HARRY POTTER WEEK GUEST POST #1: MARK SLUTSKY
This amazing story is called “What I Think It Would Be Like to Be Friends With Harry Potter” and it’s by the terrific Montreal carpenter and poet Mark Jim Slutsky. It gave me chills!:
A few years ago, on a fall afternoon sometime in the early ‘00s, I found myself listlessly poking through the clothing racks at an Urban Outfitters in downtown Montreal. I don’t remember why I was there or what I was looking for, but it was probably one of those days where you go downtown to shop for clothing, wearing a too-heavy coat, and end up overheated and distracted a little bit despairing as you realize you’re not sure what you were hoping or expecting to find and what you’re doing there anyway, sweating and annoyed in some big store and facing an overcrowded, irritating bus ride home.
But I remember feeling my heart quicken when I saw it there, neatly folded on a shelf: a scarf. A beautiful, extravagantly—almost audaciously—long scarf, soft and cozy-looking in shades of burgundy and brown, autumnal colours that I always instinctively reach for in clothing stores.
I loved it. I bought it. I wore it on the bus ride home, happy. I got home. I realized about five minutes later that it was pretty much exactly the same as Harry Potter’s scarf. I never wore it again.
You can learn more about Mark and his genealogy projects at his website dragonheartwebring.org/personal/~mark.
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