Be conspicuous

Infrequently, I purchase children’s picture books.

After getting rather overwhelmed by a huge selection of vintage postcards, photos and other discarded paper ephemera in a used bookstore in Victoria last weekend, I retreated to the children’s section. I found Veronica.

Veronica is a hippo whose literary birth in 1961 acquainted young readers with a heroine who leaves a muddy riverbank where she is overheard to sigh, “No one notices me here. I don’t even know myself.” She decides to begin walking, and keeps going until she finds a place where she can be different.

When she reaches the city, she immediately feels “gloriously conspicuous.”

When I become excited about something I am reading, I lose the ability to read it at all. The words begin to fly past my eyes until they are blurred together on the page and it’s all I can do to pick out a handful of vocabulary until I hit the end and catch my breath. This phenomena is equally likely to occur with job postings, letters from friends, research articles, poetry, long form text messages…

So now I’m racing through the pages and picking up speed: “wrong way,” “in the way,” “tired,” “you can’t,” “so conspicuous,” “helped herself,” “hide quickly,” “I want to go home,” “happy.”

I appreciated this reminder to seek out environments that will make you feel different, even if it’s hard. Probably especially if it’s hard. And that it’s ok to go home again when you’re ready. My interest was also piqued by the idea that you can’t know yourself until you are situated in a context in which you are unique, different, conspicuous.

There is depth to these concepts worth dwelling on, but I confess my immediate inspiration was to fulfill a secret ambition to follow a proud family tradition of hat-wearing (no one bedecks a noggin like my grandparents, or my parents circa 1999). I had spotted a hat shop en route to the book store, and soon after purchasing Veronica’s story, led my love to its door wherein a black wool fedora was acquired in good order.

I feel gloriously conspicuous in my smart chapeau, especially when paired with a recently acquired red and green vintage Pendleton swing coat. It may sound shallow, and perhaps no one is looking at all, but these comparatively bold outerwear choices are doing more than you know for my weary spirit, which lately has felt too small, too tired, too overwhelmed to dare draw attention to me. Especially en route to and from work each day.

If you’re interested to read about Veronica for yourself, I recommend you look up a copy of the book, titled simply “Veronica.” Roger Duvoisin, the back flap tells me, wrote this book and 40 others, and illustrated it (the pictures are delightful), as well as the covers of several New Yorker magazines, and 100 more stories by other authors. He passed away in 1980.

And should you find yourself in Victoria, I can also recommend Sorensen’s at Fort Street for used books (and discarded paper objets of all kinds); and Roberta’s Hats on Government Street.