If you click the heart on this letter or leave a comment or share this letter, you will be telling some bot that what I write here was read by a human. That seems really strange to me, but it’s true.
It’s like having a new boiler installed because our old one only worked on alternate Tuesdays and Sunday mornings, but discovering that the new “smart” boiler only works if you occasionally remove the four AA batteries from its thermostat and put them back in. So, this “smart” boiler is about as smart as a flashlight from 1907 when the AA battery was invented. So, are we in the future or in the past? I don’t know.
But when you touch the heart or comment, no matter what the bot thinks, it feels like a hug to me from across the miles. So, thank you.
I have always been attracted to nail polish since I was a little kid. How wonderful to have colors right on the end of my fingertips. I’m interested mostly in pink nail polish. I’ve always loved pink. I love pink radiators – I have one in my Carnforth studio.
I have a collection of 1950s child’s tin kitchen furniture in pink.
I have pink bedroom slippers.
Recently, I rescued a pink dog from the house clearance warehouse. She was so much pinker after being washed.
So, how wonderful to have pink fingernails. But it’s always been the same as soon as I paint my fingernails; I feel like I can’t breathe. I feel like something heavy like a paperweight is sitting on each little fingernail.
When I was a kid, I immediately scraped off the polish with my teeth and sort of enjoyed the flaking pieces of paint on my tongue for a minute, but then I would feel a bit sick and I’d go take it off with remover. I haven’t tried using nail polish for about eight years now. I have a few bottles, but I just look at them longingly sometimes.
Once I made a painting with all of my unused polish and it hangs in my house in Nashville. People probably think it’s just paint, but I know it’s swirling streams of the nail polish of my dreams (can’t find a picture of it).
When I started collecting antique dolls, I noticed that some of them had little red lines around their fingernails – leftovers from dolly nail polish.
I wonder if they scraped it off with their tiny dolly teeth just like I did?
But really I imagine that their polish was worn away as they held the hands of friends who came before me. Their polish was washed away by little doll mothers when their tiny hands became sticky from tiny cakes. Their polish was spirited away by time brushing past them in nurseries, in cardboard boxes, and in blankets inside trunks in attics. Then one day, I brought one doll and another home and said, “Look at your cute little fingers. I once wore a bit of nail polish, too.”
The dolls and bears, especially Stanley Bear and Odile Bunny, and I wish you kindness and friendship in the week ahead, and always.
Your friend,
Jeni
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I always look at people with painted nails and think "what do you actually do with nails long and coloured" no gardening without gloves, no washing up, no picking flowers, being careful not to dig them into the baby when you pick him/her up, no gentle caress. Gosh, I don't want or like painted nails!!
Nail polish makes me nervous. I felt nervous as I started reading this piece! And then it was all okay because it makes you feel claustrophobic, which is probably the reaction I'm having, too. I love all the photos of the dolls with the little rims of leftover polish on their sweet fingers!