collaborative evolution

It continually amazes me how we, the Confessional authors, pick up on threads and mutate them.

In Twelve, Ikon casually makes mention of the sole survivor of group Four, the recorder, "the one who can't stop crying." Ry picks up on that and expands on it, just a little, using him to illustrate the horrors of the broken survivors. Since the character is a recorder, and I had done nothing up to this point with the fact, mentioned way back in my Part One, that half a dozen people had come together from Luca, I make him a former co-worker of Paine's, give him a name and just a smidge of backstory, and expand on his suffering a bit more. Then Lee takes this and runs with it, dedicating almost a whole chapter to Baralai looking for a way to help him out of his stupor. An entire subplot sprang from what was essentially a throw-away the first time it was mentioned.

I'm sure there are other examples that show what an incredible thing we are doing here, but this is the one that really strikes me.

the saga of the awesome purple jacket

So last weekend, when luvmoose was here, we had some time to kill on Sunday and ended up in Macy's. We tried on lots of stuff, and luvmoose picked up a few things, including a wine-colored corduroy jacket (hereinafter referred to as "the Awesome Red Jacket"). I tried that on, too, and liked it a lot, but they didn't have it in my size. I had to try on a black jacket for sizing, and it fit well, but we agreed that the Awesome Red Jacket was a more flattering and interesting color and that I should try to find it elsewhere.

But the real centerpiece of that shopping trip was the Awesome Purple Jacket: a dark eggplant suede suit jacket. It was way out of usual my price range, almost three times more expensive than the Awesome Red Jacket, but I fell for it, hard. And that was just trying it on over the shorts and t-shirt I was wearing. Later, I came back to it, trying it on with the shell made for it and a black shirt, and luvmoose and I decided that it had definite possibilities. But I wasn't ready to drop that kind of money on an outfit that was more formal than I typically need for work, so I decided to let the idea marinate and go back and look at it another day with S, my usual fashion consultant.

A week passed. I thought about trying to go during the week but no opportunity presented itself. I invited S to Macy's on Friday after work, but she was going out of town until Sunday, so we put off the trip until then. Just as well, because I came down with a sudden cold that made me useless for much besides sitting in front of the computer and writing (about which more in another entry) for much of Friday night and all of Saturday. By Sunday afternoon, I had recovered enough to get out and about, and we hit the store.

The Awesome Red Jacket held up. It's just about the right level of formality for my workplace and can also easily be worn with jeans for a casual night out. Because it's corduroy, it's warm, which makes it particularly appropriate for San Francisco evenings, as well as my office, which tends to run cold.

But on a second visit, the Awesome Purple Jacket was not quite as awesome. It was flattering, certainly, perhaps even more so with a dark gray skirt that was clearly meant to match. But it was just a tad too upscale for a regular day at the office. For business meetings, certainly, but I don't attend those often enough and already have three suits that do quite nicely for them -- and one of these is already purple. In the end, if it had been half the cost or something that I would have worn on a regular basis, I probably would have gone for the splurge, but the convergence of factors just wasn't there. And it's not like the Awesome Brown Jacket (which some of you will be familiar with), which was so ridiculously flattering that, when I tried it on, S and I agreed that I simply could not live without it.

So I'll keep an eye out for the Awesome Purple Jacket -- who knows, maybe it won't sell well and I can pick it up on a half-price rack some day. But for now, I'll soldier on without an eggplant suede jacket in my wardrobe.

my new hobby? creative outlet? obsession? all of the above...

Something that many people don't know about me is that when I was young, I was going to be a writer when I grew up. I went into detail about this way back in one of my first posts to this LJ. The gist of it is that I used to be a writer, and then I wasn't, and the change was so gradual that I didn't even notice.

( But now I seem to be one again. )