the hour upon the stage

“What do you mean you threw it all away?!” I should’ve known this would happen, the flashing of rectangular cuts one after another on Instagram reels, TikTok, YouTube shorts, multi-camera-roll, like goggles clipped onto your nose as you watched the world live its life by seconds and minutes and snapshots of celebrities and Vogue magazines and whispers of that style on the runway that blew into a holler, a crashing storm. A wave turned roaring and unstoppable, the flood of vintage wear reimagined into all the mainstream clothing brands – you could’ve bought that camisole for way cheaper twenty years ago, dearie, and they’re still around in thrift shops now – and the flock of young teenage girls with younger wallets not quite thick enough yet for the sparkly mall shelves crowding into said thrifts, into the vintage and upcycled clothes stores, anxiously threading through the racks of mesh tops and knee-high boots and flare jeans, of baguette bags and mannequins adorned with bucket hats and chunky necklaces; messy, messy, messier glimpses of how look at that thread count and Trump is president again and Zendaya wore something like that and mirrors echoing again and again the times of twenty years ago, the flash of uncertainty that everyone facing the new millennium had hidden under Juicy Couture tracksuits and colourful baby tees, the rising of another buried sun. How do you prepare for the rebirth of an era? Life lived, life loved, life upcycled here and into that $5 bin and patched up with stitchwork, life made glamorous again by the glittery glow of social media. “Y2K is coming back?!” I had barked in a panic down the phone to a friend, who had berated loudly into my ear after I admitted I had thrown all my old vaguely vintage wear away, thinking I’d never see them on the scene again – a laughable notion that after a four hour journey down Instagram and TikTok and SnapChat and all the little glowy app icons that ruthlessly dictated the rise and fall of the cherished sun, a journey when after enough reels had shoved the stacks and stacks of fabric so distinctly 2000s into my face, I could admit that I was terribly, painfully wrong. The definitive end of a millennium, the definitive end of an era – one and the same. We never counted on them rising again. Life at its last breaths, life dead, life given spark again. How do you feel the storm of blood back in your body as if you’ve begun to live? How do you prepare for a rebirth? For now I can dive into my extensive wardrobe, lose myself in the sensation of fabric against skin – “does this qualify as Y2K?” chanted increasingly distraught through racks of jackets and shirts and the wide baggy jeans and cargos that I thought were all the rage and would continue to be – and do something so simple yet so disturbingly complex as wearing clothes. For now I can search to keep up. The fight for skirts and shoes to wear is equal to the fight for relevance. I can don my chunky platform boots, and I can get creative: layer a coquette babydoll dress against light wash denim jeans, relics of dead trends long months back. I can find the thickest necklace I own. I can go out, a wraith of now distant times mimicking the tiniest drop of colour in the rush of life and wind, trying to blend in, trying to stand out, trying to be loved. This is who I am, this is who you are – I didn’t know they could be one and the same. A constant silent scream of look, I am trying, I am what you think should be. At the heart of the city lies the maze of vintages and thrifts that are all the rage now, flooded with those who think like me, who press colour into their closets like it would hide the fadedness of older times. I call my friends and tell them to go clothes shopping with me and eagerly, they agree. Here we are now, a posse of ghosts, a posse of shiny mirrors, whatever the new buzzword is. What would the Internet call us? What would last even more than a fraction of a reel, a sliver of a second? Y2K rises again like a brilliant star fraught with defiance against the extinguishing of its nuclear power, as happens with time. We rifle through the hangers and hangers of clothing like there is no tomorrow, because there isn’t. Not when you’re racing to keep up with time. Shopping is an evolution of the self – the clothes do not fit you because you have to fit the clothes. Who are you really, dressed in all these trends? My best friend tugs a mesh camisole with leopard print from its plastic hanger and holds it up for me. “What do you think?” she says. It’s so cute, I want to reply. Everything this era is all about, everything that was twenty years ago roaring back. I press the straps of the cami between my fingers and note the daintiness of the lace, how crumbly it is. The simple lack of sturdiness. “It’s fragile,” I end up saying. “Won’t last two years” and in my heart of hearts I know that doesn’t matter because the timelines, the life lines; they match anyway. So I pick up a long lace skirt and hold it against my hot, flushed skin: so alive with the times, soon to cool and soon to burn. “This is so Y2K,” my friends gush, and I give them a half-hearted smile. I feel tired, suddenly. Exhaustion so deep and bruise blue and soft, settling like mould over my bones. They pile onto me more, more, more – acid washed skinnies there, the trim of lace here, the hem of fur on a slim leather jacket. A box of chunky necklaces more brick than bead. In the mirror, cradling an armful of clothing with that lace skirt right at the very top, I look like twenty years ago full of life, less of a ghost, less of a mirage. More like a rebirth. How do you prepare for a rebirth? – by wanting to be loved. I want so badly to be loved. I take a deep breath, smooth down the crinkles in the skirt, and go to the counter to pay.