Trading Momma's China For Lovely Loneliness

It seems silly to be so concerned about a life of spinsterhood when one is in her twenties. Life has just begun, no? But shouldn't the time be now where we begin building our lives of settlement? A lady must

• find a mate
• make sure that mate is the right mate
• stay with that mate
• marry that mate
• buy a house with that mate
• make babies with that mate

The list continues. Notice that I don't even have the first bullet point crossed off. This ideal of companionship--marriage, which would eliminate any notions of spinsterhood, requires a great deal of time, at least for this young bitty, and time is only passing with empty fists--no rings, no promises. Yes, one is only in her twenties, with the world at her feet, but those same feet creep closer and closer to an age where "finding the one" becomes mere satire. So one must throw her empty fists in the face of time and say, "You win," spinsterhood it is, and embrace being independent, because do you hear wedding bells? I don't. 

I am not the only young bitty concerning themselves with the cold hard facts of spinsterhood. The concept of onset spinsterhood for the twenty-something has become fictionalized as well! Check out a chapter from The Twenty-Something's Guide to Spinsterhood here. It is more comical than anything, but the idea that this lifestyle not only pertains to older woman, but to young females as well, is percolating amongst women in the 21st century. 

There are other interesting essays putting spinsterhood in a kinder light. Check out Mary Farmer's essay on "The Truth About Spinster" here. She delves into the historical context of "spinster" and, in a sense, glorifies the spinster of the past, saying most were well respected women due to their education and leadership skills. She ties this to spinsters of the 21st century, saying they should kick back and "count their blessings" because they truly live a life of respect and a life of freedom. Another posting talks about the multiple benefits of said "spinsterhood," claiming that getting married and "churning out kids" is not the only way to truly experience womanhood. She enthusiastically writes about her countless trips to Europe and her ability to pursue her writing career. For more information on this wild cat, click here.

So I will tuck away any dreams of gold bands or mom's old bone china, and look forward to not looking forward to settling down. Perhaps I do not meet the qualifications of spinsterhood, but I am not afraid of approaching it. There are too many lovely people and places in the world, I should not be tied down to specifics. So bring on the knitting, and bring on the cats! And of course, please bring on the wine. 

Us and Ella Mason

It was a typical day in the life of two young bitties: we fed our stray cat, poured glasses of wine, and began to read aloud some poetry. A little poetry reading, if you will. It was an evening for Sylvia Plath. Now one can not truly call Sylvia a "spinster;" she was married with two children. But her poetry gave away the isolation she felt and perhaps that isolated life she longed for. It was too coincidental that I stumbled upon this poem: 

Spinster

by Sylvia Plath

Now this particular girl
During a ceremonious april walk
With her latest suitor
Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck
By the birds' irregular babel
And the leaves' litter.

By this tumult afflicted, she
Observed her lover's gestures unbalance the air,
His gait stray uneven
Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower;
She judged petals in disarray,
The whole season, sloven.

How she longed for winter then! --
Scrupulously austere in its order
Of white and black
Ice and rock; each sentiment within border,
And heart's frosty discipline
Exact as a snowflake.

But here -- a burgeoning
Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits
Into vulgar motley --
A treason not to be borne; let idiots
Reel giddy in bedlam spring:
She withdrew neatly.

And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either.

This poem exemplified, yet again, the choice of indulging in solitude. It also was relatable  in its sense of youth, as the poet's diction implies this by "this particular girl"  and "during a ceremonious april walk"--april representing spring therefore signifying the beginning (or the youth) of a new season, a new year. The idea of isolation (spinsterhood) as a choice is conveyed through lines such as  "How she longed for winter then! -- Scrupulously austere in its order." Where the poem hits this old heart heart the hardest, though, is the last stanza. Although it evokes a sense of bitterness, it truly unites all the spinsters of the world, and so this blog goes out to all the bitties, young and old. It seems silly, but there should be a community within the barriers of spinsterhood. How else will we cope? If we do not have another fellow bitty to gripe with and at. So my spinster-mate and I continued to read the cold and daunting lines of Plath and nearly fell off the couch when we stumbled upon a poem called Ella Mason and Her Eleven Cats. Please, if time allows, give it a read. It really touches on the life of spinsterhood, quite comically. 

