bedroom a distant prospect lord berners bathroom big fish daniel wallace car/walk waltzing the cat pam houston
office resigned .|. free-for-all michael penn car you've come a long way, baby fatboy slim .|. trainspotting soundtrack living room apple venus volume 1 xtc
brand x the message came from out of the blue: Brand X welcomes you into its clutches.
1999 april 08
who is lise jordan?
jubilee sent me this postcard when she was in utrecht, the netherlands last summer on a hospital exchange program.
she insists it looks remarkably like me, although i cannot see it. there is a similarity about the eyes but the nose is completely different. and while the lips have the same basic shape, including the well defined bow of the upper one, hers are fuller than mine and have that crease down the center of the lower one. i've always found such creases to be incredibly sexy so i wish we really did have the same lips. i used to have a penchant for old fashioned hats, and had one rather like this, complete with veil, although the floral arrangement on mine was somewhat more understated. i am guessing it is the similarity in expression that struck my sister; both lise and i seem to have that looking off to the left thing down cold.
i tried searching for information about her on the web but couldn't find anything. there was very little about the photographer, willem witsen, either, although i did find one little blurb. i am betting she wasn't famous, even in her day, was most likely a friend or acquaintance of witsen's, or maybe just a client. it is highly unlikely i will ever know more than her name, unless i trek back across the ocean to amsterdam and do some indepth research. even then i'd have to suck up to someone who speaks and reads dutch as i don't and my only dutch connection, f, is now living in copenhagen with his wife who is pregnant with their first child. i somehow doubt she would look favourably upon his taking the time to drive down to help an old girlfriend, especially since it isn't a matter of life and death. [congrats again f&s]
the curiosity may well kill me, but i don't think i can convince f or gene or jubilee or anybody else of that. so, i've decided to make up a history and i've decided she will be a longlost relative. i am going to frame the postcard and put it on my desk and if anyone asks, and they will ask as they are all a bunch of nosy parkers at my office, i shall tell them it is lise jordan, a great aunt and woman of ill repute from a village outside of utrecht. i tell them she was an artist who refused to marry and wore a hat every day of the year, who had lovers too numerous to mention and was ignored whenever she went into the butcher's because he didn't serve sluts. i'll tell how she relied on her wits to get food, and the kindness of the men she took to her bed who always came with a chicken or a ham or a basket of eggs.
i shall spin the family legends of the trips she made to amsterdam to sell her sketches and to draw new ones of the women in the red light district. was there a red light district in amsterdam in 1891? well, there is now.
growing a new family tree, claire
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