Notes From the Ledge

Pandora draw winner(s)

2011-10-06T16:03:00.000-05:00

The time has come.

As is my wont, I avoided the electronic choosing system. This time, instead of putting paper into a vessel and using the magic toaster tongs, I went for a message in a bottle kind of thing.

Note that the names were printed and cut into strips all of the same dimension.

Then each strip was folded in half three times, and placed into the jar.

Much shaking commenced.
Of the jar, as in a martini, not self, as in a tizzy.

One tri-folded piece exited the mouth first, with another chasing close behind.

The first out was called the winner.

Congratulations, Olfacta!!!!

But wait. This seems so...so random. And I was so late in shaking. So, I opened up the second out of the gate. Because I'll send what remains of my sample to that person.

Womo, if you want half a hit, contact me via the link! (ScentScelf@aol.com) Olfacta, contact me with your mailing info, and I will pass it along to Dawn, who will be sending you a fresh sample directly.

Congratulations both of you.

The rest of you, if it's any consolation, now I need a hit, too. :)

Pretty Reminder....

2011-09-26T12:14:00.000-05:00

Good news! The japanese beetles seem to have withdrawn after the aggressive and insistent counter-strikes of a few weeks ago. Look at that healthy dahlia. ::smile::

More good news!! There are still 24 hours to go to the DSH Pandora review and register a comment for a chance to win a sample.

photo, author's own

Pandora review and sample draw here

Assembled / Disassembled, or, Another Equinox

2011-09-23T10:57:00.000-05:00

Not a post about IKEA or RTA furniture.

A post half about perfume, half about perspective.

All on a day of balance. Happy Equinox.

*|* *|* *|* *|* *|*
I purchased this bottle of Liz Zorn's "My Promise" a few years ago. As I recall, the purchase was "P.S.", which is to say "Pre-SOIVOHLE." * Don't go looking for it. It was a one-off, created as a tribute/benefit to/for a young person with a form of cancer, again, if I recall correctly. Liz offered the perfume for sale at a benefit, then continued to offer bottles through her website (with profits going to the cause) until they were gone.

Yes, I fell prey to a cause. I didn't even know what the notes were, and if I based my decision to purchase on how it would fit me according to the copy offered at the time -- something about light, fresh, young? -- I would have passed.

But I was all new to perfume, had "discovered" Liz and was all about exploring her creations, and thought a flyer for a good cause was nothing I would regret. I could always gift it to someone.

So, for three, four, however many years, this bottle has lived in a cool, dry, dark closet, inside its packaging. Two to three times a year, I would take it out, spritz once, and ponder. The ruminations always led to the same conclusion.

I don't not like it. I don't do like it.

There is something in there that should bother me that doesn't.

There is some kind of odd pairing in there.

This is pretty but not.

Gee, this is a peculiar something.

And then I would carefully wrap it back up, and put it away, never able to answer the question of "should it stay or should it go?," because I never knew if just around the corner laid the answer. The answers, actually.

Decisions in the balance.

It could be this, it could be that. At the moment, it is both and all of it all at once.

Equipoise.

*|* *|* *|* *|* *|*

This week, apropos of nothing, I took the purple box out of the closet. Time for another dance.

And I had one of those sensory equivalents of having the right word, the answer, right on the tip of my tongue. "HEY, that's...that's...augh!" And I neither lost it, nor pulled it into full light where it could be recognized and named. I caved. I tried an internet search.

And lo and behold, that one night, not repeatable as I compose this entry, a hit. A website in German, either offering or having once offered this for sale. (I do not speak German, though I've a pretty good short list of the German names for exotic animals in my head thanks to an orange hardcover book I got at a garage sale as a kid, Dis Ist Der Zoo.) A notes pyramid. A very simple notes pyramid, maybe six or seven listed on all three levels. But two loomed into my eyes like the classic zoom in/blur out all other detail shot in a movie when the detective sees the name in the hotel register that puts all the pieces in place.

