Things Fall Apart

My mom is the type of person who makes no apology. I've come to live with it and generally I don't need one to forgive. But in sounding more human and less holy, I should say that I've come to not really want to hear apologies at all, even if that is all a person has for me.

A few mornings ago the conversation was simple and filled with years of nuance:
Listen Jam, I want you to know, you know that bottle?
Huh?
You had a bottle of cologne.
Yea?
In your soccer bag.
Yea, okay?
The bottle tun ova.
What do you mean?
The bottle tun ova an' it break.
My bottle of Dolce is broken! - is it in the garbage?
Yes, mi threw it out, yuh cyaant smell it!? The whole room smell up suh!
(I, then take a deep therapy-intentioned breath in with my eyes closed and my lips firmly pinched.)
Whaapin, was it an expensive bottle?
Yes it was, and extremely sentimental.
Well... it tun ova
By itself?
Of course not, nuttin' nah tun ova itself unless a Duppy do it so.
I wouldn't think so.
The back of di vacuum chord catch the bag, and the bag tun ova wit di cologne...

Personally, I don't think a bottle of cologne stacks up in price against hundreds of thousands of dollars over 28 years. Also, as I walked out of the house, expecting and receiving no apology, and made my way to my cousin's house to watch her take care of her 3-month old bundle of joy, I didn't think the sentiment of a bottled scent stacks up against a mother who can hear if you're smiling or hungry from the other room. When I lifted my nose to the sky, it was sort of a phenomenal breath: The bottle of Dolce, now broken, fell into the universal scheme of things. In my mind it turned into broken glass and spilled liquid on the floor. I felt myself holding on to it, trying to rebuild it, trying to piece the bottle together with my idea of universal fairness. Not like this, I can't lose it like this, so suddenly, with so much left inside, so many experiences yet.

I realized at this point that piecing the bottle together in my mind would be harder than piecing it together in real life, and so all I really could do was sit there. I sat there and took some more breaths in. I realized that I only had a few minutes left with it. With Lana Del Rey's Born to Die playing in the background, I took a breath in and realized that it did indeed fill the room, gently. I lived in its aura. For the first time, I experienced what others may have, when the room unexpectedly became filled with my aura, for this time it was not on my body, and it was not attached to my agenda.

I think sensory adaptation is one of the most poetic analogies of nature - we forget what our own scent smells like, what others feel when they experience us, even though we so purposefully try to have people experience us in a very specific way. Most people don't know my funk, the air that comes from my dark places, and most people won't. I don't mind that, in fact for the most part I hide my funk not out of shame but out of public consideration. But sitting there, on that bar stool in my basement, it became evident that if I'm not able to smell my own richness, then nobody will ever come to know the whole story of me. All they will come to know is what I have come to know, my dark places. Just as much as you probably should introduce the people you love to your dark places, you have to introduce yourself to your own light. It doesn't happen naturally, your mind's eye is very curious about the external, you have to remind it of how unfamiliar it is with the internal. Those of us who are blessed change every day, which is why there is so much going on inside that we don't understand. It's either an arrogant statement, or a demisingly true statement, when someone says that they know themselves completely. Doubtless you are the best judge of yourself, but any self-respecting judge knows not every day's case has precedence.

This post and its metaphors for my daily experiences is not one to describe sadness or anger. This is a description of something recently that fell apart for me. Things fall apart for a reason; today's reason was not to make way for something new, but to allow me to embrace something old. I realize that I had a lot of emotion tied up in that bottle, a lot of feelings about myself that I would only let out in doses each morning. It was my mom who, just as mother's do, broke apart the glass that encased me and forced me to take myself in. Better her than me, I never myself had the courage to break myself free from yesterday to face tomorrow.

It was nice, my yesterday's scent. And now, tomorrow, I suppose can smell like anything I put my mind and my money to. Chances are, it'll still be a type of Dolce.