A Memoir in the Form of Four Denim Jackets (Part 3)

.


In the Eighties, I was both married and published.  So I needed a denim jacket more in keeping with my more dignified state.  Marianne took a new jacket and bleached the Milky Way across it.  Then she embroidered stars on the back in the pattern of the Northern Cross -- the constellation also known as Cygnus, the Swan.


The Guinness shoulder patch I had bought in Ireland in 1982, the first time I had ever been overseas.  Above one pocket are a cloisonne button of Fat Freddy's Cat, another for Solar Energy (I was working for the National Solar Heating and Cooling Information Center at the time), and a handmade "Cool Runnings" wooden button which I had bought in Jamaica.  Over the other pocket was a NASA patch -- I was a sponsor, not a participant. The black-and-white  button was for Philadelphia's Mythos Festival, a city-wide celebration of myth that Marianne and I both enjoyed the hell out of.  I wore it upside down to symbolize my intention to turn mythology on its head.

The braided string had significance, I know, but what it was I have long forgotten.

I used to call this jacket "my SFWA colors."


*