Mint.

Lily of the valley.

Tumble tumble tumble tumble tumble.

Lily of the valley was both the white flower that didn't overwhelm me that was slightly spikey, and the something that should be bothering me.

Mint answered spoke to both the something peculiar and the odd pairing, being up against LOTV and all.

Hunh.

And now I saw it from the inside out. Like walking up to a Van Gogh or a Monet, and seeing those brush strokes, individually, with texture and hair paths in them. The pieces of them.

I thought about the pieces on and off the rest of the night. Intellectually, of course, in terms of "hey, forget that Geranium Pour Monsieur, that new Byredo, look at what Liz was doing a few years back," and "hey, do you think Erin/the folks at Now Smell This would notice if I went back and added a comment to that post about mint in perfume a while back?" But especially just in terms of the elements themselves. What it felt like to smell it now with names, how it suddenly so easily fractured into individual pieces every time I sniffed it. Whether or not I would take it in whole cloth again.

*|* *|* *|* *|* *|*

My mother used to complain about going to see movies with her father. My grandfather, you see, was a carpenter. When he looked at a house, where you would see "cottage" or "saltbox," or maybe "dormer" or "eyehole window," he would see coping and joinery and ash or maple.

Combine that with his healthy skepticism, and it was impossible to sit through a scene with a ship going down without him pointing out where they had used a model, or see King Kong crashing through the jungle without him indicating the stop motion.

My mother, of course, was indignant about somebody snapping her willful suspension of disbelief in two.

Suddenly, in retrospect, I felt sorry for my grandfather, caught in the fractures, in the details, unable to take his eye off the hair mark in the brush stroke and see the sunlight on the hay.

*|* *|* *|* *|* *|*

I'm still in the midst of figuring out if I'll again see this My Promise in gestalt, in full assembly, in big picture, in concept. With a little distance in time, perhaps, I'll regain distance in viewing length.

This is not something I worry about. I've of course stepped close and been able to step back again with other perfumes, other somethings. And I am fascinated by how clear, how instructive, how simple this particular walking through the steps was. I think it helps that this is a simple perfume. Citrus-y mint for a perky nearly bracing open, which makes an interesting framework for then receiving the LOTV. Something innocuous and gently cozy at the bottom to couch it on the other side. A gentle musk? I seem to remember "wood" being in that German pyramid, on the bottom.

Ah, well. Not all came into sharp focus.

Alles gut, of course. To be honest, in the end, I prefer seeing the sunlight on the hay. I dig having the brushstrokes revealed, but my pleasure comes from wrapping it back into my overall image.

I don't enjoy pointing out the model rods, as my grandfather did. I only want to see them, in fact, only want to look for them, in my own time.

*|* *|* *|* *|* *|*

Happy day of equipoise. Whether your daylight is about to lengthen or darken, may this turn be smooth.

And maybe offer a few surprises.

*yes, I was inconsistent with the quotation mark enclosures there. I didn't like the way it looked on "P.S." I mean, check it out: "P.S.," -- kinda makes it look like the comma is part of the abbreviation, no? Which bothered me. So I am instituting the first vagary in the NFTL Stylebook: do not encase the comma within the quote when indicating specific names that end with a punctuation mark, for that confuses thine editor.

photo by author

Say what?

2011-09-19T13:04:00.002-05:00

Avast ye, mateys, and hoist yer scurvy selves to a benign bit o' bloggery.

'Tis International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Arrrrrrrrrrrr.

(Thanks to pirate bits like that, th' tongue can be shared across th' Seven Seas...what ye lads and lassies yell te be "intarnashn'l.")

Shiver me timbers, 'tis Anne Bonny!

