by Peta Murray and David Carlin
We have wandered and wondered into the impossibility of imagining what is to be old, following threads that have arisen through exchanges of micro-essays, emails, and conversations.
NOTE TO THE READER: The following is all that is left of a much longer essay (in fact, the manuscript for an entire book), which one of us—it doesn’t matter who; we take joint responsibility—left in the pocket of a garment that went through the wash and out the other side. We offer it as a warning against forgetfulness and a sincere if threadbare enquiry into how to dress for old age.
1.
Old age is often seen as a time of diminishing
unfortunately, not symmetrically.
After the verses and the chorus
there is only one possible out(fit) for the end.
Amen.
2.
In childhood demarcations
Little boys
Little girls
the adjustments how much flesh which bits.
endlessly negotiating
We look for all the places time has left its
softening
Short sleeves now unbecoming.
inevitable
trajectory of ebbing.
Try this, you’ll feel
better.
I’m-not-dead-yet compensations.
Mixed messages or what?
3.
beige—
a short word
colourless colour.
a turning down of brown.
Beige has to start again.
My hand is a beautiful colour.
cast off my inner whiteness and embrace my outer beige?
4.
Here is dour. The costume of the patriarch.
so many men
forever looking away into a middle distance
an emotional taboo that leaks
stone faced
What a price
A maternal grandmother
so ancient you cannot countenance
Dear drear - her bleach and her hoarding
cut price Sao Biscuits
a sip of tea, a bite of soft bread, a sip of tea bliss.
A picture of a man containing dour.
lips thin and sharp
in the morning walking left to right and in the evening right to left,
mistaken for something fragile, brittle, and ultimately transparent.
5.
At last!
ugg boots, trakky dacks, T-shirt, an old grey jumper,
A cuppa tea.
I don’t go out in my ugg boots. That is taking it too far.
comfiest
My late father-in-law’s blue turtle neck jumper
pop my head through
I have my elders’ arms around me
Because life is harsh.
All mirrors should be turned away.
The point of comfy
fluffy-toed sartorial oblivion
Day wear. Night wear. Wear and tear.
one’s hands too arthritic to fiddle at zips and buttons
And surely, with the wrinkling
the weight of gravity and time.
Comfy says: really?
take the odd nip of whisky, for medicinal purposes round 6pm at night.
6.
Or wear the rebellion
spectacular shoes, or a flower in your hair
durational practice
quintessence of wearer
shorthand for personhood
and I pass the test of being me
an artform in its own right.
7. I am going through a phase, you may have deduced
androgynous femme black hair dye Francophile try-
to-dress-like-an-artist let-it-all-go-grey
Do men have these?
This is not rhetorical
My queen and king.
Not just for the heels
the big hair,
not just for the frocks
the frou-frou
but for the wit
of
it,
the sly take
on not staying
where
one
is
put.
the sheer density of attention.
when we are old, who will give us this?
8.
a single metal press-stud at the cusp of memory and language
my mother with her back to me, and me supposedly asleep in bed watching her at the sewing
machine, purring with her foot, cradled in the light, alone with her sorrow.
9.
I still long to be dapper, truth be told.
boater hat, hatband, necktie, crisp shirt, wingtip collar.
waistcoat, buttoned, plaid blazer, boutonnière, trousers, two-tone brogues
complete
my father as a young man in the city streets, mid-stride glowing with
blond youthfulness and kitted out
he never lived to grow old, a romantic purity in being unrevised,
undisputed, as it were, by later looks.
10.
birthmarks, disfigurements, other signs
I’d love to be made over, I truly would.
To be youthful is a thing.
To be “oldthful” is a word spoken by someone with their dentures out.
Ha ha some old fool…
11. Every home should have a dress-up box
let loose admirals and vamps, duchesses and nymphs something we still contain but
seldom find chances to reveal
escape, from the confinement of image, prison of oneself.
It is the more that entices me
comical dressing gowns preposterous slippers. risky business catch our eyes,
glimpse one-part embarrassment meets two-parts gall.
despite,
again and again the disappointing news broken to us.
this does not exist. that is not how things are.
protest inwardly, or learn to acquiesce, the suit of reality enclosing
gaps and mysteries one by one patched
zipped
or otherwise sealed over
from day one, squeeze into a dressed-up world, a violent, miserable pantomime
12.
a little soft shoe shuffle, as slow as she likes.
a back-of-the-auditorium grin.
Glamour! Approach with caution.
We, the untucked, the wizening, the chicken-winged, the spinnakered,
Ah, the
ancient glamours we will show you!
The book manuscript alluded to in the introduction to our essay actually exists, albeit as a work in progress. Called How to Dress for Old Age, it is a collaboration speculative in both content and the processes that have given it form. We have wandered and wondered into the impossibility of imagining what is to be old, following threads that have arisen through exchanges of micro-essays, emails, and conversations. In Invisible Mending, we take up with perverse delight the opportunity for a new phase in the experiment that has seen us shrink 40,000 words into a mere 800. Then, in keeping with domestic measures that in many ways may be seen to be counter-erasure—the mending kit, the sewing box, the iron-on patch—we endeavour to leave enough of this remnant intact to retain some trace of design and shape, while at the same time exposing our aging frames beneath the fabric of the words.
—
Peta Murray is a writer-performer and teacher, best known for her plays, Wallflowering and Salt. Recent works include Missa Pro Venerabilibus: A Mass for The Ageing, and the live art-based performance piece, vigil/wake. As a Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, in Melbourne, Australia, Peta’s focus is the application of transdisciplinary arts-based practices as modes of inquiry and forms of cultural activism. She is particularly interested in the application of “meaningful irreverence” as a means to navigate change. Critical writing includes contributions to Axon, Fourth Genre, New Writing, RUUKKU and TEXT.
David Carlin’s books include The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet (2019, with Nicole Walker), 100 Atmospheres: Studies in Scale and Wonder (2019), The Abyssinian Contortionist (2015) and Our Father Who Wasn’t There (2010), and two anthologies of new Asian and Australian writing, The Near and the Far, Vols 1&2 (2016, 2019). His award-winning essays have appeared in Griffith Review, Meanjin, Hunger Mountain, Overland, Westerly, Terrain.org, Essay Daily, TEXT Journal, and New Writing. David is Professor of Creative Writing and co-director of WrICE and the non/fictionLab at RMIT University, and the Co-President of the international NonfictioNOW Conference.