Blurring the lines.

When you wear a lot of hats, there's a good possibility that you're going to show up to the wrong party in the wrong hat. Chronic fish out of wateritis. It's taken me an unspeakable number of years to decide that it's not that big of a deal. I just wear the wrong hat and roll with it.

Is that just a few steps from wearing jammie bottoms and crocs to the market? Even if it's just the market across the street, where the Korean guy behind the counter never even looks up from the Korean soap opera on his tiny tv? If he doesn't look up, am I even wearing them?


This used to feel mortifying. I could never figure out what hat I was supposed to wear. So at the barn,  I felt dumb in an artist hat. But not so dumb in the dog hat. At the dog show, weird to wear a horse hat. But the art hat could look pretty ok. Wife hat? Friend hat? Would a carny wear that to a bar? Horse hat at the art, just so wrong.


And god forbid at an art thing, wear a dog hat. Even though, isn't that festival wear, to dress up like a spirit animal? Pelts and such. It's a hat though, not as simple as just toting around an underarm dog. And the designer hat, really a jaunty cap, does it make the art hat look bigger or does it just make my ass look fat?

Sometimes throwing hats on and off at a run, in the car, on a flight of stairs, reaching up and realizing, yeah, wrong hat. Needing to improvise. Knowing that probably, my hat's a little bit unraveled and has visible puckered seams. Nothing to do but roll on.


I had this phase for a while, before we slunk out into the woods, I went camo. I had camo pants, actually they were skinny jeans with moto detailing that I got at a red lined super discount sale at the gap. So weird zippers in an unflattering spot. Even trying to wear camo in the bush, I ended up with the wrong kind. But they did have stretch. I so much needed to blend, so that if found out, I could just fade back into the brush and vanish, just like that.

I was building a giant map, so I took a notebook and document almost every step I took. A project now on hold. I had a compass. Was that a cartographer hat? Woodsman? Artist? I think I have a camo beanie around here somewhere, that I tucked my hair up into, I guess I looked more like a tree that way. This look was useful though, for when I was painting out there, needing to move fast and be undercover, I really could just fade into the bush, and then run.

It was satisfying to know, I did belong there. Claimed the forest as my own. Like when I pull on my boots when I walk into the barn. I've always done this. Walk in and put on my boots, right then and there. I own those steps. I take them off just before I shut of the lights to go home.

I put on my waterproof, super nubby sneakers just as often now, to keep my socks dry and keep me standing when I'm sprinting to the next position. Showing Banksy the correct arm matched up with correct shoulders. And sometimes they let Gooey go in the tunnel.


Lately I'm getting better at blurring the lines. And not being so worried about the wrong hat. Maybe it's my glasses. I think I need another pair again. Everything looks soft, I want to hit it with an unsharp mask. Twice. My favorite food used to be Swanson TV dinner. Salisbury steak or turkey and gravy in the large foil compartment. Cobbler up top. Peas and carrots to the side, and mashed potatoes, covered with a papery film, to the left. Nothing could touch nothing else. So lovely and so orderly, entirely predictable. There was zero blur. Every compartment a unique color, texture, and chemical, packed lovingly by a robot into a shallow disposable tray.


Right now, the dog blurs into the horse blurs into the design blurs into the art blurs into the house blurs into the forest blurs into the blog. Nothing's really getting done. My house is a mess, and I can't find the pink slip to my car. The blur means the floor can be dirty though, dirt doesn't show up so good. Time's just moving too fast to take care of all the things. There's money to be made, dogs to play with, people to see.

So, oh, hi! I haven't forgotten you. I think about you all the time. My thinkers are stuck on being a little blurry. We're here and we're doing our best. If I don't always get a hat on, at least I wad a headband up there into the hair nest and pretend it's a good hat. The right one. Maybe the wrong one. Maybe a blurry one.

I hope it doesn't make my skull look like my hairline's receding. Goes along with the jammies and the crocs.

It will get wet, because it's raining and we'll at least walk one loop in the woods. Til then, good night.