P-}

(That thar be a bucko emoticon, if yer fixin' to savvy.)

~~~^^^^~~~~^^^^~~~^^~~~~~~^^~~^^^^^~~~~~~
(chooppy seas)

Also today, perhaps and perhaps not, the anniversary of the creation of the emoticon. Wired is running a "This Day in Tech" bit about the purported perpetrator of perplexing symbolage, Scott Fahlman. However, the story of the attempt to concoct symbolry to clarify text communications gets immediately murky, for as Wired points out, typesetters have been pressing (HA!) type-based non-verbal communication upon us for many moons before that.

Oddly, I myself had a bit of an emotical dust-up with the OAITH (Other Adult in the House), when he perceived that a virtual missive I sent came with barbed tongue, rather than gentle greeting. Why?

:)

That's right, a smiley face.

Apparently, geeks have used this archly, to convey, well, an edgyness, rather than the placid contentment I was trying to convey.

The scallywag was ready to hop aboard the Man-O-War and make sharkbait o' me.

Fortunately, all was cleared up before he blew the messenger down. But Blimey! who knew I had stepped into a bilge-sucking morass of hempen halter code.

So, I've been thinking on these two things today, Local Talk Like a Pirate But Watch Yer Emoticons Day.

And then of course, fixed it upon myself to link it all to perfume.

~~^^^^^^^~~~^^~~~^^~~~~~^^^~~^^^^~~~~^^^~~~~~~~

What perfumes have the potential to flub the message between perfume-lubbers? Or even perfume lovers, for that matter?

I for one hold Chanel No. 19 aloft. You know, Luca Turin's wire-hanger mother? The one folks refer to as "cold" and "distance keeping"? I mean, okay, the galbanum is bracing, but people, there is green flower in there. I don't wear it as a "buzz off" kind of fragrance; I wear it in the same manner I might pick a pair of Italian shoe boots for the day. They are both beautiful, have clean lines, and support me when I need to attend to business, but don't quite cross over into bee-yotch territory.

Not to me, at least.

Here, here's another one: Serge Lutens Musc Kublai Khan. You know what that says to me? It says "me and my men have just been out riding on horses and camels for a few days with no shower in sight and we might have rolled in something along the way and we're just going to plonk down next to you here and if you don't like it you better run FAST because we're already enveloping you and if you don't faint you might retch." You know what I've heard someone else say about it? "MMMMmmmm, cozy."

Is what we have here a failure to communicate? In this case, I don't think so; I think here it is simply different languages. Like, say, German and Chinese. Phonemes and graphemes. You say potato, I say rubber stamp. Because I think we are not even experiencing the same thing, let alone deciding what that something means. So let me take this moment to clarify what I am trying to find in terms of examples of perfume mis-communication: We both agree it is a smiley face. I mean, say, a lily of the valley. But what does lily of the valley signify?

Speaking of lily of the valley, let's hop to that gem of a note for the moment. Have you noticed folks waxing nostalgic about, say, Diorissimo? It is a lovely creation. I can acknowledge that a) it smells like lily of the valley, and b) it is pretty. But from there, you and I might diverge. Because, truth be told (here I go into a Very Quiet Voice, so as not to offend), it is this|close to being, well...simpering. Blow me down if one of my fiercest friends, she who dons Mitsouko like a cutlass and Femme like a come hither va-voom dress, says it makes her feel pretty. Me? I feel like...oh, I don't know, Nellie Olsen, stripped of sass, left with nothing but banana curls and a very clean pinafore.

Hey, speaking of Femme...let's talk cumin for a moment. There's a note that I frequently find myself nodding along with the crowd when we determine whether or not it is present. But then...what does it mean, to have it there? To me, it's generally B.O. or panties, which trust me, in my world does not mean "come hither." It means hither was reached 3-5 hours ago. But wait, that's not how I *receive* a message, that's how I interpret what is sent. Hmmm.

Here. How about Big Flower Bombs, and/or Big White Florals. Like...let's go classic here...Fracas. What does that say to you? Sexy bombshell coming through? Or Tennessee Williams character who is slightly unaware of being past prime? Undulating vixen? Or flat footed floozy with floy, floy?

It's a problem that has been posed before: for whom is our message in the bottle? Sender, or receiver? Directly connected of course to the question "do you wear perfume for yourself, or for others"?