I was thinking of ways in how to reach out to my fellow lonely ladies and it hearkened back to a time when I sent an anonymous letter to an anonymous woman. I randomly thumbed through the yellow pages looking for a single woman--older, preferably. At first it was a game of closing my eyes and pointing to a place on the rumpled, yellowed page. After countless attempts, I landed on a woman who I will give the name Beatrice. It was apparent she lived alone, so I scrawled down her address, and began to write her a letter. I wrote to her about all the small mundane lovelies that crowded my heart. I wrote to her about the poppies blooming in my apartment complex, how that small patch of dirt in an overwhelming concrete jungle just didn't serve them justice. It was all jabber, but I wrote away and ignored every sentimental sentence couched in broken syntax and marked by dashes or scribbled out words. I folded the letter, sealed it, stamped it, and slid it through the mail slot, with no return address. I sometimes wonder how she received that letter. Perhaps it was a good thing to put no return address--she may have sent me a letter back telling me to shove off. But regardless, this made me feel a little more connected to my side of humanity: the side us independent, lonely ladies pull to. So if you're a young bitty, and you're reading this, reach out to your fellow spinster! If you happen to be a solitary man reading this, you're considered a bachelor, and I don't feel as sorry for you. 

P.S. This is what I would imagine Ella Mason, who has eleven cats, to look like:

or maybe this:

Hipster Spinster

Today's blog is purposed for the modern day spinster, or, rather, spinhipster. Often--almost always--I have been accused of being said hipster. I pause and am baffled by the labels under which i fall; seemingly i fall under two different extremities, spinster (which I have provided many descriptions in my previous blogs, but if you forgot, click here), and, as of late, hipster, which is a subculture of men and women who are not only hip, but are appreciative of art, culture, witty banter, and all the finer artsy fartsy aspects of life. For a more detailed explanation click here. So what do you do when faced with such slander? You embrace it. 

Hello, my name is Jessica and I am a hipster.

When embracing both of these said concepts (hipster and spinster) a sort of merging occurs. There are some canny parallels--not in lifestyle per se, but in appearance and attitude. Perhaps a new culture has emerged, or perhaps hipster (emphasis on female hipsters of the world) are the new spinsters. So here are some tips on:

A check list is needed in order to fulfill this new emerging trend. If you look carefully at the photo of me giving a hesitant wave, you'll notice the sweet heirloom around my neck. That came from my great-grandmother, who (although widowed at a young age) carried on in a manner of spinsterhood--self dependency. The necklace captures a sense of that crazy, gaudy lady that lives bitterly within all of us young bitties. It also meets the trend that hipsters oh so desperately try to achieve: vintage. So, 

heirloom. 

If you want to be up with the fashion sense of said hipster, your pants need to be over sized and ladies, shirts tucked in. What more screams old lady whiskers? Yet it is the new latest fashion. Looking at my picture, it seems that i can cross out

over sized pants with shirt tucked in. 

You can't forget the tights--but they must be patterned or colored,

colored tights. 

One last thing. You can't forget your ginormous 

infinity scarf. 

The hipster wreaks artsy fartsy in that self photo, and some of those elements weave into the web of spinsterhood, the only thing lacking is a good glass of wine, and a down trodden face like that of my lady-in-black placed above. 

When googling this new idea of spinhipster, I was disappointed to find that no one else seemed to have made the connection. But i did find this really neat website called Hipster Spinster, which is filled with art and designs that satisfy all of your hip and vintage needs--it's where "vintage charm meets contemporary cool." 

I am not sure this young bitty quite qualifies as "vintage charm meets contemporary cool" but the recognition of a style I associate with "spinster" in a new trending style that is prevalent today was humorous and in a way, endearing. So the next time you see me hobbling down the street, and you feel the urge to call me hipster or spinster, why not just trying to mash the two together?

PS I know you all were expecting a cat photo. So I won't disappoint: 

cat's in the bag--or toilet paper roll. 

Hobbies For the Old Woman Trapped Inside Me

Before I delve into my spinster witticisms, I must give a snippet of the two young bittie’s continuing catscapades. While walking to Tower District for a cup of coffee, we stumbled upon a handsome tabby—we couldn’t resist ourselves.

Although we could not lure him back to our small bungalow, our spirits were not completely broken, due to the cat infestation taken place at the empty house next store. We find ourselves frequently peeping through the blinds and watching them squander the vacant lot and our wee little spinster hearts; As of late, we’ve been a bit lonely and distraught over the absence of the youngest member of our family: Eliot.

If you have seen him, please call this number 867-5309

No need to fret, though. A brilliant idea came to me while I was grocery shopping today. My roommate and I have been wanting to create a garden in the back of our yard. While picking out various vegetables and herbs, I found this little gem: 

Soon our yard will be filled with cats, hopefully Eliot amongst them. We're not crazy cat ladies , we just love animals. Not truly. 

As of late, I have been looking into acquiring some new hobbies--something that will keep this old soul preoccupied after I graduate this coming May. Gardening definitely appealed to me (and soon, with the help of catnip, I'll be preoccupied with litters upon litters of cats), it's been something i've been wanting to begin for quite some time, but I could not think of many new hobbies that attracted me. Then, I  picked up a needle and thread. 

