Overheard

Little old lady: So, what exactly is the universe?

Handsome middle-aged man: Exactly?

LOL: Like, is it at the end of imagination?

HMM: Well, the universe we talk about is all that was created by the big bang.

LOL: So it’s bigger than the milky way.

HMM: The milky way is just one galaxy. There are millions of them in the universe.. There’s also a theory of multiverses, that there are other universes. But since there is no communication between them, there’s really no way of knowing.

Long silence

LOL: I’m going to die in great ignorance.

HMM: So are we all.

LOL: But I will die more ignorant than you.

HMM: (Chuckles) Well I don’t know about that. You know more about other things.

LOL:  Hmmm....yes, I guess there’s such a thing as relevant ignorance. I don’t really care if I die not know anything about the universe. But I do care that I'll die never having learned Chinese. And when I’m dead, I don’t suppose I’ll care even about that.

One Fucking Onion

You know how it is in supermarkets. You have only an armful of items, but the quick lane (1-8 items) has a line-up that would go around a block. So you look for a shorter line. And there it is! The customer’s cart is empty and she’s down to her last few items of food. So I scurried over, elbowing my way past the woman with a mountain of produce in her cart going in the same direction. Smugly I lay down my four carrots, my bag of onions and 3 bags of milk.  The woman ahead of me is down to her last onion. So, naturally I congratulate myself for being so fortunate. 

One single onion. She is explaining to the cashier in precise detail in which bin she found it and what the assigned price had been. The cashier’s name tag says “Mandy”. Mandy needs to know which button to push after she has weighed it. She scans the little roller with the codes and prices.

“It’s not a Spanish onion,” she says, as she squints down on the pathetic little onion.

“No,” it was in a separate bin, and it said 39 cents a pound.”

Mandy punched in under ‘yellow onion’ and the price showed 55 cents a pound.

“No, that’s not the right price,” the customer said.

Mandy tried under ‘Vidalia’ but the price was even higher.

“I don’t know what else to try,” Mandy said. “We’ll send someone over to check out the bin.”  She called out for a price-check over the loudspeaker. A woman named Samantha came over, examined the onion, listened to the lady who gave her detailed instructions on where to find its source. Samantha did not jog to her destination. Nor did she exactly crawl. Perhaps ‘sauntered’ would express her approximate speed.

“Patience,” I told myself. A skilled meditator could meditate on a crowded subway, I reminded myself. I meditated for maybe six seconds when an undeniable feeling of irritation came over me. “Patience,” I repeated.

In the eight or so minutes that followed, Mandy was careful not to make eye contact with me. I was dying to roll my eyes to express a tolerant, so far, exasperation,  but she looked straight ahead, motionless as if she were a part of an installation in a museum. Supermarkets in the Anthropocene ?

At long last Samantha returned and gave Mandy the code number she should use. Mandy punched it in and once again the price came out as 55 cents a pound.  The customer became animated, trying to communicate with her hands and elbows how she had found this one onion and how it had been clearly marked at 39 cents a pound.

It was at this point that I noticed that she was a rather short, stout woman, perhaps in her mid-thirties. I also noticed that her husband was standing at the other end of the counter looking bored. All the other items were clearly packed and ready to go. It was then, also, that I noticed the woman seemed to be enjoying herself. She actually looked happy, commanding Samantha and Mandy. She was urging Samantha to go back and look more carefully. The minutes were ticking by. Samantha hesitated, looked to Mandy and I could sense an argument brewing.  Somehow it was suggested that the customer herself should….  That was when something snapped inside me.

“Oh for God’s sake!” I said loudly, and brusquely gathered up my carrots, onions and milk in my arms.

I could actually feel the electricity as the customer snapped her attention to me. “Oh my!” she said loudly. “Aren’t we the impatient one! ”

“All this for one fucking onion!” I almost shouted.

“Well, the pennies might not mean much to you, but they do to me,” she said, yes, proudly.

Ah! She was playing the poverty card. My milk and carrots were not exactly luxury items. But, perhaps she had noticed that I was buying a whole bag of onions whereas she could afford only one. Who knows. I probably had more money than her, but then I was not that Kardashian woman either. (Or are there many of them?)

“”Yeah?” I snapped back. “ Well then, if I were in your shoes, I’d rather leave the onion out of the recipe than make someone wait for ten minutes!” I stomped off in a huff, and fortunately found another cashier who was not too busy.

God that felt good! I smiled all the way back to the car. There were so many worries waiting for me when I got home, so many chores to do. Lentil soup to cook, studio to clear out, dogs to walk, weeds to pull, emails to send…… And then there was the tricky feud with a prickly neighbour that had to be straightened out. But the venom in me had been spent....  resolving the argument would be a piece of cake. Shining love opened up before me.

