Time Travel in a Bottle
Feb. 21st, 2012 01:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydionDuring this move, I was able to unpack slowly, which is a weird luxury for me. I'm used to unpacking being this emergency that needs to happen at hide speed. Remember also, that before I moved North, I generally moved a couple times a year every year from 1988 onward. Things get lost or misplaced under those conditions. They get shoved in boxes and end up in the backs of closets, drawers, etc.. The two moves before this one were particularly chaotic for a number of reasons.
One of the side benefits of doing it slowly this time is that things got sorted. Lost things were reunited, things like jewelry got weeded. It turns out that a lot bath products got lost in at least the three previous moves. As a result, it turned out I had a ridiculous number of samples. Some were gifts or suveniers people gave me. Others were from variuus hotels. I used to use them for travel all the time, but then 9/11 meant I couldn't take them on planes. Then I stopped having a car that could travel distances, so couldn't visit friends in places like Oregon as often. I combined the collections and have been steadily working my way through since November. (I am down to two trial sized shampoos). I also found two partially used full sized conditioner bottles. One is of unknown origin.
The other? Time travel in a bottle.
This was the conditioner (and shampoo) I was using when I first left home for college. Two of the four young men I loved the best at St. John's used this same brand. (It's not as surprising as you'd think. I have always had a penchant for dark haired men. This brand was marketed by hair colour, smelled pleasant in an androgynous way, and worked reasonably well without being expensive). We were sad when the brand got discontinued, and I remember one of them (I can not swear which) buying up a bunch of bottles before they were all gone. A couple of years later, I found this bottle of conditioner super cheap in a discount store in Corvallis that sold irregulars and close outs. I used two thrds of it, and apparently lost int in the next move. *facepalm*
So this bottle has to be a little over two decades old at best, possibly over, but I am poor and there was a third left. The texture is no longer correct, and the scent has long faded. However, the shape and colours of the bottle and label are a little time machine, bringing me shards of 1988-90: the scent of a man's hair (long and straight, or very curly), my hands and lips on skin, snatches of conversation, of time and place and circumstance, little full sensory slices of long ago stories, long ago moments.
The boy I loved better the second time around, who's path and mine were so different we had to separate, is now the father of a teenager. The other who when West a year and a quarter before I did, for reasons just as pressing as mine, but almost exactly opposite, is now an architect in Toronto at a Green firm. I hope he is happy. I always hope they are happy, even when contact is broken for so long.
One of the side benefits of doing it slowly this time is that things got sorted. Lost things were reunited, things like jewelry got weeded. It turns out that a lot bath products got lost in at least the three previous moves. As a result, it turned out I had a ridiculous number of samples. Some were gifts or suveniers people gave me. Others were from variuus hotels. I used to use them for travel all the time, but then 9/11 meant I couldn't take them on planes. Then I stopped having a car that could travel distances, so couldn't visit friends in places like Oregon as often. I combined the collections and have been steadily working my way through since November. (I am down to two trial sized shampoos). I also found two partially used full sized conditioner bottles. One is of unknown origin.
The other? Time travel in a bottle.
This was the conditioner (and shampoo) I was using when I first left home for college. Two of the four young men I loved the best at St. John's used this same brand. (It's not as surprising as you'd think. I have always had a penchant for dark haired men. This brand was marketed by hair colour, smelled pleasant in an androgynous way, and worked reasonably well without being expensive). We were sad when the brand got discontinued, and I remember one of them (I can not swear which) buying up a bunch of bottles before they were all gone. A couple of years later, I found this bottle of conditioner super cheap in a discount store in Corvallis that sold irregulars and close outs. I used two thrds of it, and apparently lost int in the next move. *facepalm*
So this bottle has to be a little over two decades old at best, possibly over, but I am poor and there was a third left. The texture is no longer correct, and the scent has long faded. However, the shape and colours of the bottle and label are a little time machine, bringing me shards of 1988-90: the scent of a man's hair (long and straight, or very curly), my hands and lips on skin, snatches of conversation, of time and place and circumstance, little full sensory slices of long ago stories, long ago moments.
The boy I loved better the second time around, who's path and mine were so different we had to separate, is now the father of a teenager. The other who when West a year and a quarter before I did, for reasons just as pressing as mine, but almost exactly opposite, is now an architect in Toronto at a Green firm. I hope he is happy. I always hope they are happy, even when contact is broken for so long.
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-21 02:03 pm (UTC)I think I can visualize the bottle.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-22 10:05 am (UTC)I am sure you can visualize the bottle.