All I know is, there are times when folks have described what message a particular scent conveys, and my head tilts to the side. ("Are you talkin' to ME?") But I know that unless they ARE talking to me, there's room for different translations.

However, if we are trying to talk to each other, it would probably be best if we made sure our lingua franca was all simpatico.

image of Anne Bonny taken from Hanging Cup Pictures,

also found at the delightful Geography All The Way

engraving apparently by the peripatetic "anonymous"

oil painting of a message in a bottle by Nancy Poucher at Daily Painting

When memory is a seeing eye: DSH Pandora

2011-09-14T09:40:00.001-05:00

The first time I sprayed, I smelled dust. Book dust. No, something that had been pressed between the pages of a favorite volume that was older than me.

As it evolved, it bloomed into something more alive, as the dust faded, and one of those just above skin auric clouds appeared, a blended floral, with a something that drew me in -- that something having the same allure as some of my vintage chypres, but not being just that.

I was enchanted, and I didn't even know by what. Whatever it was, if this was Trouble, I had Hope for a long and happy future with it.

The tradition of pressing leaves into a book to preserve them is relatively familiar. The idea being that you can preserve at least a portion of that which is destined to become past, to be history. But are you familiar with "Bible leaf," a.k.a. costmary? Costmary used to be a basic kitchen garden plant, and its longish, somewhat wide leaves were pressed between the pages of bibles to help church goers stay awake during an all-day service. In other words, what was pressed between the pages, an intentionally gathered waft, was placed not for rememberance, but for bringing one into the moment. A moment which, of course, you were supposed to pay attention to so you could remember it later.

not costmary, from the project described at Create by Maria Apostolou

***
I, and others, have discussed the idea of scents that seem to hover just above your skin before. In my ruminations, I put their place in space somewhere between "sillage" and "skin scent." They appear not in someone's wake, and not by burying your nose in and snorfling. They are in some ways my favorite presence, one which does not announce itself in advance, but one which still manages to exist off of skin.

Pandora pulls the nifty trick of maintaining that aura, and having a skin snorfle, too. I love this. This is my favorite way of thinking of people, with the immediately registered, the something you learn when you gain closer access, and the limited glimpses of something deep and private. Open the book, find the pressed leaf, catch a first whiff memory impression, scratch the surface and it comes to life.

***
Costmary is a perennial that should be renewed by division every few years, since the old plant becomes bare at the center. Dig up small plants that pop up in the garden, or this plant could become a weedy pest.

- deZine by Maggie

Gardeners know that most perennials need division in order to be rejuvenated. A classic sign of a perennial that is in need of attention is that the clump dies out in the middle, the newer shoots/roots taking on life even as the original section lets go of it.

In a way, I feel that what Dawn Spencer Hurwitz has managed to do with Pandora is to take a division from an existing plant and bring it back to life in a new setting, and that in doing so, the the plant takes on a new character.

When I go in for the snorfle, as I pass the opening whiff of dry opening the book, enter the floral cloud above my skin, and extract a hit of the depths beneath, I do NOT smell my beloved vintage chypres. Not Coty, not Millot, not any particular one. Not even that something, exactly. But, I *do* find that the style of attraction that pulls me in is just the same -- the happiness of the Coty, the greenness of the Millot. Pandora is, however, its own something.

And it is lovely.

***
What is this Pandora? Plucked from the past, plonked into the present, for me it is a journey that starts with memory and puts me very much in this moment, with all the palimpsest layers of reading backward through a written and virtual herbal, and then again being woken up and finding yourself here, now, not in the midst of a sermon, but a moderately rich floral bouquet that needs to not be too loud so that you can appreciate the background -- plant based, leafywoodyslightlyhumusy, not exactly chypre not exactly amber.