Sewing would be the perfect hobby for an old bitty like me. I was anxious to begin right away. I had several patches I have been meaning to sew onto an old ratty tat tat backpack of mine so I thought I'd begin there; one problem: I had no sewing utensils! Luckily, I only spent a few minutes fretting. Thanks to my bitty in crime, there were already needle and thread in the house, stowed safely away in her craft box. I began immediately. It took me a while the get the thread through the eye of the needle--shaky hands (how convenient for the blog)--but eventually it went through and I began threading some patchwork. I was rather impressed at how natural it felt. While threading away, I began to muse on the idea of a young adult sewing. The act seems a rarity among my generation and among society in general. It occurred to me that this new found hobby was another attribute in conveying the idea that an old, lonely woman lives inside these young bones. Although I am not spinning, per se, I am utilizing the thread made by my fellow spinsters, which, humorously, is another definition of spinster is a person whose occupation is spinning:

Here is where creativity lies, behind the wheel.

Before the wheel, these ladies (and perhaps a few gents) spun by hand, thread twisted between the palm and the thigh. This method was replaced by the wheel during the Industrial Revolution. To learn more about the evolution of spinning, click here. So thanks to my spinning ladies, I now have lots of thread to sew with! I must say, I have quite the knack for it. I also found it to be quite therapeutic (after about the fourth prick of the finger and slip of the tongue). Gardening or sewing or any "aged" hobby you would find your great aunt Barbara, doing are actually lovely mundanes that should be brought back to the younger generations. I should not be called an old woman, or a spinster, because what I do is considered old and atypical of a young adult female. Activities like this should not be excluded to the elderly and should not be discarded. One cannot point their finger and say that I am a crazy old bitty who lives alone (besides the other crazy old bitty that occupies the house) with her garden of catnip and  her band of felines and her growing patchwork. This should be considered a normality of being twenty-something, right? 

One last thing:

My first (but not last) piece of patchwork.

On Emily and Solitude

I was (and still am) trying to wrap my brain around this idea of spinsterhood. When the idea of spinsterhood existing in my own world at the mere age of twenty-two came to me, at first it was comical, because when one hears the word spinster, this image usually comes to mind:

  There seems to be a stigma built around the concept, that stigma consisting of women who are lonely, shriveled, haggardly, pitied, own many cats, are hunched over and creeping, etc.  When I began using this word in passing conversation, trying to rouse the idea with friends and acquaintances, I was surprised to learn that a handful of people weren’t vaguely familiar with the term. When describing this lifestyle, they immediately became familiar with the term, and most retorted oh! An old hag! The concept has seemingly become fictionalized. We only see extremities of spinsterhood characteristics in stories—the most prominent in my mind is Faulkner’s Emily in A Rose for Emily. But this can’t be what represents spinsterhood, a women living in her old colonel father’s house, isolating herself from society and hoarding a dead body of a man she sleeps with every night. Many negative connotations have been constructed, so I’ve been racking my little brain about how to glorify this idea of women remaining in solitude for the span of their life. I wanted to break this fictional element that has attached itself to my current fascination. I turned to my literature (where the fictionalizing began) and started musing on the author’s motivation in creating these characters. I then looked up quotes, hoping someone else’s brilliant thought would give birth to some sort of epiphany—rather give me some sort of guidance to glorifying this lifestyle of solitary women. Here are a few quotes that I stumbled upon:

 “The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.”—Charlotte Bronte

            Okay, so this particular quote wasn’t so inspiring, but it captures the fear that has been derived from spinsterhood. It does recognize that being singular is not what is feared, but being lonely. No dependency on another is needed.

“Better die an old maid, sister, than marry the wrong man.”—Billy Sunday

            This one was a bit more comforting…

“Without a doubt... the worst part of being a single woman was having to take care of your own car.”—Lisa Kleypas

            This one was just simply humorous.

And then I stumbled upon this little gem:

“She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.”—Jeffrey Eugenides

This spurred some encouragement and turned me away from fictional characters that portrayed all the haggardly elements of spinsterhood and pointed me toward a real woman who represented lovely qualities, despite her solitude: Miss Emily Dickinson—thank you Jeffrey.

Meet poet and brilliant Emily Dickinson:

Emily lived in Amherst, Massachusetts where she lived reclusively and wrote beautiful, stopping poetry. None of her poetry was published until after her death; her sister founds hundreds of poems and they began being published after 1860—they sold rather well. Dickinson never married and slowly began to withdraw from society. Her quiet life was not seen as morose or pitied, it was infused with creative energy as she wrote one brilliant poem after another.

Here is a link to an article with further details on how her hermitary affected her work:

http://www.hermitary.com/articles/dickinson.html

On looking at Emily’s solitary life and on looking at her work produced from this solitude, it gave me satisfaction and hope for those who also share in this solitude. One does not need to be wrinkly with whiskers poking from their chin, or surrounded by wailing felines. One can be imaginative, creative—influential—despite their solitude, hell, solitude may help spur some of that creative energy—it did for Emily. If there are those who are shrowded with doubt within their solitude, do not let the stigma that society has created around spinsterhood define you. You are not haggardly, you are not “of no use,” you are not truly alone. Look at others who have impressed their ideas and imagination on life. Something lovely can be born from solitude. Thankfully, Emily Dickinson aided me in my quest to glorify this “lonely” life we call spinsterhood. 

