“You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” is an English proverb with its earliest reference in writing recorded in 1579 by a satirist named Stephen Gosson. Whether it originated in his brain or it was a commonly known saying back then, no one knows or will ever know unless time-travel becomes a real thing. Hey, it could happen someplace other than in romance books and action-adventure movies. I’m a firm believer in the theory that anything Man can dream up we can achieve. Except for world peace and the end of tribalism in politics. Those dreams are getting dangerously close to being diced and fried up like a sliver of pork rind in a dystopia world.
Back during the height of the pandemic I was hooked on reading dystopia and post-apocalyptic books. And it just dawned on me that what I was looking for and found in those books was the concept that “it could be worse.” That was my dad, always searched for a way to comfort me when I was belly-aching about anything from having my feelings hurt to losing my mom. “It could be worse,” he’d say, “instead of saying mean words that girl could have punched you.” “Instead of your mom dying she could still be suffering in a lot of pain.” The isolation of living through our pandemic didn’t seem so bad when compared to running about in a world void of vegetation or made-made buildings or governments. Although even in my prime I would have been one of the first to die in that kind of world because I don’t know how to build a cross between a go-cart and motorcycle out of spare parts nor do I own a black leather outfit and both seem to be mandatory requirements for surviving in a dark future.
I suppose you’re wondering how I could go from purses to post-apocalyptic survivalists in two paragraphs. That’s a fair question and the answer is I’m ramble writing which I do when I’m trying to see what falls out of my head when I’m not trying so hard to write something on a fixed topic that I'm hoping will ‘Wow’ others. And it worked because I’m finally remembering something I read on a fitness trainer’s website that at the time I thought might be a good starting point for a blog post:
“Stop chasing a former version of yourself
Its outdated
Force on the 2.0 version.”
Can you keep a secret? I miss the old me. The one who was confident when I opened my mouth that words would come out in the order I intended. I miss the women who once painted portraits and had the audacity to dream I could be another John Singer Sargent. I miss the arty-farty me who jumped in feet first with any craft that came along and of course, I miss the me who didn’t carry around too much body mass. I miss being best friends with my husband and so many other things the years have taken away---or I carelessly let slip though my fingers because I ran through life like I was Dionne Warwick on a movie set singing, "What's it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live?" Correction: I wrote that last sentence in the past tense but I still do that---continually ask myself what my life is all about only now I add: Did I hit all the benchmarks that a human is supposed to do while here on earth?
I’ve taken two into my eighties this month with my birthday and I’m still here, but I’m running out of time. I need to focus on who I am now. None of us can turn a pig’s ear into a silk purse but I’ll bet if I try I can make the 2.0 version of myself into something as weirdly novel as a purse made out of a pig’s ear. Yes, I know a pig’s ear purse in a world with a growing vegan population might be offensive but in order to end this essay I have to tie it back to the beginning---that's a writing rule I rarely ever break---so I’m stuck with that proverb.
But I’ll leave you with something else the fitness trainer (Joelle Leggs) wrote that made me smile and I hope it does the same for you: “Don’t half-ass anything. Whatever you do use your full ass.” ©
