For Consistency

It helps develop one's aesthetic and ambitions.

The most interesting thing I’ve learned about being a writer is that I have to remember that I have a body. This week, for example—the actual matter of when I’m writing this is insignificant—I’ve been sitting down to my desk without a shower. I’m out of step with my usual process. While I’m writing a lecture on “the food essay,” I’m excited: drawing lines from 16th century France to Virginia Woolf to xoJane will do that to a person.

But I know that when I come up for air and I’m still in my dog-walking exercise outfit, hair not done and eyebrows not filled in, I’ll be grouchy. I’ll have a terrible attitude. I’ll be curt. I won’t want to seize a damn thing about the day. I’ve learned this because of this newsletter. I’ve learned the importance of my outside and inside being in balance. I’ve learned the importance of showing up for my work as I want my work to show up in the world.

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The significance of an “aesthetic” has come about in digital discourse. There are all sorts of definitions; there are myriad guides to finding one’s “personal style.” But the way one shows up in the world visually, sensorially is something one can’t fudge, copy, or make up. Of course, through attempting those things, one learns. Developing an aesthetic comes with developing a sense of self, of one’s desires. A look and an approach to life accumulates. That accumulation requires attention, though. One has to tend to it. Sometimes, we surprise ourselves. We emerge—hatching like an egg. We’ll do this repeatedly throughout life. That’s the beauty.

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I’d never been a person for perfume, or makeup, or color on a day-to-day basis. As a middle-schooler, when I wanted to adorn myself in some way, I put on electric blue lip gloss and glittery silver nails: I didn’t want to enhance my human features, but make myself alien. Catholic school had lots of rules about makeup, nail polish, hair color—all that stuff. When I had any chance to break out of that, I went extreme.

I found myself using Halloween to paint and cut up T-shirts, decorate them with tiny safety pins, cut an old uniform skirt into a micro-mini, put on huge dragon-embroidered platforms I’d begged for from Delia*s, and zombie-fy my face. I was good at Halloween and spent the rest of my time having the expected anxiety about what to do with myself as a girl, when it felt like no matter what, I couldn’t win: Nothing about how I looked would be my authentic choice, I was convinced.

Fragrance has become part of my life in the last few years, but it wasn’t until just a few weeks ago that I had an urgent craving for a scent just the way I would for a specific meal: Dries van Noten Rosa Carnivora—I had only a sample of it from a nice girl at Saks, where I’d been looking for my sister’s Christmas gift. It’s floral but spicy; it’s feminine but hard. Rose and vetiver are the two notes I’m deeply drawn to; I know this from creating a spreadsheet of my favorite perfumes to understand the commonalities. It embodies its name, and I like when things embody their names. I’d loved it immediately. While showering, I thought, I need to put it on and dug through my big Baggu carry-on to find it among the little things I only have for travel. This will be my next scent, I thought. The scent of my next act. I sprayed it on myself while wearing a silk chartreuse dress, ankle-length.