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. 

*   *   *

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.

*    *    *



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)

Words Planted Like Seeds

Today is a mirage. A preview of spring, nothing more. By Sunday all this will be frozen over again, encased in ice, piled high with snow. For today, however: icicles shrink, drain pipes gush and heads go hatless under a cloudless sky. I feel a breeze in my hair and it makes me shiver but not from cold. It's like a shard of June has broken off and fallen backwards through the seasons. I wonder if, later this year, we will come upon the fragment of February that it replaced. I wonder if we will go to sleep hot and sticky, in a world of parched grass and air conditioning only to wake up facing a blizzard?

*****

On Tuesday I entered the vault. When I heard that I was invited to visit a bank archive I thought yawn and ah well, it'll look good for class.

*



I had to be escorted into the elevator by my obliging tour guide; the service elevator is the only one that goes to their floor. Not up, as I'd assumed, but down and into an old vault. We stepped through the giant metal door as if entering a submarine. We're under land though not water; a subterranean instead.

I was surprised by how lovely it all was. It felt newly renovated. Despite the lack of windows it appeared to be a calm and comfortable place to work. Just three people in the department, all bookish and bright.

There was a storeroom full of treasure. I don't know what I expected. I think I'd imagined that all I would see would be reams of graphs (printed on dot matrix, with tear-away edges) showing how the piles of gold belonging to the bank have grown over the years. And this is when we signed a contract with The Prince of Darkness... see how dramatically our dividends increased after that quarter? But of course it was not like that at all. It was dusty old ledgers from the 1820s and artwork purchased by the bank and prototypes of typewriters all gleaming brass keys encased in wood.

The treasures were remarkable, of course, but the best bit was when my host sat me down to show me what she does every day. From outside looking in (not that you could, not that deep underground) it would not appear terribly exciting: cleaing old things, typing away about them in a database. But when she told me about it she beamed.

You are writing the history of the bank, of the city really, and of the items in our collection. This database is it, it's the record. I love my job.

*

I checked out the little museum on my way out. It's on the main floor and open to the public, unlike the rest of what I'd seen. There were more stories under glass. Crumbling bank notes from before Canada had its own currency; lovely 3D pictures of the construction of the Old Port (made of cut paper and little strips of wood); a handcarved letter opener.

*



There are things in that vault, solid artifacts with ID numbers, a monetary value and a spot on a shelf. But the reason they matter is because they are placeholders for stories. They whisper, in their hidden lair under the cobblestones of Old Montreal, even if the only souls who hear are the archivists in the next room. It is a library like any other, a treasure trove made up of words whether they are printed on a page or whether they hover, invisible, in the air.

*****

I wish I were an athlete but I am decidedly not.

The truth is, the snowboard won. I get these ideas, I think that maybe this time I will take to something immediately. I will show natural talent and I will swish down the hill in style. And then, of course, reality hits and I am flailing in the snow with a large chunk of fiberglass strapped to my feet, on the verge of tears. How did I get to be so delicate? Have I always been this way? Everybody falls. Everybody gets back up and tries again. It is the only way to improve. I know this, I knew this before I inched up the bunny hill on the motorised ramp. It made no difference though, each time I collided with the mountain I felt the breath and starch both get knocked out of me.

Why does it have to hurt so much? When can I go in and drink hot chocolate?

*

Just once it would be nice to be able to impress him. Just once it would be nice to see pride in his eyes rather than patience and pity. He spent the whole car ride back with his hand on my knee saying You did so well, I'm so happy we went, You should have seen yourself on that last run, but somehow I had trouble believing him.

The next day I expected my tailbone to ache, but it didn't. The rest of me was sore though. Especially my arms and my fingers. All those times I had to hoist myself back up, doing backwards push-ups on a moving board.

People asked how my weekend was and I found myself telling them that I went snowboarding. Just like that, like it was a fun outing and not abject humiliation. Everyone cooed and said Oh my, that must have been hard! I'm too scared to try. Are you any good? and I found myself chuckling and saying No, not really, but everyone sucks at first. 

I guess I'll probably end up doing it again, won't I?

*****

The past few days I've been trapped in my couch. I started reading Room and could not stop. Interruptions would not cease: work, making supper, sleep, hygene. I would have preferred that they leave me be, to read for as long as it took.

It's not really my favourite kind of book but it is the kind that requires you to stay up with it, holding a flashlight if necessary, asking over and over what happens next?

The language is deceptive. It seems simple but it isn't and it is now imprinted on my brain. I hear myself thinking in the cadence of a five year old and urging myself to be scave. If that sounds a little too precious, or if you think that books narrated by children are not your thing, I bet you would be surprised by this story. I bet you would be charmed and drawn in and moved to the edge of your seat. Or then again, maybe you wouldn't, but I was and I'm glad.

