Monthly Archives: February 2014

To Wear Chanel No. 5…or not to.

26 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Fashion, Pushpins (Daily Life)

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This weekend, I almost succumbed to a new force of fragrance. I almost bought Chanel No. 5.

There it was, on the department store counter, clothed in its elegant, geometric bottle, beckoning to me, inviting me into its sensual history. Created in 1921 by Coco Chanel, this was the designer’s distillation of what she thought a woman should smell like. This was the scent loved by Marilyn Monroe, a few drops of it her only consistent bed partner during her all too short life.

I picked up the bottle and sprayed its contents on my wrist. Immediately, I was greeted by the scent of bergamot and powder. A few minutes more and my skin oil changed the perfume’s configuration. Now, the watery sweet smell of lily of the valley emerged from its vortex of musk and citrus.

I liked it. But, it didn’t really smell like me.

Perfume, I find, is a lot like fashion. Depending on what you wear, you can change your image, change how people perceive you. Perhaps when I am in my fifties, with my white hair piled atop my head in a Victorian bun, I would be able to wear Chanel No. 5 in all its musky gravitas. But now, I am in my late twenties, with short hair and a lot of life to live.

I walked away from counter and out into the February day. The wind on the other side of the sliding doors blew into my face, bringing with it the smell of black current, sandalwood, musk, and vanilla. I remember smiling. The Burberry Women I sprayed on my neck that morning was still there, subtly enveloping me in its elegant, earthy scent. Here was a perfume I wore to work and to parties and to galas. A scent whose vanilla notes intensified when I went on long runs and whose sandalwood mingled with the smell of bark and moss when I climbed the occasional tree. This was a perfume that held me in its warm, quiet embrace as I drifted off to sleep

Burberry Women smelled like me, its essence distilling my own.

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Remembering Miss Rumphius

19 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Literature, Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

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Last week, I reconnected with Miss Rumphius, a lovely book from my childhood. A research project from work took me to YouTube, looking for short, inspirational videos. After a few key word searches, my eyes fell into the illustrations of this richly pigmented picture book. I again became part of Miss Rumphius’s story, left breathless by her colorful adventures and dazzled by the thick, spiky clumps of “blue and purple and rose colored lupines” she plants all over her town at the book’s end.

If you haven’t read it, or simply do not have the time to watch the video, let me tell you a little bit about the plot. The story follows the life of Alice Rumphius, a little girl who lives by the sea. When she is young, she wishes to go to far away places. And when she is old and tired of adventure, she wishes to live by the sea. In addition to these life ambitions, her grandfather challenges her to “do something to make the world more beautiful,” the hardest thing for a person to accomplish. So, Miss Rumphius grows up, moves away from home, becomes a librarian, goes on adventures, and when she is old, she lives by the sea, making the world more beautiful as she plants thousands of lupine seeds around her little town.

Listening to her story after all these years gave me an odd feeling–it felt like both remembering a long-forgotten memory and realizing a long, unspoken prophecy. In my youth, her life inspired me, a Midwesterner who had never seen the sea. She was an ideal I could only hope to aspire to: interesting, wise, and full of colorful stories. Now, I feel a strange affinity with Miss Rumphius, rather than a gape-mouthed awe. I feel like I have lived into bits of her essence. Like her, I have traveled to far off places and become a librarian. I also desire to create beauty for this world through writing, relationships, and cooking. Did this story help to shape me for the life I now live? Did this little piece of art help to mold my tastes and desires? In some ways, I think it did.

But in other ways, I think that this little piece of art was a striking story that helped to reinforce the values and life truths of the men and women who raised me. In quiet, unassuming ways, my family and my neighbors chose to create little artistic moments that startled and re-directed the lazy, predictable flow of small town Midwestern life. My grandmother planted larkspur every year in her garden for humming birds. At the beginning of each summer, we would try to guess where new patches of pink and purple-blue would appear, blown by last year’s winds. Where others saw piles of car parts and buckets of spark plugs, my grandfather saw (and would build) purring, rumbling Model T Fords and classic Roadsters. Our family garden, thanks to the efforts of my father, always had heirloom tomatoes in the summer–beautiful, ruby colored orbs whose taste was so rich, so deep, that each bite became a silken caress.

