A Journey Around the Sun

Missed connections, supermodels, dream jobs, and a body that is mine

Hello!

Before I begin, a couple of very important things:

1. Please watch this very short video before proceeding. It is my everything. I can barely make it past the first two seconds before the tears of laughter start.

2. If you haven’t subscribed yet —it’s free!—please consider pressing the button. Your support helps me to keep going. Plus, I’d be honored, humbled, eternally grateful and thrilled beyond belief.

We’ve made it to the season of figs squished on pavement, soccer practices, meals that begin and end with bread, mushroom hunting, and deciding which day to finally break down and turn on the heat. I turned 45 this week, which neither excites nor depresses me. I am grateful to have made it to 45, and I am also shocked that I am here.

On my daily walks I take note of the thwunk of apples unceremoniously falling from branches weighted with fruit, the cornucopia of colorful beanies perched jauntily on heads around town, and the smells of warm, cozy things wafting from people’s homes. I collect seeds that I spread throughout our garden and I daydream constantly about someday having a greenhouse.

It’s also the season of me looking for work, which, if you’ve ever been there, is the worst season of the year.

My job search has felt a little like the log ride at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. You climb into the hollowed-out brown fiberglass log, putting your trust in a janky piece of molded plastic engineering that feels like it could capsize at any time. Then you pretend to smile widely and enjoy the leisurely journey through the canals of fetid water, knowing that at some point in the near future, you’ll suddenly drop off a ledge and get uncomfortably wet, sliding to a disheveled finish with wet hair matted across your cheeks and forehead in front of a group of strangers.

Each iteration of my resume and cover letter brings me closer to my desire to completely abandon the artifice of the whole dog and pony show and simply write the following:

My name is Belle Chesler. I managed to simultaneously parent and teach through a pandemic. Thank you for considering me for this position.

Or, my latest attempt at a bio: Belle Chesler was once a bundle of dividing cells. Before that, she was energy from an exploding supernova. These days she is a 45-year-old woman walking around with sore knees and a penchant for sketchy street foods. Some day, who knows how soon, she will become compost.

Enough said, right? I mean, what else do they want?

This car was parked in my neighborhood. Three of the greatest bumper stickers of all time.

A few weeks ago I got a flat tire. I took my car to the Les Schwab in St. Johns to get the tire fixed, not realizing that like everything else right now, there is a shortage of mechanics and they wouldn’t be able to fix the tire for a few hours. (Fun fact: Les Schwab used to hand out foot-long summer sausages when you bought a full set of tires. “Free Beef!”) I decided to walk home instead of waiting for an unspecified number of hours killing time in the smell-of-new-tire-miasma, even though it would be a long walk home.

As I zig-zagged through the neighborhoods of North Portland, collecting dried-out seed heads of globe thistle and Australian Indigo and stashing them in my pockets, I heard the wailing of a small child. A little girl, around 3 years old, was standing alone on her front porch screaming desperately for her mom to let her in the house. I watched as she threw herself into the front door over and over again, distraught. Unable to bear her distress, I approached slowly, standing at least 20 feet away from her on the street and calling out, “Do you need help?” She looked at me and immediately cowered in a protective stance—she turned her body away and covered her face, not wanting to interact with a stranger. Cautious not to upset her further, I backed away slowly. As soon as I got far enough away that she could no longer see me, she resumed her screaming. I stopped and waited on the sidewalk just out of eyeshot, hoping that her mother would hear her and she’d be let in the house. I waited for a few more minutes as her anguished cries continued, and then decided I should probably step in to help.

I walked slowly back and called out to her again, “Did you get locked out of your house? Do you want me to knock on your door with you?” She nodded her head miserably but did not turn away from me, so I proceeded slowly up the steps, giving her plenty of space.

At this point, I realized that this situation was fraught in MANY ways. She clearly saw me as a threatening stranger, and so I had to be as non-threatening as possible. I knocked on the door loudly, stepping back and waiting with as much distance as I could between me and her and the door. A dog barked inside, but no one came to the door. I knocked again, making upbeat chit-chat with her about my cat Lupe as we waited. Still no answer. And so I asked her if she knew how to open the door. I walked towards the door and mimed pushing down on the handle so that she could try to open it herself. As I stepped back from the door, a woman jerked it open. She appeared frazzled and completely confused. Inside I caught a glimpse of a tidy home with expensive furniture and a bouquet of flowers on the mantel. The woman looked like me, with brown hair and blue eyes, but 10 years younger and more put together.

“Hi!” I said. “I heard your daughter crying and I was just trying to help her get back inside.” The woman looked at her daughter who had already run inside and latched on to her leg, her face buried against the woman’s body. Then the woman looked at me, and without saying anything—not a word—swiftly closed and locked the door.

As I turned and descended the steps, I felt a full-body flash of shame. I appraised my outfit—a grey jumpsuit and pair of cute Italian sneakers—and smoothed down my hair, wondering if I looked particularly menacing or disheveled that day.

