I spy with my little eye



A springtime image by David Peterson of Mouse Guard


+ Some purple hyacinths in an old honey jar, next to the window. Stems reaching, flowers beginning to fold in on themselves, heady scent starting to fade.

+ A boy on the bus, with foot-long eyelashes which are completely incongruous with his thick stubble.

+ Unspeakably scary news from the other side of the world, of trembling earth and colossal waves. Just like that, out of nowhere, for so many people everything is gone.

+ A couple, on the corner, trying to take an arm's length photo. Laughing because instead they took video of themselves posing.

+ Pigeons bathing in the street-side lakes that had formed overnight, as the city temporarily thawed. Whole parties of pigeons gathering at the pool, dipping under the surface before popping up, feathers askew, spray fanning out around them.

+ An office, on a mezzanine, reached by spiral staircase, overlooking the library, inside of a museum, with a window looking out on busy streets and falling snow. A place where one catalogues 16th century dresses and 18th century books. In a word, heaven.

+ A café, done entirely in white. Blinding: stark, bright, white. White wicker, white tables, white walls. Glass cases full of tiny delectables dusted with the green crumble of crushed pistachio. Customers wearing tweed and cashmere, sipping espresso from tiny white cups. A small white dish with two maracons.

+ A chunk of ice, hanging precariously over a doorway. Water dripping continuously. Will it shrink, or will it fall?

+ A suitcase, open on my living room floor. A passport, a pair of strappy shoes with height (I have to practice wearing those...), a sun hat, a book. A trip I would never have planned, but am grateful to be invited on.

+ An accidental glimpse in the mirror beside the coffee maker in the office kitchen. Dressed this morning by going: what is on the top of the pile? Grey cardigan it is. Hair coiffed at desk, after removal of hat + coat, and pulled back into a static-defying ponytail. Make up? Not really. But in that glimpse: rosy cheeks, happy eyes, as-if-on-purpose hair with just the right flyaways. How many times do we look in the mirror and not want to change a thing? Not often enough.

+ A paperback in my purse, for reading on the bus. A great cover. Purple, naturally.

Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions by Neil Gaiman

Smelling of Purple

Photo by Emerson Merrick of An Apple a Day

I am one of those sensitive folks (in a long line of sensitive folks) who hates perfume. I glare openly at abusers who have lost all sense of proportion and wield scent like a weapon. What right do they have to asault my nasal passages like that?

And yet, I confess that I wear it too.

I suppose I should amend my previous statement: I hate most perfume. I hate the majority, but I covet that tiny intoxicating minority. I love a handful of perfumes; the kind with fancy labels, made in small batches, possibly in someone's kitchen, with ingredients described as "locally sourced", "organic" and "all natural". You know the kind of thing. The kind of thing you could practically eat. 

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In the language of the perfumer, I am considered gourmand. Ok, ok. In any language I am considered gourmand. I am picky though - far pickier about what scent I wear than what food I eat. Not that I am indiscriminate about my diet, but when it comes to perfume I seem to have a very narrow range of likes. Whereas with food I am open to experimentation.

One of the unfortunate things I've discovered in my aromatic searching is that gourmand often means spun sugar. I am drawn to scents inspired by foodstuffs but I do not want to smell like confection. It's the richness I'm after, the complexities of spice - both sweet and savoury. It's the difference between eating fresh fruit and hard candy. The fullness is lost, simplified to one sticky,  false note; the living story of the fragrance (and flavour), the botanical roots, are lost and replaced with corn syrup and food dye.

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My fantasy goes something like this:

Imagine the spice aisle in a small, old fashioned grocery store. Glass jars full of fine powders: crimson, buttery yellow, every earthen shade of brown. Some jars holding the spices in their original form, fragrant and whole. Full-leaf teas lined up all along the top. Rows of vanilla extract with actual vanilla beans, clove buds, slices of ginger and zezty little strips of orange peel floating in the black depths. Small bottles of dark elixir with slender seed pods just visible in the liquid. Wooden shelving, polished smooth with age. Candles made from bee's wax strung up by their wicks. Barrels of fruit at the end of the aisle - ripe purple plums, dark cherries, plump blackberries. Maybe a few stalks of rhubarb bundled up, sitting in my basket. Imagine, also, that there is a bakery next door, and something fresh and dusted with flour is cooling out of view.

