Warning: long post ahead that deals with shopping and personal goals

Yesterday I walked everywhere. I left school and went straight to 6th and A, stopped home for money, and walked to 38th and 9th and then back. It was great, although my calves, which were aching beforehand, almost prevented me from sleeping that night (as did Harry, who called me at one in the morning during a draw-a-thon and made me miss him all over again).

I really can't explain the deep delight I take from looking at clothes in thrift shops. I stopped into Barneys while I was nearby to get ideas, but I found myself dissappointed in the unimaginative interpretations of the past that they were showing off. The real thing is infinately superior. Old dresses and shoes and felt hats and jeans have so much history in them, so much life... it's almost a high. I wander into these obscure shops and sift for hours and feel like I've gone back in time.

The strangest part of the experience is finding old wedding dresses. I know I've mentioned this before, but they're always there. I always wonder if the person either died or decided to give away their wedding dress--maybe the marriage failed, maybe they're just not sentimental, or maybe they needed money. Or maybe there's a failed designer out there who was clearing out his or her racks. Either way, the fact that something that was once so important to someone is abandoned and on sale for twenty dollars has a kind of sad magic to it.

People will always take the most beautiful designs and stick huge neon tufts all over them. I'm forever cutting things off of things, tearing out shoulder pads and snipping beads and monograms. I got an amazing purse the other day that had a whole garden of suede pastel flowers germinating on one side, and I just cut them off and got an elegant bag. I got complimented on it at a thrift shop yesterday by this woman who was trying on a calf-length pastel-blue pouf skirt with a natural waist. "I don't know if I can wear it with a waist this high," she told me, but I told her that it could be manipulated. She was fascinated. "How would you wear it?" she asked, so I showed her a few tricks--use the pocket fabric to insert a triangle into the zipper, or fold the top over a belt, or hide it under a pinched sweater. She told me that she had to shop for new clothes now because she'd had an operation that caused her to gain weight and was only now returning to her natural shape. She was thirty and in law school. I gave her tips for resizing her clothes. She asked me which design school I studied at. I told her I was in high school and she smiled and said that "you intimidate me even more now than you did when I thought you were twenty-five."

It was an eerie moment. I'm not used to intimidating people. I don't think of myself as an intimidating person at all. I have to admit that I was flattered, partly because she seemed pretty confident, but I was also just confused. I hate being intimidated by people, and I've spent most of my life doing it. I have several friends who initially intimidated me; but they're of that wonderful type that see intimidation right away and go out of their ways to avoid it. I want to be a Lauren, smart and gorgeous but so friendly and loving that no one feels threatened. But that takes more than just confidence; it takes charisma and knowledge and understanding. Even as a freshman I understood that; my goal was not to become one of those high-school princesses whose beauty leaves a bitter wake but to become a queen, strong and confident and loving. I can deal with criticism pretty well now, but that kind of a compliment is a much more driving criticism to me, and it scares me. I'm more confident now than I ever have been, but I want to find a confidence so great that it approaches complete humility, and I'm not there yet.