Choice of the "Qua La"

It must be of no great surprise now...we've added another to our family. 

This is Eliot. He came a bit more quietly than Edgar. He is quite the lover with a sweet amiable nature. We assume him and Edgar to be brothers--they compliment each other so nicely.Edgar definitely has the traits of an older brother as he is always pushing poor little docile Eliot around and frequently stakes his territory on the wooden ledge of our back porch, looking down on sweet Eliot. We often find the two kissing and showing brotherly affection toward each other, but there are oftentimes we find the two in a hissy fit--Edgar of course initiates this. 

But no matter what, we still love them both dearly.

It's rather canny how with each blog post comes a new cat purring its way into our two sizes too small spinster hearts.It may seem like canny coincidence--involuntary and a frequent happening, but it is really a choice. We choose to care for these little lovers and we choose to to stay at home drinking Delicious Red (yes, wine straight from the box) and read poetry out loud.

These certain aspects of our life may ring lonely, deplorable,in a sense, or just unfortunate circumstance, but my friends, it is a choice! Today's blog is about choices, and we're going back about thirty years to the little village of LOI, Vietnam. 

(With many thanks to one of my Professor) I discovered this  article on women in this small village who were considered "too old for marriage" when they were a mere twenty-six years old. These women decided that this was not going to be their fate--they were not going to be told by their society that they would remain alone. They chose a life of solitude for themselves, but here's the twist (which breaks the barriers of my own "spinsterhood"): a group of women would find men willing to impregnate them and then would choose to raise the child on their own. They preferred to remain alone, and so they did without allowing society to deem them "qua la" or "past marriageable age." They just really wanted babies! 

Here is a link to the website (again, many thanks to my professor for showing me this) that'll give you these women's stories in a bit more detail: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/world/asia/in-vietnam-some-chose-to-be-single-mothers.html?_r=0

So there are many different aspects to this life choice we call "Spinsterhood," or "Qua La" or what have you, but one thing should be made clear: For most (including my roommate and myself) it is a choice, a lovely simple and quiet choice that entails (at least for us) many glasses of boxed wine, poetry by the lamp light, and lots of purring kitties. 

Whisker On My Chinny-Chin-Chin

    So, I last left you all with our latest addition to our little spinsterhood family (Hamlet the noble stray). Unfortunately, for him, we had to leave our apartment--but gratefully we walked into our new/old home nestled within the Tower District. But no need to fret! We quickly made friends with another stray. Stray he may not be, though. A few weeks back when we did a walk through of our now lovely little home, we spotted a cat on the wall in the backyard. We immediately swooned, and the previous owner (picking up on our amorous nature toward the cat) subtly remarked that if we wanted the cat, he was ours; she couldn't take him along. We thought she was kidding.  

    That Friday afternoon after we had moved all of our big furniture, I was perusing the back yard and heard an awful cry coming from the far end of the yard. Low and behold, here was that very same cat, hissing at me and staring me down with his yellow ominous eyes. His sibilating could not frighten this young bitty away, though. With a little help from my fellow bitty, we quickly de-jaundiced his eyes and heart. 

Meet our latest addition Edgar, who came a rap tapping on our door crying Nevermore--leave me hungry; we call him Poe for short:

\

But our continual catnapping is not the heart of this blog. The main issue I wish to address is facial hair. Hi, I am Jessica. I am twenty-two years old and I have whiskers on my chin. 

I remember the days of old when my brother, sister and I used to go visit our great-grandma and ransack through her library, tip on her type writer, and climb her gnarly tree out in her front yard. We loved our stubborn old grandma. She had a stern voice, endearing blue eyes, and flailing whiskers. I remember them vividly, poking out from her chin, and my sister and I would try to stifle our giggling. Here I am now, twenty-two, and my chin mimics my dear old grandmothers. So what does one young bitty do? Buys herself a good pair of tweezers. 

Luckily, I am not alone in this plucking event. My roommate and I have made it into a game of sorts--a "hangout" session, if you will. We like to call this "Whisker Patrol." We enjoy sitting in the living room, soaked in sun, plucking our chin whiskers; it's become a favorite pass time, really. I am often reminded of my grandmother and her whiskers glistening in the light that peeked in through her blinds. We now have another commonality, the only difference is I put my tweezers to good use. I am lucky to have a fellow young bitty to share in my curmudgeon-ity. It's these minute things that perpetuate this spinster attitude--lifestyle I've acquired. Things as small as a whisker on the tip of my chin.