Filigree & Shadow

I had composed one of my better posts (if I do say so myself) ready to kickoff involving computer software, technology, and the adult entertainment industry. It even included a millionaire whomst ruined what could have been an otherwise okay hookup had he not grimaced after audibly farting – this story had it ALL – but even p**n is awash in AI hoping to fight another day for relevancy, so instead I will herald the month of June with a simple prayer:

Be gay, do crimes.

This morning I awoke to a notification from Instagram: “Someone thinks that you might need some extra support at the moment and has asked us to help.” I tapped this notification to see a screen letting me know “You're not alone.” Which is true, because I have a husband and three cats. I also know the difference between a single right quote and a typerwiter apostrophe, but I digress.

Am I okay? Are *any* of us okay? I mean, well,

*gestures outside*

The irony is not lost on me that a platform responsible for dysmorphic concerns – according to a study published in 2020 – is also trying to play the concerned entity with offers to contact a helpline or a friend. Nice try, Jan.

I am actually doing okay. I just received a phone call that my offer for a retail storefront in Amsterdam was accepted by the property owner, and I will soon be very busy after we iron out a few details about the space.

It’s entirely possible that Meta laid off damn near everyone at Instagram and we have AI observing what we look at in our feeds. In my defence, Meta chose to show me a clip from “Dying for Sex,” starring Michelle Williams, Jenny Slate, Sissy Spacek, and Paula Pell who delivered a knockout monologue about hospice. Maybe Meta AI watched me watching the clip and thought I needed extra support. Maybe someone thinks they’re being clever and reported me to Meta because I did or wrote something that offended their sensibilities. Whomst – WHOMST – can say.

If you, dear someone, thought I was insufferable before, just you wait.

Thank you once again, , for your beautiful work.

To paraphrase Edvard Munch, flowers will bloom and she is in them, and that is eternity.

Thank you, everyone, who took a few minutes of your time to commemorate our sweet Jóna.

In a world where events are constantly vying for our attention, you stopping what you were doing to read about how much we love her is everything.

I was dismayed, and a little surprised, that a company went out of its way to find my email and offered a collaboration on social media posts to promote cat scratchers.

Meta for Business sent me two emails inviting me to join its monetizing program to “reach your full potential.”

In such a short amount of time, we’ve built these fantastic systems where we can collectively share in each other’s lives whilst capitalism pushes us to swallow galaxies whole in our collective appetite.

When my mom died from Covid, the fragrance I made in her memory was how I processed everything who she was to me. My therapist pushed me to release the fragrance, and it meant the world that so many people understood what I made.

I don’t have any materials to sketch a fragrance for Jóna, so I typed out a post for her to let the world know she existed.

Jóna is an opalescent star in our galaxy. And for a moment, we were blessed to know her brilliance.

The fact that you all – friends, family, colleagues, customers, and random passersby – collectively grieved with us and celebrated Jóna’s life means so very much. 🩶

It just so happened that we found you and your brother waiting for someone to adopt you at the animal shelter. That was thirteen years ago. You were meant to be with us for at least another thirteen more. You have lost muscle and fat, your spine tangible under your fur. The ultrasound showed us your abdomen full of liquid, the mass cell tumor in your spleen. A liminal space to deliver news that made us fall into strange chairs, our elbows on knees and our palms on our eyes as the tears kept coming. We are strangers in a strange land, and the doctor could only say “Sorry” as we wept.

The doctors are not convinced you could survive anaesthesia. If you were strong enough to endure a splenectomy, “survival beyond 2 months is unlikely.” Where is Bastet to rid you of this illness? Where is Mephistopheles to make a bargain for your life? How can there be a God who chooses to take you from us, to strip us of beauty and purity when cruelty and torment are allowed to exist?

My beautiful Jóna. I wish I knew how much time we have left together. I wish it was always. I am sorry for all the ways I failed you. I am sorry for not knowing you were in pain. I am sorry I took advantage of every day we had together. I am sorry I could not save you.

I wear you on my skin. My shoulders show the history of your nails every time you purred into my ears. There are not enough minutes in the day where I can press my nose into your fur and breathe you in. You smell like home. I can kiss your head and tell you “I love you” for the first time, every time.

Here I write your existence into a world of ones and zeroes. 16.7 million colours to show your beauty in photos. 25 million bytes to record the sound of your purr for fifteen seconds. I would build data centres on every moon in our galaxy if it meant I could preserve every moment of you.

If there is another place after this, I hope you are there with Vinnie, waiting for us. If this is all there is, in all of the universe, I am forever grateful that we made our way to each other and got to spend our lives with you. We are blessed to know such unconditional love, especially in a world that is in such deficit of it.

Oh, my love.

“Dear James, I wanted to share how things went, because your contribution was genuinely one of the highlights of the evening.

“We held two events in collaboration with my university, Macquarie Uni Sydney, our Synaesthesia Research Group, the Performance and Expertise Research Center, Filigree & Shadow and Playtronica: a Wednesday seminar and a Thursday community meetup. We had Dr Solange Glasser join us for both days.

