Hello dear Off Topicers,
Have you noticed that when you see a woman emerging from a shop doorway trying to contain some helium balloons1, or a man walking through town carrying flowers, they look somehow different to everyone else on the street? Sort of glowy and bathed in magic. Not so much because of the accessories themselves, but more because they’re very visibly on a mission to make someone - somewhere - feel special. It almost seems to make them appear to be levitating an inch or two above the pavement as they go on their way.
I was sitting in traffic last week and saw exactly this young woman, and a few weeks earlier, that man. Both times I’ve wanted to hug them. There’s something oddly vulnerable about the public declaration of loving someone, even though all of us do. Perhaps because it feels like witnessing a snapshot from a larger story. One that ends in an unfamiliar house - a messy kitchen, their grandmother’s living room, a newly-decorated bedroom - with laughter and conversation and surprise2. I often wish I could follow the person home (in a non-stalkerish way) to watch the next scene, and always imagine everyone must feel this way and that we’re really only a few steps short of morphing into a crowd of well-wishers, hot on the happiness-giver’s tail, as though they’re a pied piper…).
In non-public flower-giving, I recently came across Ivy & Bud3, who despatch posies through the post, complete with a bud vase of your choice. I think they mostly use locally-sourced / garden-grown flowers and I’m sure I read on Instagram that their foliage is often foraged from local hedgerows. I sent one as a thank you to my mum and she was so delighted that she took lots of photos so I could see (her photoshoot scrunched at my heart, so really it ended up being a gift for me, too :)
Finally, I want to leave you with a quote from Jim Harrison, just because I love it, and thought you might too:
All I want to be / is a thousand blackbirds / bursting from a tree, / seeding the sky.
Whoosh. What a glorious image.
Wishing you week of being a thousand blackbirds,
Florence x
I don’t even like helium balloons.
If I’m the carrier, I feel more like I’m levitating on self-consciousness. Walking through town with a large hand-tied bouquet of flowers*, I’m nine-years-old again and have put on my best party dress, declaring to the world that I have very particular intentions, and they’re now privy to my executing them. But there is also another angle for concern** - might it appear as if, by squashing my face up against tulips or roses, I’m attempting to steal some of their beauty and make it my own? Look how pretty I am set off by these pink and purple petals, I seem to be saying. You could lower the bouquet, the voice in my head suggests. Oh yes, of course.
* Although I increasingly tend toward giving plants, as I like how long they last and how even the ungreenest of fingers will normally get at least eight weeks of chlorophylled joy from them (And yes, I absolutely wrote chloroformed joy before thinking it didn’t look quite right 🙈).
** I’m aware this is overthinking, but there’s often so much fun to be had in thoughts, I’m not sure I have much inclination to try to under-think. Also, my self-consciousness in these matters is mild, so these aren’t thoughts that plague me (those are currently mostly to do with needing to re-silicone around the bath and wondering why I spend so long putting it off, when for the majority of my waking hours, the need to do this buzzes around me like an irritating fly). x
Not gifted or an ad - just an idea I liked enough to share.
Thank you for sharing the Jim Harrison quote. It’s lovely and joy-inducing!