Casual Friday: Summer Silver Shimmer

I wear this silver fish skeleton necklace very frequently, but with it being such a unique, stand out piece, with its own movement, structure and form, almost its own sense of agency, i never tire of the look. While at home with my family in Baltimore the other weekend, my siblings and I went hiking in the woods near our local reservoir, with my sister's adorable and forever endearing labradoodle Siouxsie; at the edge of the water, near a normally tranquil and silent dirt beach, we came upon a decaying fish carcass. It was a dissipating wreck of rotting flesh, with dances of flying and crawling insects and crustaceans, prepared to feast wantonly.

Comparing the sight of an actual organic being, this dead fish, a creature whose gross demise feeds new life, to a clean, cold, and immutable decoration, a relic from my own original organic source, my grandmother, also now gone, I cannot help but appreciate the ephemeral and inherent beauty of flesh and blood, and marvel at the innovations and marks, whether they be ecological or aesthetic, living organisms leave behind them.

This marquisite ring is another relic, though one of a definitively different nature, and one that is a source of translated nostalgia; it belonged to my older sister, Elizabeth, and I believe, or at least I remember and have ingrained the story by this point, whether fact or fable, the ring was a gift from a former beau. The love tarnished, unable to be revived with either polish or well-intentioned effort, and, in fine metaphorical form, the ring was then crushed by the weight of some jewelry box.

It can no longer be worn on the finger, which is a true shame, but it can be slipped onto a thin chain and serves as an interesting charm. Like the ill-fated relationship, which no longer quite holds the same meaning or position along the current life trajectory for my sister, but the memory of which can still be touched and revisited, can still be gleaned from cortical recesses, the ring is a sort of morphous shadowed image of the original: a distortion.

More relics: these thin silver bangles were recently discovered in one of my jewelry boxes, much to my own delight. They make a pleasant type of music when worn in tandem.

Something old, something old, something old, and now something new: black leather Michael Kors wedge sandals; great height and lend some sophistication to even a casual Friday look, which, in this case, comprised of dark cigarette leg denim jeans and a plain black blouse.

Friday afternoon soundtrack: "Cruisin" Smokey Robinson; "Keep Gettin' It On" Marvin Gaye; "Lovely Day" Bill Withers; "Your Love is Like the Morning Sun" Al Green; "The Right Time" Ray Charles; "Waiting for Superman" the Flaming Lips