Art Therapy

I have files on my computer, heavy with pigment. Folders full of photographs, paintings, illustrations and digital renderings. I seek them out, almost compulsively and then I collect them, hoard them, stash them away. I use them as my desktop wallpaper and sigh each time I close a window. When I feel low, or when I just want to see something nice I pore over the images and find a balm for the ugliness that can, at times, threaten to overwhelm.

The above two photos are by Tim of that's just it photo

Concept artwork for the film Coraline, by Chris Turnham

Flight 3 Cover, by Kazu Kibuishi

 

Santa Monica Pier by Alice Stevenson

Portrait with Black Bunny, Leaving the Orphanage and Three Springtime Gals by Emily Martin (aka The Black Apple)

Full Body Tattoo, In the Gallery and Birthday by Jen Wang

Oyster Catcher, Bear Mountain (detail) and Anarctic Waters by Diana Sudyka

 



Tangled, Knee Deep, Shark Bite and (I think this is the name) Molt by Stasia Burrington

I'm so taken with Stasia's work that I actually own all of these images in some form or another in real life, not just in files on my computer (her shop is full of beautiful things). I am checking my mailbox this week, for Molt as a pendant. That's actually not the finished piece; the completed version can be seen here, and it is breath-taking, but I really love this stage of the drawing for some reason. I even kind of like the fact that it's not finished. 

Internet Whiplash. And snow. Not in that order.

It was snowing gently on my walk to work this morning. Something I'd never realized before moving to colder climes was that under the right conditions snow actually falls in tiny, perfect flakes. Cartoonishly perfect. Exactly like those paper ones we cut out.

I think the first time I noticed this was sitting in a car and seeing them land on the windshield in little piles and slowly melt against the glass.

I have this idea that I'd like to take a photo of them, the way I see them as I walk along, against my dark purple scarf. I keep meaning to bring my camera out with me when the conditions are right, but somehow I never do. 

+++

Have you ever gotten whiplash on the internet? What I mean by that is you go along reading your usual list of sites, maybe a clever writer here, a webcomic there, all regular daily stuff, but then someone links to a site that's new to you (without warning, possibly) or they write something out of character and suddenly you are blindsided by grief. 

Yesterday I found myself here, directed from here (not a site I read a lot, but on occasion), and I continue to feel haunted by what I saw and read. 

I am warning you now, it is a devastating story. It starts off breaking your heart and then just gets worse. I'm not sure what I think of making a photo documentary of someone's life in that way. I'm still thinking about it though, and about Julie, which is perhaps the whole point. 

[Note: If you are curious, but worried, you will probably get the idea by following the link and reading the introduction. That part, and much of the rest of it, is safe for work, as they say, but there are parts that are not and there are parts that are just too difficult to really look at regardless of your surroundings.]

It's probably a natural reaction to witness a thing like that and be horrified and then, quickly, to start thanking your lucky stars. To watch your own woes shrink to the size of those snowflakes, and then melt away. It would be nice to think that this change was permanent, that it was a forever kind of thing and that from this moment forth I shall never again be petty or take my good fortune for granted. Oh, but it doesn't work like that. I'm sure I was petty again within about fourteen seconds.


Why is this weirdo standing next to me at the crosswalk, GO AWAY WEIRDO. 

What do you mean you don't have the plum doughnuts? 

The zipper on my tall boots snapped off. The whole world is conspiring against me again, isn't it??? 


It's too hard to be raw and grateful all of the time. But it is good to be reminded. 

I want to say something about the more important reminder, that of human suffering and the cost of privilege (aka "good fortune") and what on Earth can we do about it all? 

But I don't think I can without sounding preachy and being a complete hypocrite. Because what do I do? I try to be kind and mostly I'm wrapped up in my own worries. Like everyone else. 


+++


Walking home from yoga tonight the temperature had dropped. Despite the earlier flurries, the morning really hadn't been terribly cold. That's another thing I learned by moving east; the coldest days are the clearest ones. Sun at the window lulls you into lighter fabrics, more exposed skin, maybe even a skirt. Don't be fooled though, it's a trick. Cloud cover acts as a blanket, trapping the heat. It's better to wear skirts when it's snowing, and snow pants when it isn't. Go figure. 

It actually sounded cold - the drop in temperature meant that the snow was squeaky underfoot. It's quite pretty when it's that cold though. The stars come out, and the places where the snow is left untouched glitters under the streetlights. All those tiny, perfect flakes. 

Recap: 

December - Blur! Pretty lights, good food. 

