my personal statement, work experience statement, academic records, contents page, subject award certificates, detail shots of pages/texture, a clear camera focus, or any resemblance to shortness in length..:

& for some reason, i didn't take photos of the last two pages, so here they are printscreens of the PDF document..


























i am begging for my haphazard / scattered / tidily messy sort of aesthetic approach translates.

on my parents' re-visit to Anne Frank's house/museum a couple of years ago, they brought back a book for me; 'the last seven months of Anne Frank - the stories of six women who knew Anne Frank'. for some reason, i have only fully read it recently.

'the story of Anne Frank is one of the most famous of World War II. millions around the glove have been moved by the extraordinary diary of the girl who spent more than two years hiding from the Nazis in the sealed-off back rooms of an Amsterdam office building.
but very little is known of the last seven months of Anne Frank's life, after her brutal capture on 4 August 1944. what did she think and feel? how did she endure the suffering of the death camps? our only insights come from the women whose lives touched hers - at Westerbork, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen.
each of the six women interviewed for this book has a remarkable story to tell - a story of unimaginable horror but also of great courage. Anne Frank's life ended shortly before her sixteenth birthday. these women were more fortunate. they lived.'

below are some section that i had tagged, perhaps a little aptly, with 'shit' sticky-notes.

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we arrived in the dark. to start with, we went through the gates. the first thing we saw was the infamous sign: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. it was oppressively quiet. we passed many watchtowers, little houses surrounded by barbed wire, and high electric poles. everyone knew immediately where we were. it was so insane - that moment of realisation, yes, this is an extermination camp. it was dreadful, horrible.
the horrible effect of the very bright, dirty-looking neon light, a bluish light, and that grey sky above, more or less lit up by the neon lamps. and those little men in blue striped suits, who whispered, 'ihr seid gesund. lauf.' (you are healthy. walk).' they were trying to warn us. we didn't understand any of it. we were too tired and too resigned and too far off balance to realise what was happening to us. yes, it was a kind of nightmare, an inferno.
- p56, Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper

the Italian girls were very aggressive. i remember somethign nice about the French girls. they had been shaved completely bald. they found a little piece of glass and a small comb with three prongs. with that they combed their eyebrows, looking into the little mirror. then they tied their clothes around their heads and looked again to see if they weren't still a little bit elegant.
i find such things delightful. the Nazis tried to set countries and nations against each other and to attack and take away a person's best quality - his dignity. and so i find people like those French girls so marvelous - those girls who fixed up their eyebrows with a little dirt in order to look a little better - really what the French call 'esprit', the strength to not give up, not to knuckle under. never.
- p58, Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper

all the people were subjected to the most vicious sorts of threats in order to make their fight for survival even mroe difficult and to create even more tension. one punishment - a very common one - was, for example, to have to kneel in front of the barracks with a stone in your hands. no one could talk to you or you would be beaten. you were also beaten if yuo turned your head - and you had to stay there for hours. a lot of people died that way. it was not easy to stay alive; it was easier to die. it was easy to contrive something in order to die. and if you had no other ideas, it was even simpler just to walk into the barbed wire. countless people walked into the electrified barbed wire. i don't think that's a secret. people made their farewells and walked into the barbed wire (in Auschwitz).
- p70, Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper

in Westerbork, i met the Frank family for the first time. my husband had quickly made contact with Otto Frank and got along with him very well. they had profound conversations and we had a very good relationship with Mrs Frank, whom i always addressed as Mrs Frank. i never called her by her first name; she was really a very special woman. i had less difficulty saying 'Otto'. she worried a lot about her children. she was always busy with those girls. it is an especially close relationship - a mother with her children.
soon thereafter we went onto the transport. naturally, i spoke with the girls. Anne, especially, was a nice child. your heart broke since they were so young and there was nothing you couild do to keep them out of it. those children expected so much from life. we did too, of course, but were years older. i was twenty-seven or twenty-eight. my husband was thirty-one. but that was what was so tragic about everything. you couldn't do anything - absolutely nothing. we had to let happen what would happen.
it was probably for the best when parents were with their children, because i met mothers after the war who had lost their children, and i have often thought: Mother, why didn't you go into the gas chamber too; it would have been better.
after the war, their lives were unbearable. i still know those women, with all of their sorrow. women who lost a couple of children and their husbands as well, who have never recovered. in that regard, to go together as a family was for the best.
- p144,145, Lenie de Jong-van Naarden