Who Has Good Taste?

The problem with good taste is that it’s so predictable…. sometimes even boring. BUT, good taste speaks for itself, right? It has no need to defend itself. In questions of morality, we might ask “What would Jesus do?”  In questions of taste, there is no Jesus, though there are many who have offered themselves as guides and have profited from it by building up reputations as arbiters between good and bad. They create magazines, run columns and blogs. They become a part of the machinery whose job is to produce anxiety. Can you risk having bad taste? Who wants to stand out on the red carpet as the one whose frills don’t compliment their funk?

The problem with good taste is that it’s so predictable. Oh, I already said that. Yes. I started to think about this recently when I had to choose a colour for my new living room. The style of the room could go in many directions.  I have downsized to a small country cottage of about 880 square feet. It feels very compact after 25 years of floundering in a spacious 3,000 square feet. A third of this new space is a living room with a 14 foot cathedral ceiling, quaint windows on three sides overlooking a forest, a distant lake, and a neighbour’s house. What to do!  What to do!

So I went to the experts. I bought an armload of magazines to help me solve storage and function problems. Four of the magazines were devoted to good taste. I must have leafed through hundreds of photos of the living spaces of multi-millionaires.  I’ve taught my daughters that when shopping for ideas, start at the top….see what the current Rolls Royce is all about and then move down to your personal financial comfort zone. In clothing, for example, one current model of good taste is the Dutchess of Cambridge, the Jackie Kennedy of today. Check out to see what she’s wearing and let the vision inform your next purchase should you need a new purse or dress or fascinator. You can’t go wrong.

But here is my point: the aforementioned homes were, for sure, exquisite, but, if you simply flip through each magazine, you can’t miss the preponderance of off-white, creams, beiges, soft greys…. predictable, no? Sure, they are Cashmere coulours you’d love to wrap around yourself.  My two dogs and three cats would love it!  But....predictable. I had to search hard to find a living room somewhere in Italy that dared to venture… into a middle green, no less. The green was made mysterious by soft lighting and an ultramarine ceiling dotted with stars. I love fairy tales. I love the Thousand and One Nights. I love colour. This was the only idea that actually excited me: to make my living space into a rich, evocative fantasy world.

So I tore out the page and took it with me to Home Depot. I am experienced, I thought. I know the trickery of green in all its shades. This particular green was neither dark nor light. It did not veer off into the olive or lemon zone. It did not suggest blue, but I realized it had to contain a fair amount blue to overcome the yellow. And a bit of black to tone it down. In the photograph, the top corner of the room was a murky green and a spotlighted area in a bottom corner was practically white. But the two extremes shaded into the central area  where, with some guess work, I could average out the predominant colour. With the right sort of lighting, the full complexity of shading could be duplicated. Right?

I will skip over the hour spent in colour comparisons and floundering among the paint chips. When I finally finished painting my wall, I stood back to have a look at the naked unembellished truth: a rather plain green wall. But I was not disheartened because my vision for a room of mystery was still intact. It would take time and….

Hmmm…Did I mention money? As I stood there I began to calculate what it would take to create the mystery of that room somewhere in Italy. An ultramarine vaulted ceiling?  Hidden lighting? An artificial tree? A Persian carpet? Reupholstering of my old couch? Nothing was impossible. In time. With patience. With money.

A knock on the door brought me back to reality. There stood my sister. She dropped by on her way to No Frills to see how I was doing. There was nothing to do but to invite her in and winess the result of all my labour.  Now, my sister has good taste. Her middle name could be Onassis. As we stood there in the middle of the room viewing my masterpiece, I have to give her credit for keeping her mouth shut. I was plainly caught standing on the red carpet in an under-sized dress that accentuated the ten pounds at the waist that I needed to lose!

Yes, I know all about good taste. It’s not as difficult as it may sound. If you don’t have money, put your trust in IKEA. If quickly flipping through a magazine while squinting, there is not much difference between an IKEA kitchen and a million dollar one. You will see a haze of off-whites and crisp lines. Beautiful. There is no sarcasm intended. Good bones, simplicity, lack of pretension. Lack of adventure.

In my calculations I realized it would take ten years or so to bring my vision to fruition. In the meantime, I needed a place to relax in, to bring friends and guests to. The green wall still stands today, but the vision has shifted.  The south-facing wall is now jet black ---just on the edge of good taste--- and the other wall is a soft silver. Definitely in good taste. Everything I own fits in without a clash. Any accent looks good against the gray and spectacular against the black..

When I told my sister over the phone that I was no longer sure about the green wall, there was a brief silence at her end. “Hah!” she finally said. “You said it, not me,”