And there was my neighbor Helen, who would keep seed packets in her car, ready for her to open and scatter whenever she came across an abandoned parking lot or patch of dirt.

She was my own Miss Rumphius. Present in my life before I read this book.

Favorite Pick-up Lines from Classical Literature: Post the Second

14 Friday Feb 2014

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This past Wednesday, I shared with you, my gentle readers, four of my favorite pick-up lines from Classical Literature. It is Friday, and as I promised, here are the final four:

5. Confessions, Augustine of Hippo
“Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!…You called and cried aloud, and shattered my deafness; you flashed and blazed like lightning, and routed my blindness. You cast your fragrance, and I drew breath, yet pant for you; I tasted, yet hunger and thirst; you touched me, and I was on fire for your peace.” ~Augustine

Whew. Though Augustine wrote this to God, it’s still pretty sensual. Seriously, who wouldn’t want to be called a “Beauty so ancient and so new”? Plus, how do we know that he didn’t express the above sentiments to another human being at some point in his life? He was quite the player in his youth, if you know what I mean. He totally got a girl pregnant, then peaced out. But, thank goodness he started writing such exquisite things to God. It’s hard to pull crap on an omniscient being. So much better for him, the ladies, and the growth of the Christian church.

6. “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” in Flappers and Philosophers, F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Do you think I ought to bob my hair?” ~Bernice

Oh beautiful, dull, awkward, Midwestern Bernice, trying to get the attention of champagne-guzzling, Ivy educated, easily distracted, Northeastern boys. The pick-up line, given to her by her worldly cousin Marjorie Harvey, does get those silly boys’ attention (like a lot), and almost leads Bernice into social suicide after she gets said bob (hint: Marjorie Harvey is a horrid, horrid human being). Though luckily for Bernice, when she loses her long, sumptuous locks, she finally finds her backbone.

7. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation [for loving Mr. Darcy]. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that it had begun.” ~Elizabeth Bennett

Pride and Prejudice has many wonderful pick-up lines in it, but this one, this one is my favorite. These three sentences always give me chills when I read them, and I’ve been reading them since I was twelve! I love Elizabeth’s honesty and awe as she reflects on the growth of her attachment to Darcy. But then, for me, that is the beauty of Elizabeth and Darcy in the first place. They challenge each other into spaces of deep introspection, and from those places of introspection, they both discover new things about themselves. A couple who is willing to self-reflect and learn from one another is a fine couple, indeed.

8. Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare
“Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.” ~Benedick

Beatrice and Benedick, just the cutest in all of Messina. Here are two characters who have similar personalities and totally get one another. Benedick knows that he and Beatrice are high-spirited, witty, merry-makers who aren’t the types to get all moody, and googly-eyed about each other (::cough::cough:: Claudio and Hero). Wooing peaceably is so not their thang–and that’s what makes this line so charming. They see, and woo each other, just as they are.

And there you have it–eight of my all-time favorite pick-up lines from Classical Literature. I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed writing about them! And, if you are at all inclined to use any or all of them, do use them with prudence. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Favorite Pick-up Lines from Classical Literature: Post the First

12 Wednesday Feb 2014

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Oh, hormones. We humans have those, don’t we? And ridiculously enough, we’ve had them for quite some time and seem to act on them in lovely, earnest, and slightly odd ways. Whether dressed in togas, powdered wigs, corsets, breeches, or rolled up stockings, our fore-mothers and forefathers have always desperately tried (with varying success) to get into the togas, powdered wigs, corsets, breeches, and rolled up stockings of the slamming hottie of their sexual preference. How do we know this? Classical Literature tells us so. I find that Classical Literature, especially the novel, is a warm-hearted record of how our not-so-distant ancestors navigated those big, giddy, feelings. Feelings that always seem to manifest when human beings attempt to pursue companionship and population extension.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d share eight of my favorite pick-up lines from the classics, four today and four on Friday. Here, in no particular order, are the first four:

1. Daniel Deronda, George Eliot
“You look good. Perhaps it is God’s command.” ~Mirah Lapidoth

Oh Mirah, your aquatic suicide (death by drowning in a water-logged cloak) was just thwarted by the super compassionate, super thoughtful, super hot Daniel Deronda. Yes, Daniel does look good (in both the moral and physical sense, this is a Victorian novel after all). And darn right it’s God’s command!