early in the morning, we were taken to a very long train with many cars. next to it were SS men with dogs as well as the commandant, who didn't move a muscle. whatever happened they allowed to happen. we were pushed into the cars. those who were sick were shoved inside on stretchers. there were old people who had trouble climbing up into those cars. it was a dreadful sight.
the train rumbled along at a terrible speed. sometimes it stopped for several hours, and once in a while the doors would be opened. most of the time, however, they stayed shut. the young man at the little window kept on saying, 'now we are at so and so,' and he would name one place or another. 'everything's been shot to pieces, i can tell you; there's been some bombardment here.' that gave us a great deal of satisfaction.
afterward, we heard that the train had stopped because people in another car had sawed a hole through the floor of the car. why they were still in the Netherlands, they had dropped through the hole and let the train ride over them. a few people were successful. one woman lost her hands and one man lost an arm. in one way or another, they were given help in the neighbourhood which they had crawled to. they got out of it alive.
- p146, Lenie de Jong-van Naarden

after i had finally made it clear to them, they took me on the back of a bicycle to the train station. but the train had already left for Amsterdam.
there was a policeman there who said, 'here is a paper to fill out for ration cards, and here is this and that.' so i took all that and went to sit down on a bench, because i didn't know where else to go.
the policeman said, 'shouldn't you be goine home?'
i said, 'yes, but i don't know whether my house is still standing.'
'where is it?' he said.
i gave him the address, and he gave me some good advice.
'go to number 4, Pletterjistraat. those are friends of my parents, and they'll be able to tell you whether your mother is there.'
and in fact those people picked up my mother, who lived just on the other side of the street, and now..that ws so marvelous. i looked terrible, but my mother, yes, she had gone to stand at the station every evening, and just this particular evening, she hadn't gon there; she had begun to lose hope because we returned rather late.
well, that was completely crazy, seeing my mother again. i went home with my mother, and we sat up the whole night, talking. i still remember that very well. my mother kept on saying, 'oh, child, how is it possible, how can this be?' i told her all kinds of crazy things, which we laughed about. that's how i came home.
how can i find tranquility,
years later, the tumult of the men resounds,
the swishing of their whips,
above the people being pushed along,
and stamping of boots,
cries of anguish.
i have seen so many go to a desperate death,
across a dirty path, on which their weakened feet
dragged them to the gate.
smoke cannot speak,
from the chimneys, they slip out, formless, above my head,
and are taken by the wind,
robbed of their bones.
since then, despite my clothes, i am naked,
and remain exposed to synonyms.
therefore, it is not tranquil within,
the whips are still lashing,
and at the most unexpected times,
the packing paper pictures come forth,
chilly, yellowed, grey from smoke,
and stiff with death, at night, when i want to sleep.
- p202,203, Ronnie Goldstein-van Cleef

a section from If On a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino:
take your shoes off first. if you want to, put your feet up; if not, put them back. adjust the light so you won’t strain your eyes. make sure the page isn’t in shadow, a clotting of black letters on a grey background, uniform as a pack of mice; but be careful that the light cast on it isn’t too strong, doesn’t glare on the cruel whit of the paper, gnawing at the shadows of the letters as in a southern noonday. try to foresee now everything that might make you interrupt your reading. cigarettes within reach, if you smoke, and the ashtray. anything else? do you have to pee? all right, you know best.
it’s not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. you’re the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. there are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. but not you. you know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst. this is the conclusion you have reached, in your personal life and also in general matters, even international affairs. what about books? well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn’t serious.

so, then, you noticed in a newspaper that If on a winter’s night a traveller had appeared, the new book by Italo Calvino, who hadn’t published for several years. you went to the bookshop and bought the volume. good for you.
in the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven’t Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. but you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn’t Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. and thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. with a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive New And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Have Read Them, Too.
eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out: the Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages, the Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success, the Books Dealing With Somebody You’re Working On At The Moment, the Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case, the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer, the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves, the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified.

now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time To Reread and the Books You’ve Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It’s Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.
with a zigzag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books Whose Author Or Subject Appeals To You. even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you), and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new you seek in the new).