If you haven't guessed, I like it.

costmary, image from Women Who Run With Delphiniums

***

Do you want to play with Pandora? DSH Perfumes has offered to share a 3ml sample to a reader. Comment here to register your interest. Drawing will held on Tuesday, September 27, at noon U.S. central time.

Because how often do you see THAT as the time and or time zone??? Plus, it's a new moon.

DRAWING IS CLOSED.
WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED...BY MOONSET.
(moonset over the westernmost Great Lakes region, that is)

Things seen (and an apology for that)

2011-09-13T12:49:00.000-05:00

The kind of post that usually gets titled "under construction."

sometimes i think the real reason for the soap is that the layers of bubbles form a veil over the results of what is essentially a murder spree
regardless, if one is to save the flowers, the japanese beetles must be attended to
(not in the spirit of a lady-in-waiting)

I am going through a learning curve with Blogger's new interface, and you will see some layout changes here over the next week or two. Have not yet entirely figured out how to land at "done" without you seeing some of the interim.

If only I could shake and stir some bubbles over it all...

My apologies.

image author's own

Things come down

2011-09-11T13:38:00.000-05:00

Ten years ago, sometime around 7:30 in the morning in the U.S. central time zone, I was standing in front of three cubic yards of smoldering, smelly, beautiful mulch. Partially decomposed compost. I was crumbling it between my fingers, admiring its texture, taking in the aroma, looking inside my gate and making plans.

About ten minutes before the hour, a figure emerged from my house, interrupting my reverie. A plane had crashed into the tallest building in Manhattan's skyline. Being trained in the realms of context, skepticism, and history, I deflated the messenger. "It's happened before," I said. "Empire State building. A plane crashed into it. It's still there. Let's see what we learn as the day goes on."

I took a not entirely pleasant but entirely pleasing sniff of the semi-rotted matter, and resumed making plans.

Once again, just after the hour, a figure appeared coming from the house. Another plane, another tower. Skeptical head gave way to a two headed hydra of "oh, this is a story" and "oh, sh#t."

Plans gave way to planes. Which kept coming. The Pentagon. A Pennsylvania field.

Late in the afternoon, it seemed that perhaps it was the end of the planes. I walked back to my compost. An eerie silence. For I lived under an O'Hare flight path. The sound of airplanes, though distant, was constantly woven into the ambient noise of our yard. Suddenly, nothing but birds.

For days, nothing but birds, and the heart thumping occasional sound of a fighter jet.

Eventually, planes came back to the air.

And plans came back to my conscious.

Ten years later

I went walking through the park last night. The moon was almost full, so there was some light. That odd creeping light, that somehow combines the effect of turning on a focused highlight beam with the diffused light of a gentle flood, a peculiar light that is generally visible but most evident when it lands upon vertical objects.

So while you know where expanses of nothing are in a way you can't during a new moon, what really stands out are the edges of things that are there.

***

You do it, but differently, navigating in the dark. With even a minimal amount of light, you still try to lead with what your eyes discern, but other senses are heightened. When applied in familiar landscapes, internal blueprints get accessed. Whether it is your kitchen...a closet you organized...memories of your grandparents' house...a frequently traveled park...if you know it, both mental maps and tactile memories fill missing spaces in the visual data.

When you enter familiar terrain, you make assumptions.

When you round a familiar bend in the path, in the dark, you expect things. On a moonlit night in September of 2011, you expect the unmistakable silhouettes of two impossibly large willow trees. Your mind starts to put them into place, even as your eyes send the true but impossible message "One. Just one, on your right."

You are aware of the moments of cognitive processing as the brain adjusts, realigning expectations and current data inputs. You can almost anticipate the gasp you utter, the search to understand, the understanding.

A behemoth is gone.