2. A Room With a View, E.M. Forster
“For something tremendous has happened; I must face it without getting muddled. It isn’t exactly that a man has died.” ~George Emerson

George Emerson: so earnest, so poetic, so determined to understand all the feelings that holding an unconscious Lucy Honeychurch are causing in his nervous system. Even though he and Lucy just saw a man get stabbed to death, holding her in his arms totes got him thinking about…other things.

3. Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
“I see what you think of me. I shall make but a poor figure in your journal to-morrow.” ~Henry Tilney

Henry Tilney is just the best. His statement to Catherine Morland allows him to do two things: 1.) Show Catherine that he deeply understands the trivialities of women (he knows that a young lady’s relationship to her journal is important!). 2.) Gauge how Catherine feels about him through her reaction to his self-deprecation. Clever, clever boy, he must have a sister. Oh wait, he does have a sister!

4. Tom Jones, Henry Fielding
“Your situation, Mr. Jones, is now altered, and I assure you I have great satisfaction in the alteration. You will now want no opportunity of being near me, and convincing me that your mind is altered too.” ~Sophia Western

Sophia does not suffer fools. Especially the misguided foolishness of one Mr. Tom Jones who, though swears that he has loved her since childhood, proceeds to sleep with half the women in Georgian England over the course of Fielding’s 800-page tome. Though Tom finally falls into both money and redemption (and also wants to fall into Sophia’s arms–hey-o!), Sophia knows that only time will allow her to trust his sincerity. Her wisdom and sense in the presence of such a charming rake is quite admirable.

There you have it: four down and four to go. See you on Friday…

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Hard R’s and Nasal A’s

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Pushpins (Daily Life), Religious Exploration

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“Alright, sweetie, let’s get ya outta there.”

I bend down, and unbuckle Elliot from his stroller. He giggles in appreciation as I lift him out, then promptly repays my kindness by sprinting towards the park’s icy fountain. I run after him, and catch the toddler in my arms before his little gloved hands touch jagged ice.

“No ma dear. Ya musn’t touch that. It needs left alone.”

My consonants begin to slur, my hard r’s growl from the back of my throat, and my a’s embed themselves high in my nasal cavities. And for a moment, I am no longer in a New England park. I am back in Northeastern Ohio. I am a little girl, trying to touch a glass jar on a supermarket shelf, barely stopped by my mother’s arms.

“No ma dear.” My mother said. “Ya musn’t touch that. It needs left alone.”

My consonants begin to slur, my hard r’s growl from the back of my throat, and my a’s embed themselves high in my nasal cavities.

Five years away from Northeastern Ohio has helped to smooth out my hard, folksy, Midwestern accent. Studying in both in England and at an Ivy League institution has further gentrified it. I say “back” instead of “beACK” on a regular basis now. But, those Midwestern speech patterns and accents do come back. I hear them when I am giving practical advice, I hear them when I speak with friends I love and trust, I hear them when I talk to children. My Midwestern accent comes out when I am relaxed, when I am willing to be completely vulnerable. Hard r’s and nasal a’s are my auditory reminders of home, of parental nurture, of unconditional love.

I am not the first to think this way. Centuries ago, Dante wrote his beautiful sacred poetry in Italian instead of Latin. Though Latin was the scholarly language of the church, Italian was the language of Dante’s mother and father–the language that reminded him of deep, unspoken intimacy and love. A much more intuitive medium for him to explore God’s love for humanity through.

My Midwestern accent comes out when I am relaxed, when I am willing to be completely vulnerable.

Elliot wiggles in my arms, now. He points at his stroller.

“Oh, do you want to go beACK?”

“Yeah!”

“Okay, then. Give me your hand.”

He reaches out his small hand, I take it into my larger one, and we walk back to the stroller. Thank God love manifests in many different ways; thank God love wraps itself up in daily word and tone.

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