oh (said with an expulsion of breath)

I feel cheated today. This morning Shandiz woke me up with the news that Captain Phil of the Corenila Marie and Deadliest Catch fame died last night. I just woke up from a nap and had an WWD article waiting in my mailbox that stated Alexander McQueen killed himself.

The combination of these two events brings the extremes of my existence together, and oddly enough is quite reflective of the URL of my blog.

For those who don't know, my father was a commercial fisherman when I was small, and this formed quite a lot of my early memories (maybe I don't remember everything quite accurately). It was exciting for us, and somewhat awful for my mother I think. He mostly fished on Lake Superior, but also went to Alaska and fished out of Kodiak. When he was fishing on Lake Superior, and we were not in school, sometimes Erik and I would go with him to 'help' sort the fish when the nets were pulled up on deck. Other times we would go with him to mend nets on the top floor of the Sivertson's Fish Company warehouse in Superior (this was after it was moved out of Canal Park and the shop was closed on London Road, I think it used to be where the Subway is now. We went to the office while they were moving and I got a display with miniature flags, Erik got a stuffed chipmunk on a wooden plack the shape of Minnesota). We, of course did not mend, but we did play in the nets and ropes. They were big, thick rope ones, not little monofiliment things.

When my dad was in Alaska, he would send us boxes full of treasure. I think they were wooden boxes originally from Japanese fish knives (I know they were wooden boxes from Japan) filled with coral, sea shells, bits of shark fin and other things he came across while fishing.

To this day, when I think of the fishing boats, the nets, the warehouse and those boxes of little treasures, distinct smells come to mind, fishy smells. When I was small, these smells were a very large part of life, in my teens -- abhorrent, and now I find them comforting and I miss being on the water so much. I think it might be a similar sensation if you grew up on a farm.

About the time I became revolted by the smell of fish and diesel fuel is the same time I became obsessed with fashion magazines and un-naturally beautiful things. I don't know when exactly Alexander McQueen came onto my radar, but I always thought he had the best name and career. I did a project on him for school and was doing some research at Nordstrom, where they carried a few of his pieces, and the sales lady saw me in the designer section, stereo-typed me as a looky-loo and said in a very bored way "can I help you find anything?". When I said, "yes, do you have any Alexander McQueen?" She popped to life and said "You must really be into fashion, because most people just think his stuff is weird!" I told her I was doing homework and she was very excited to have someone to talk to who was not looking for Dolce and Gabbana (who I also admire, but find a little mass-consumer. There is nothing wrong with mass-consumer things (I think my last few clothing purchases, aside from maternity shops, have been H & M), but if you are shopping in the Dolce and Gabbana price point--get unique).

I have a lot of respect for Alexander McQueen because he is not a 'celebrity designer', he doesn't really do red carpet (just watched a fantastic documentary about the red carpet business on Sundance)or hang out with 'it' people, just creates interesting things that aren't always pretty in a traditional sense. Really hard to talk about him in the past tense.