As I walked back home I was shaken. The hostility of the exchange was totally unsettling. Had I done the wrong thing? And if I had, what was the right course of action in that situation? Did she slam the door on me because I was perceived as a threat, or did she feel ashamed that she’d accidentally(?) locked her toddler out of the house? The irony is that I got the flat tire on my first day at a new part-time gig consulting in preschools about how to incorporate creative play into the classroom. I am exactly the person you’d want to help your preschooler in that type of situation: a preschool educator.

And, the thing was, I’d done the math. I knew that I was a likely candidate to be able to walk up and knock on that door to help. I’m a middle-aged mom. The little girl was white, I am white. What if I was a woman of color or a man of color? Could I have helped? What would the calculus be in that situation? When I recounted the story to Andy, he remarked that as a man, he never would have attempted to intervene, the situation would have been too contextually complex and potentially problematic.

The more I think about the situation the further I get from an understanding of it. Should I have left the little girl on the porch? And if I’d simply listened to her cries of distress and walked along, what would that mean about the way that I am caring for the people in my community? In the past few months I have come across a few people slumped on sidewalks or in the grassy medians of the neighborhood who are not moving. My instinct is to always walk over and make sure that they are ok, and that they are simply sleeping— not dying of an overdose. And while I’ve run the risk of being yelled at (that only happened once), or intervening when I am not needed, I am willing to take that chance.

Every time I see this variety of amaranth (“Pointy Fingers”) I lol; it so clearly is flipping us all off. Thank you, plants, for bringing the levity.

A dear friend turned 50 and threw a dance party at a club I hadn’t been to in years. She runs a record label and DJs (as does her husband, daughter and many of her friends), so the music was amazing. They rented the club from 5-8 pm —which turns out is my platonic ideal for clubbing— and friends, young and old, showed up and danced. The best part about the evening was that she requested that everyone wear all black, paying sartorial homage to her singular brand of goth/punk style.

Minutes before we needed to leave, Cleo and I jockeyed for space in front of the bathroom mirror. Both of us spent too long trying to figure out what to wear and ended up smooshed together at the sink furiously trying to solve makeup problems. Our intention: mimic an approximation of our friend’s iconic and dramatic eyeliner. The problem: I didn’t have any eyeliner. In fact, I realized I didn’t have any make-up at all. Aside from what Andy calls my “lotions and potions,” a collection of face oils, moisturizers and sunscreens, I only ever wear lipstick or mascara, and most of the time I wear no makeup at all. Some time before we left for Italy I jettisoned all the cosmetics my older sisters handed down to me over the years. The expired castoffs all seemed depressing and gross, so I threw them away. But, I never replaced anything.

And so there we were without the eyeliner we needed to complete our looks. Cleo decided to improvise, using a dark grey eyeshadow she had in her drawer, and I simply gave up. The thing is, even if I had the right makeup, I don’t really know how to put it on. Somewhere along the line, I missed out on that particular rite of passage. No one ever taught me how to apply makeup, and I came of age before the internet, so there were no tutorials to watch on my own.

Thankfully my bff intervened once we were at the party, dragging me into the dark bathroom and patiently applying eyeliner as I squirmed and teared up. She also lent me a bold red lipstick that pulled the whole look together. And BOOM! In photos from the evening we look AMAZING. Each time I see myself with makeup on I feel two things: 1) That I am a complete fraud; a child playing dress up as a grown woman, and 2) If I ever learned to wear makeup and applied it more regularly, I probably would like more pictures of myself. That shit elevates a look!

Luckily I nailed the eyeliner.

These days I find myself bumping up against a lot of these gaps in my gender performance, marveling at the ways that I simply opted out of playing with traditional femininity. With each new developmental phase that Cleo goes through, I upwell and revisit memories—and baggage—from my own experience of maturation, examining my adolescent self through the double lens of Cleo’s current reality and the distance of middle age. What I keep finding are moments when I felt so out of step with what was going on around me that I simply disengaged (or maybe disassociated??). I wish I could say that I rebelled, but it wasn’t that. My body and my face became something separate from my essential “me-ness.”

At 12 I was flat-chested (my nickname in the 7th grade was “Belle Chestless”) and thoroughly committed to soccer. My friends bought silk string bikini underwear from Contempo Casuals; I wore cotton briefs that came in a three-pack. While they headbanged to Warrant’s Cherry Pie, experimented with curling and teasing their bangs, and fantasized about who they’d kiss at the next 7th-grade dance, I sat by in mute wonder, not knowing how to even begin to participate. All I wanted to do was read, listen to Fleetwood Mac, and rollerblade around the neighborhood. I knew that I was somehow missing vital information that I was “supposed” to have, but I couldn’t bring myself to fake it and fail.