Imagine distilling all of this into a small vial and dabbing it on your skin. Imagine tendrils of scent wrapping themselves around you, invisible to all but your most intimate companions. Imagine catching subtle hints of this throughout the day. 

*   *   *

It's hard to shop for your nose online, scratching and sniffing forlornly at the monitor. I keep at it because that is the best way to access all of the alchemical entrepreneurs out there, and because I am relentlessly optimistic that one day a brown paper package will arrive containing aromatic perfection.

Actually, a couple of months ago, it did. Or, close to perfection, anyway.

To me it smells purple. Not only purple, but the exact right shade of purple. Dark and fully ripe. Plum, or blackberry wine, with bunches of green herbs and whole spices stewing within. I kind of want to lick my own wrists.

I didn't fall in love instantly. In the pot (it's in solid form) it smells too fruity, too strong. On my skin however, the spice comes through, the green mingles with the purple and it turns mellow and lovely. 

I don't think it's the one (alas, is there such a thing?) (probably not for this fussbudget). It doesn't boast enough vanilla, and not quite enough spice either, but it is delightful and I enjoy smelling of purple while I keep searching. Just so long as I remember not to wield it like an olfactory dagger. Which, actually, when you love how something smells, is harder than I thought.

(This is the perfume, for those who are interested in such things too)

Purple

Is it really like a writing desk at all?

I'm not sure just how much stock can be put in this website, but it seemed a good, reasonable answer. I like the response "they both have inky quills" best.

"Raven" by John James Audubon. Have you

seen his illustrations? Gorgeous. Definitely encouraging

my creeping birder tendency. Found HERE.

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From wikipedia. Please click to enlarge. It's worth it.

I'm thinking about ravens. Or rather, of one raven in particular.

A few years ago I went camping somewhere north of Montreal with my love and we met a raven. I know I'd seen them before (I am from British Columbia after all, where they grow on trees) (ha) and had certainly heard them before, on walks in the woods, but this was a very up-close encounter.

Did you know that ravens are the size of turkeys? I wonder if the raven has swollen in my rememberings. Maybe it was the size of a very large chicken? No, I'm sure it was bigger than that.

He was so brazen, so cheeky. He almost seemed able to grin. Or wink. Or both.

(I only assume it was a he... could just as easily have been a she)

It was morning, and we'd just come out of our tent. The forest was mostly still, although you could hear the mist-muted sounds of other campers making breakfast, off in the distance. We heard a percussive noise in the trees above our site and looked up, all groggy and bed-headed, to see a feathery black giant. His head was twisted to the side, the better to see us. 

He hopped down to ground level, having decided that we were about as threatning as kittens, and strutted around for a while. We were totally enchanted. 

The campers next to us were either not up yet, or had already left to do some early morning activity, so our raven friend wandered around their site looking for snacks. Or trouble. Or both. 

He poked around a woodpile ("Look how BIG he is!" we exclaimed, "He must be as big as a turkey!"). He snooped in their stove ("Look how CLEVER he is!"). He scratched in the rubble under their picnic table ("Look how BEAUTIFUL he is!"). He clicked his beak and made throaty noises ("Listen to how WONDERFUL he sounds!"). He catalogued their garbage and found little of interest ("See how endearingly CHOOSY he is!"). He moved here and there, sometimes quite near to us ("See how his black feathers gleam PURPLE and BLUE!").

I remember being struck, not just by his size, but also by his shape. I sort of had in mind the image of ravens as big crows. But they aren't at all. Crows are much sleeker birds. Ravens have heft, and also shaggy throat feathers. They both have crafty, intelligent eyes.

We were crushed when he moved on, about twenty minutes later, to cause trouble elsewhere. How wrong would it be, really, to have a raven for a pet?

This stunning photo was found, through a google hunt, at this curious spot.

As far as I can see, no credit is given to the photographer.

It appears to be a book proposal by one Boria Sax. I don't know if it ever got published.

Boria Sax is a delightful name, don't you think?

Now I want to read The Mythical Zoo.

Dear Mr. Boria Sax, you seem so interesting (and are possibly a fanatstic raven photographer),will you be my friend?

In between assignments...