January - Blarg. Three weeks of convalescence (so far). One thing after another and I am feeling all Victorian and consumptive. I even had to postpone a long-awaited voyage. Curses.

February - Brrr. It is deep winter. Snow is piling up to the eaves and we are tucked away inside. Except when we have to go out and then we wear the clothing equivalent of puffy comforters. I'm still not fully well, and I have some trouble sleeping. So I am awake, sometimes, in the darkest parts of the night. I feel like Moomintroll - awake when all the world is hibernating. 

Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson

I may not be a morning person, but he sure as hell is.

It was still dark when I opened my eyes. Today I woke up a full twenty minutes before my alarm and for once I didn't just take advantage and fall back to my pillow. This may have had something to do with an insistent prodding from the foot of the bed.

***

I swept the kitchen floor before unrolling my mat. The dust moved in beguiling eddies, inviting someone to play. I shooed him to little avail.  

***

I stretched out, feeling my spinal column click into place.

Cat pose. So-called because of the way it invites the household pet to curl up underneath your torso.

Inhale, arch your back and look up.

(Shove the cat off the mat.)

Exhale, bow your back and look down.

(Shove the cat off the mat.)

Inhale, arch your back and look up.

(Shove the cat off the mat.)


And so on with each pose. I couldn't lay my hands on the heinous spray bottle so I improvised and flicked water at him from the nearby tap. It worked. For about ninety seconds.

There's probably a lesson in there. About tolerence and finding peace within the chaos of life. Can I learn the lesson while hissing that he's an evil, interfering little troll?

Eventually we reached a compromise. He flopped over on his side right next to the mat. Touching it with the tips of his paws. I, in turn, made some effort not to land on his tail.

***
I was statuesque in seated meditation. Pure white marble, shining with the light of the gods. He circled me, a complete disregard for deference, and rubbed his chin against my circled thumb and forefinger. Enlightenment is challenging with fifteen pounds of fur and menace climbing all over your lap.

***

By now the sky had lightened. Branches made zigzags against an indigo backdrop. Movements could be heard in the apartment above ours as I rolled up the mat (might I have flicked it with unecessary vigor because I know it startles him? Of course not). One car, down the street, pulled away and left for work. And then, soon after, another.

***

I switched the light on in the bathroom, getting ready to shower. He beat me to my task and jumped, eager, from the ground to the toilet to the sink. Imploring me to turn on the tap. But not too much, lest he soak his whiskers.

When I stepped out of the shower, dripping, I found there was only a small corner of the bath mat available to me. Even a cascade of drops did not deter my interloper. Nor did a towel to the face. Oh no, that was just a plaything and had him on his back sprawled out, batting at the frayed edge and pushing me off onto the tile.

***

I congratulated myself when I saw the time.

I have a full half-hour for breakfast. That means coffee. 

My daredevil companion curled around my feet as I put the tiny espresso pot on the bright red burner. What are scaldings, nicks from the paring knife I use to cut up a plum, or bruises from a fall when they come with such love, such devotion? 

I wanted to curse him but when I saw him trotting ahead of me, towards the living room couch, and I saw his low-slung cat belly swaying and his paws pitter-pattering my anger gave way to mirth. 

We sat together while I ate. I knew he was just siddling up to me because he was greedy for the yogurt in my bowl, but who can resist such softness, such perfect feined feline adoration?

***

I closed the door on my way out, not running for once, just heading out for work unflustered, unhurried. I caught a glimpse of him, settling in atop the plumpest pillow on the supplest part of the couch. He was licking white droplets from his muzzle and adjusting his whiskers so as to appear suitably rakish and handsome. I turned the key and shook my head, smitten as always.

Lumos

1999 – Montreal

Daytime talk shows are not the best company to keep but I am the night shift manager at a Second Cup and I have little to occupy me in the period between waking and working.  So, one winter afternoon finds me stretched out on my roommate’s couch flicking between our five or so channels.

Rosie O’Donnell is interviewing an English writer I’ve never heard of. The writer seems a bit star struck, not used to the attention of Hollywood. Rosie is raving about the book. A kids book, something to do with magic. The writer tells us that she wrote it on napkins in a café while her infant daughter napped. They flash the cover. Rosie makes the writer swear to cast her in the movie.

“And mark my words audience – there will be a movie!”

The segment ends with Rosie giving this woman a computer. So she can write the sequel on something more substantial than a napkin.

***

Within a week I make my way over to the Chapters on Saint Catherine. The kids’ books are on the bottom level, but it isn’t the bright cornucopia it will become. I brush aside cobwebs and scan the shelves.

A guy in a red vest goes by with a cart.

“Can I help you find something?”

I give him the title. I’ve forgotten the author, but it doesn’t matter. He’s never heard of it.

