About Sunday

$874.72 (with taxes) and barely smellable;
call me Mr. Dandy.

Leather running shoes for Fall.

Remember the evil queen in Show White who asks her mirror: “Who is the fairest in the land?” To face her day, she needs to believe that it is she who is the fairest and she needs regular validation that her beauty is foremost from her mirror.

I have always loved that part of the Snow White story because I believe that is how we all start our day. We all need our mirrors, implicit faith in ourselves, to excel at something and reinforcement of what we believe to be true about ourselves. We are all also as deluded as that queen.

To open our front door and step out into the world each day, we need to feel confident whether or not that confidence is deserved. We need to believe in ourselves and our worth and many of us—too many of us—believe ourselves to be better than most.

Every day I see countless instances of people putting themselves ahead of others or exempting themselves from the overt rules and regulations of society and/or the subtler conventions of socialized behavior.

One thing about myself about which I am terribly proud is the tenacity of my French self-identity. In spite of being abandon by my birth parents and surrendered to Anglophone culture, I have practically lactated over the sounds of French since my birth.

Conversely, I have always felt like a fish out of water in Anglophone Canada. I also grew up feeling “outside” because I was gay. But now I know too, that another reason I feel detached from life is that I am not someone who acts outside the rules or feels “better” than others. That, too, sets me apart from the mainstream human behavior that surrounds me.

Hence the profound existential crisis that is currently warping and wafting through my life. Yesterday was brutal. Yesterday was the second wave and I know more are coming. Yesterday I woke up deep into it so I quickly donned my shoes and backpack and was out the door to walk the wall. By the time I got home, I felt functional.

I met dear friend Mary-Lou in the afternoon and bought myself my first cologne (See above) thank you very much. My nose wants the best apparently. And more shoes. Call me Imelda.

PS:  I have had to accept that cherries are out of my life. After 67 years of loving cherries more than any other fruit (except watermelon), I cannot eat them any more. I have had them three times so far this year and been terribly sick each time. Cherries are now on my long, long list of late-life allergies—all due, according to my docs, to twenty years of ingesting psychotropic HIV drugs.