Thus, it was a truly bizarre experience to watch the series The Super Models a couple of weeks ago. I was floored by my visceral familiarity with the collected archival imagery of Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, and Cindy Crawford from the late 80’s and early 90’s. The photos, music videos, MTV interviews, and runway shows had a fundamental impact on my coming of age; they are a part of my adolescent DNA. At 12 I had already thoroughly digested the models’ symmetrical, unblemished, thin beauty as the feminine ideal— a standard I couldn’t possibly meet.

Watching the series, which tells the story of how these four women ran the gauntlet of a sexist culture and a brutal industry, forged lifelong friendships and built careers, is mostly entertaining because they come off as thoughtful and vulnerable. But, because it was produced by the subjects themselves, it feels more like hagiography, avoiding any critical analysis of the way the relentless celebration of their beauty narrowed and homogenized the discourse about how to present as a woman.

The corporate objectification of these women and the fawning adulation of their physicality in the press completely warped my relationship with my face and body. I could not replicate their impeccable feminized beauty, and so I was not beautiful. There was no point in even trying. My face and my body were not a problem to solve, they were an obstacle between myself and the world. And that was my jumping-off point into womanhood.

I have to work hard not to pass along this legacy of unloving regard for myself to Cleo while she plays with her appearance at this crucial age. Standing in front of that mirror with her after I’d thrown a little tantrum trying to figure out what to wear, I forced myself to breathe deeply and laugh through the frustration. There I was in that mirror. Just me. Brown hair streaked with grey, laugh lines, blue eyes, and the wisdom to try and be kind to myself even when it feels nearly impossible.

This is 12.

Coming into a healthy relationship with my body, of being embodied — not just operating as a head floating in space that occasionally remembers it has a physical form —is a minute-to-minute practice for me. It’s the reason that I walk, hike, garden, make art, dance, swim, and practice yoga every day. I have to constantly work to anchor myself back into my physical self. And then, once I’m there, I have to persistently negotiate the critical discourse that emerges. Once I’ve quieted the shitty committee in my head, I feel something akin to peace.

Unfortunately, my inner voice feels relentlessly chattery these days, spitting a constant barrage of narration that I find mostly inane and sometimes insufferable. God, I can bore myself! When I do find interior quiet, I am acutely aware that the voice is waiting impatiently in the wings, ready to chime in and commentate. And before you lovingly remind me that what I need is a meditation practice, YES, I know. I need to get back into a meditation practice. I’m trying. But this voice is a motherfucker.

I’ve also found that neither books nor TV nor movies are scratching my itches for entertainment and distraction. I was reading Pema Chodron’s book The Places That Scare You and in it, she describes this desire for external material security and satisfaction as the “lord of form.” In other words, when we look for diversions, escape or sustenance from the outside world of things (aka movies and books, clothes, drugs, booze, sex) or find ourselves numbing, distracting, or trying to endlessly fill ourselves with the external and material in an attempt to be more secure or happier, we are allowing our ego to be fed by the lord of form.

I know that I tend to look to other people’s stories, easy laughs, mindless TV shows, and comfort foods when I am in a state of insecurity or personal discomfort. I want to hide in the narratives, to disappear myself rather than confront the uncertainty, the not knowing and the transitional. But this is life, right? We are always in transition, we are always in a state of uncertainty. I guess it’s a good sign that these distractions aren’t working right now.

And so I bake focaccia, write my emails, and reach out to possible leads. I look at the job boards, shrivel in existential dread, and I work whenever I can. I remind myself that at 45 I may be perceived as partially worthless in the eyes of a capitalist system, but ultimately my skills are manifest. And someday, if I’m lucky, I will finally get my dream job as the witch of the woods.

And that’s all she wrote. Hang in there, friends.

xo, Belle

HOT LINKS:

Funny that I should now give my recommendations! But here they are…

I can unequivocally say that Season 3 of Reservation Dogs was incredible. Especially this episode.

Cleo and I watched the Beckham documentary together, and we both really enjoyed it. I’m currently co-coaching her soccer football team, so it was delightful to watch so much footage of him playing. Also, I am totally fascinated with his methods of folding and organizing as well as his obsessive cleaning. Hearing Fischer Stevens’s voice throughout was also a sweet little reminder of all things Hugo in Succession, and that was also a delight.

I read a bunch of books over the past month or so: Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson, Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr, Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby, and Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson. All of them are well-written, but, as I mentioned above, none of them did it for me. I don’t have any hot takes, other than I might be a tough audience right now. A real “It’s not you, it’s me” situation, if you will.

And my last recommendation: How to cook a head of cabbage the way our Italian friend Marta does it.

1. Cut up a green cabbage.

2. Heat a large pan to medium and pour in a ton of high-quality olive oil.

3. Put the cabbage into the pan and cook for a long time. Add more oil if you’re feeling it.

4. Salt to taste and serve. YUM. Simple and delicious.