“Thanks anyway.”

I turn back and with some diligence turn up a trade paperback with a red locomotive, billowing purple steam and a boy with a jagged scar on the cover.

1999 – Montreal (a few months later)

Things have gotten tricky. I am not a happy person.

Home. I need to go home.

***

I am at the airport. Someone that I love has brought me here, and knows I’m going but doesn’t understand why. He is the kindest person I have ever met. My heart breaks to leave him, but every instinct tells me that to save myself I’ve got to go home.

A painful goodbye, a take-off.  Above the clouds I pull out the book I brought to read. To take my mind off things a bit. There’s a flying car on the cover. It’s silly and sweet and it lulls me all the way across the granite Shield, the endless prairies, over the jagged edge of the Rockies, to where my province dips her toes in the Pacific.

Home.

1999 – Mission, BC

The air is so clean, so wet and green. My lungs drink it in. I am dizzy from the sudden influx of oxygen.

I go to the grocery store with mom, trailing behind her. I am a child again, it seems. I pick up gourmet jelly beans and a book. Some kind of bird-creature on the cover, wings outstretched. It’s a little thrilling to discover that the third one in the series is already out. It’s a comforting place to put my aching brain.

2000 – Vancouver

Things have improved in leaps and bounds. The hardest part is that once your mind has dipped into those dark places, once it knows the way, it threatens to return with ease at some slight provocation. You get a bit wary of the possibility of relapse.

***

The fourth book is coming out, and I'm looking forward to it.

I wander over to the Chapters on Robson Street to pick up a copy on release day. It's only midday and I am surprised to discover that they’ve already sold out.

2003 – Hamilton, On.

I am in this town learning to be a midwife. For a brief span it is my calling, my life’s work. I am happy, working hard and in good company.

***

Lesson learned: I pre-order my copy of book five at a little local bookshop. I am not the only one.

2005 – St. Catharines, On. and then Montreal (again)

I have left the midwifery program. I don’t know it yet but it will be for good. As in, for ever, and also for my own good. For good. It is good that I left. But it also fills me with grief for the loss of this image I’ve forged of myself. Now I can never be her. Now I have to create a new her. 

I find my way back to Montreal, and to him. Even with this new crisis I am in better spirits, better health than last time. I find that despite the time and everything that has passed there is still love. He is still the kindest person I have ever met.

***

Summer. Once again I find myself at the Chapters on St Catherine. This time, instead of rooting through a basement trough I am shuttled upstairs to a special table that’s been set up on the third floor. A long, snaking line is forming for book six. Looking at the crates piled everywhere, I think they’ve ordered enough copies.

2006 (Christmas) – Montreal

Best gift ever. Better than the Barbie camper van I got when I was seven. Better than the combo tv/vcr as a graduation gift. Better than a diamond ring.

I get an ipod. 

No big deal, everyone has them. Except it is a big deal, it is magic. Portable music. Of course I’ve been doing that since I slid “Fields of Fire” into my neon yellow walkman in 1986. But did you know that you can get books on these things? Audiobooks? People who read to you, leaving your hands free to chop carrots or paint or enter data while the story washes over you?

It’s a revelation. 

2007 – Still Montreal

The heat of summer hasn’t really hit. It still feels nice to be outside, at night.

I do something unspeakably nerdy. I attend a release party that culminates at midnight, when the bookshop sellers are contractually allowed to hand over our copies of book seven. The last one there will ever be.

The party is painfully tiny. It’s painful in a lot of ways. It’s like the smallest Star Trek convention ever held. Still, it is fun and I float home on a city bus crowded with adults sporting striped scarves and stuffed snowy owls. I think they went to bigger parties.

***

I wonder if, for the other attendees, this is tantamount to filling a prescription for antidepressants. That sounds crazy. Am I crazy? I have no interest in dressing up as characters. I am only mildly interested in the film versions. I've never read any of the slash fiction, I swear. I don’t have a great deal of difficulty in predicting the outcome of this epic. I count other books, other authors as my precious favourites. But there is something about this series that coos to my hind-brain and makes me glad.

***

I finish the last sentence later that weekend, on a breezy terrace. A short bus ride away from where I began the first sentence, nine years ago, but a world away none the less. 

At first I hate the ending. With subsequent re-readings I will come to like it. At that moment, setting the book down, I feel bereft. But also, grateful.  

Present – Montreal

The books gather dust, but I’m sure I will pull them out again one day, when I have someone small to read them to. The audio versions get played about once a year. Or when I can’t sleep. Or when I’m agitated. It is an auditory soother, hot cocoa for my ears. It’s silly and sweet and lulls my mind away from those dark traps. It’s a tiny point of light when I need it to be.