fragrancing

Ads all over town for Lampe Berger, a classy air purifier, which claim it "cleans and fragrances your air."

"To fragrance" - that's a new verb. I guess if you squirt perfume on someone, you are fragrancing them. I guess to complain would make me an old fogey; English is an ever-renewable resource. But seriously - "fragrances your air" is going too far.

It's bloody cold out there. How lucky to be self-employed. I spent the day reworking an essay I have spent days reworking before, but this time, I think I might have solved the puzzle/cracked the problem/made it work. Sent it out to a couple of readers to check, because I can't tell any more. I didn't know before where it started or where it ended. Now, I think I do. Maybe. We'll see.

There was a vigil at Church and Carlton at noon today for a homeless man called Richard, who recently died there, on the street, right in front of one of the biggest grocery stores in the city. By the time I got to the vigil, there was only a handful of folks, a billboard with photographs of Richard as a smiling young man, lots of candles burning. No one should die on the street in one of the wealthiest cities in one of the wealthiest countries on earth.

P.S. “I found when I was a child that if I could put the hurt into words, it would go.” —Jean Rhys