Lately I've been doing a lot of young adult reading for school. I like having this excuse to get caught up with the world of YA writing. I used to read a lot more of it than I do now. This is because I work at a library that doesn't have a YA  section and also because I used to read it as a sort of balm. What ailed me was being a student midwife, and there was much intelligent escapism to be had in the land of young adult fiction. I still have ailments but I guess I treat them with something else these days.

Anyway. I am discovering a lot of new authors and finding a lot that is worth reading. I've been posting my reviews (which I have to write for class) to my goodreads account, but maybe at the end of the semester I will do a sort of recap of what I read. So far my new favourites have been Susan Juby (already mentioned) and Jaclyn Moriarty. They both write such clever, quirky young women (and young men, for that matter).Their stories have a good mix of humour and depth. 

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This past weekend I had a challenge. This challenge was: find a dress to wear to a wedding. I have comletely ambivalent feelings about finding dresses for things. On the one hand - new dress! That's always nice. On the other hand - I have try on twelve thousand horrible poorly fitting dresses before I find one passable one! Not so nice. Part of the problem is that I seem to fall into some weird catagory of petite (but not quite), plus size (but not quite). And so I am on the fringe of normal dress sizes and can't find much that actually works for my figure. The other problem is that everything in the world of dress making is so ugly lately! 

(Uh oh.. I believe that I just allowed my age to show.)

But really. So many fake fabrics and appalling patterns. Who on earth wants to wear such repulsive colours? Where are the pretty vintage-inspired dresses? Where are the simple lines and rich tones? Where are the neat little details? Where is the artistry? Oh right, not at the mall. Curse you budget.

In the end I found a dress I am mostly happy with. I should take a picture of it, but probably not with me in it (I am not sure that I'm ready to start style-blogging).

Now I'm on the hunt for an appropriate necklace.

This is pretty gripping stuff, huh?

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At lunch time today I went out to run some errands and grab lunch. The errands were halfway successful. I found a bunch of not bad looking fake flowers for a display at the library. My preference for purple is completely transparent. I did not find a new fancy necklace to wear to the wedding next weekend. Ah well. And then lunch was also a bit of a disappointment. Tofu and veg in a weak, watery peanut sauce. Pretty unsatisfying.

On my way back to the office, walking along the sidewalk, clutching my bouquet of fake (mostly purple) flowers, my sorry lunch, and holding up my purple umbrella, I stepped in front of a white van as it pulled out of a driveway. It didn't see me, and I didn't see it, until the last minute. Luckily it wasn't going fast at all, and so I was not in as much danger as my rat-a-tat-tat heart may have implied. I was on the verge of being really rather irritated with this devil may care white van for pulling out of a blind driveway like that when I noticed that there was an ancient white cat curled up on the dash. She gave me a sleepy blink and I wasn't quite so irritated afterall.

Neither housework nor homework

Yesterday I fell in love with a flamenco dancer. Ok, I fell in love with five of them. Ok, ok. I fell in love with their shoes. 

This festival is going on right now and since I work right next to where it was set up on St Catharines, I spent my lunch hour eating spinach empanada and quivering. I am pretty sure that it was this group I saw perform, and the singer was fantastic, but it was the dancers and their purple (five shades of red, plum, eggplant, mauve and lilac) dance shoes. Mary Janes with heels. They were all in rippling black skirts. They used their hands like folding fans. They twirled and scowled and stamped their perfect shoes.  

 los zapatos morados perfectos están aquí

*   *   *

Shuffle shuffle shuffle. 

It's Saturday. My place is a mess. These two facts are not really related. My place is always a mess. But as it is Saturday I am not running (late) to work, so I am forced to sit in the mess.

Shuffle. 

I've got stuff to do. Homework: book(s) to review, papers to read, a quiz to write, notes to make. 

Yawn. Shuffle. Shuffle.

*    *    *

Breakfast smoothie: 

1 frozen banana

1 cup frozen mixed berries

1/4 cup plain yogurt

1 tsp ground flax seeds

1 tsp psyllium husks

dash of cinnamon

drizzle of agave nectar

A splash of almond milk

1 straw

*    *    *

Cleaning is out of the question.

Instead, my camera. What are the things in my apartment that do not make me feel tired?