“The seminar drew students and staff with a real appetite for the subject, lots of questions and lots of energy. But the community event on Thursday was something else entirely. Prof Anina Rich and I gave lightning talks, we ran a Q&A, and our lab team set up several synaesthesia stations and experiment desks across a large venue. Big screens showed trailers and excerpts from films featuring synaesthete characters, and there were artist materials and syn stations related to senses throughout.

“The Filigree & Shadow display, with the app that I made and the music, was one of the most popular stations of the night. I also found white headphones for the station to make it look real stylish. What struck me was how broadly it appealed: women and men were equally drawn to it, and people lingered in a way they did not everywhere else. The combination of scent, sound, and the interactive element was exactly right for this audience.

“Blume emerged as the clear favourite when people were matching fragrance to their synaesthetic experience with music, though the other scents were far from overlooked; there were genuine contenders and some lively debates. One of the attendees was particularly taken with the display, admiring how the music deepened the way people engaged with the fragrances. It was a real pleasure to see your work appreciated by someone who truly understands that craft.

“The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. What stays with me most is the sense that this community is genuinely hungry for connection. Seeing synesthetes travel interstate, engage with the research, and find others who truly understand their perceptual world reminded me why this work matters.”

- Anton Dorso

Years and years ago I read an article in “The Economist” – would it kill Meta to introduce italics and bold in text? – where someone argued a better version of capitalism could flourish as every boat is lifted. I really took that ideology to heart and centered my business around community, not competition. When you came to visit my studio in West Seattle, I didn’t just share my fragrances with you: I introduced hundreds of customers to perfumers whose fragrances are now in their collections. A basic premise of community allowed all of us independent and artisan perfumers to prosper.

That is, at its core, the mission and vision of .nl. A retail boutique in Amsterdam featuring curated perfumes both independent and author-led. My approach will be the same as it was in West Seattle: regardless of your background, identity, or prior knowledge of perfume, there will be something here for you.

My business is now officially registered in the Netherlands, so I’ll be hitting the pavement every day in De Pijp and Jordaan until I can successfully find a retail location that has a decent amount of room, foot traffic, and doesn't break the bank. (My 43-page business plan already accounted for rent in the financial plan.)

Relaunching Filigree & Shadow in the E.U. is phase two. I have to start from scratch – materials, compliance, everything – and that timeline won't jive with a government expecting me to contribute to society and pay taxes. So I’ll begin with a smaller, fully compliant selection—formulas I can responsibly produce with materials I can actually source. From there: discovery sets, travel sizes, and larger volumes for those who’ve been asking.

Until then, I’m here to build something that lifts boats. I’m not just a mom. I’m also a canal.

Oopsie-daisy. You weren’t supposed to see this yet.

We picked up our boxes from our friends who live outside Bruges (Brugge) last Wednesday. We rented a 15m sprinter and drove from Amsterdam to our friends’ house. We stayed long enough for hello kisses, packing the sprinter, eating a sumptuous lunch, goodbye hugs, waiting in traffic for four hours to return home, then returning the sprinter in their 24-hour lot because I am not about to pay for hourly parking in the city only to return it the next morning.

European drivers have no concept of the physics, the way they overtake lorries (trucks) then merge into the lane with not even a meter of space. You all need to understand that if you hit the brakes on your car, at that distance, the lorry will be braking through you. But I digress.

All of our belongings survived the journey from the New World to the Old World intact. Double-corrugated cardboard boxes and compostable packing peanuts FTW. We discovered that Justin has more shoes and pants than we previously thought, and I do not need another item of clothing again. Ever.

To know me you must understand I was raised on a steady diet of reading “Bloom County” as a child. Some people might say “Calvin and Hobbes” is the greatest comic of all time (GOAT), but that’s a lie. It’s “Bloom County.” Next to both versions of Opus the Penguin plushie is a world history book given to me by my maternal grandmother. This book and a colored photograph of her sleeping on a porch are all I have that were hers. In case you were wondering, the history of the world opens with The Creation and ends with the history of Paraguay in 1874. Nothing else has occurred since.

We are awaiting our residence permits so we can get local phone numbers. We can purchase health insurance – €347 per month total, compared to $1450 per month in the U.S. – and I will be able to set up a business in Amsterdam.

If I were a penguin, such as Opus, I, too, would have a wish for wings that work. So I hit the ground running. (In new shoes.)

We arrived safely with all four cats in Amsterdam. They have taken a shine to the bed as we currently have no other furniture in the apartment. Every day we are adding something to the apartment: yesterday we outfitted our kitchen with cookware, and today we’ll be buying furniture for the living room. The cats would appreciate having something else to lounge upon.

We have appointments next week with Immigration for our residence permits and biometrics. Once we each receive our BSN, we’ll be able to open Dutch bank accounts, finalize our utilities, and get Internet access at home.

We’ve given ourselves the month of March to set ourselves up in our new home, and the city has been nothing but wonderful to explore by foot and public transport. Soon we’ll add bikes to our modes for transportation.

A lot of the anxiety I’ve been holding onto has finally given way. I cannot wait to begin what comes next. Until then, I’ll continue learning Dutch and subject locals to my butchering of their vowels.