***

I had made a plan to document these trees. Willows have been part of the fabric of my life for as long as I could remember. I swung both on and from a willow in my grandparents' yard. A willow is the first tree silhouette I learned to identify. Willows signified the presence water, always something I liked knowing I was near. These two willows, the most recent in my life, were preposterously large. Willow trees only lived this long in prehistory and Harry Potter. I grew to feel their presence on my walks and cross-country ski runs as nearly sentient. The one on the right had taken some severe blows over the years I've lived here, and it occurred to me last fall that it probably wasn't long for this world. I wanted to do something. In a way, these two trees were what prompted me to finally re-integrate photo habits into my life.

***

Coming out of the slight curve in the path, taking it all in during one of those time slows down moments, hearing course through my head the sound of chain saws that I had filtered out, away, because that always sounds like trauma and tragedy to me and I know I can overreact to things tree so I try to just look away, turn away...with those sounds, and knowing the outcome even as I had to watch my brain process the data, my first instinct was to pull out my camera. A fitting memoriam. But I didn't have it. I did have my camera phone. It registered this:

Which was apt.

I came back the next morning, with a camera. And set about attempting to document the aftermath, full of sorrow for not being there when the humans and the machines were in the process of taking it down.

Thus began a whole lot of "fail." But I kept at it, knowing that going through the motions was, just as were my repeated picture "takings" the night before, more a ritual for me, and a chance to murmur "sorry" over and over in my head.

This picture was one of the attempts to reflect the "missing mate." It failed. You can't see/feel the mass or girth of that trunk. I am between 5'6" and 5'7" -- prone, the height of that trunk is well up my chest, nearly to my shoulder.

Here is that piece from the side. With my travel mug for scale. Better, and yet, when I go in that close, the enormity is somehow lost. Yet again, if I pull back...

...it loses drama. And reverence.

So I keep going at it. It doesn't matter so much that I know I will fail at my assignment. Though, to be sure, that stings. I keep going at it, because the ritual helps me, and because I think there is a chance, that I might get it. And even if not, maybe the attempt will make me better. Eventually.

The more I try, the more I fail. But I take the time to mark, nonetheless.

Surrounding the site of absence, other images, somehow easier to take.

September 11, 2011

all images the author's own

I do, I do, I do Heart Les Carrottes!

2011-08-19T10:48:00.001-05:00

Love them.

Also it, the perfume Olivia Giacobetti created for Honore des Pres.

From the odd, bitter rooty vegetal opening, to the iris reveal, to the cozy drydown which sometimes reads as a fairly simply buttery iris, and occasional as a sort of mildly dense sweetened carrot souffle, the kind of thing you could serve either along with a meal or afterward for dessert.

In chatting with other folks about this one, I am noticing that a) a lot of people found it, well, odd, b) a few people looked askance at me when I called it an iris scent, especially a "buttery" iris one, and c) Vamp a NY is still getting a LOT of love. Followed in second by I <3 Coco.

Fine. Go hang with the big bombs, the dense chewy things. I'm going to hang back here, keeping a low profile, but totally enjoying snarfling every stage of I ❤ Les Carrottes.

photo, as usual, the result of the author's mischief
Signature on carry out sleeve presumably that of Ms. Giacobetti, and a welcome surprise

Independence Day

2011-07-04T10:20:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite ways to reflect upon the day a group of colonists declared their independence from a monarch who "‎has has sent swarms of officers, to harass our people and eat out our substance..." is by reading the letters between John and Abigail Adams.

I say that as if I spend a lot of time reading these letters, and, for that matter, reflecting upon our independence.

I don't. But I should.

Happy Independence Day, America. Your myths and your truths, both the difficult and the wonderful, worthy of contemplation.

Philadelphia July 24th, 1775

My dear,

It is now almost three Months since I left you, in every Part of which my Anxiety about you and the Children, as well as my our Country, has been extreme.

The business I have had upon my Mind has been as great and important as can be intrusted to [One] Man, and the Difficulty and Intricacy of it is prodigious. When 50 or 60 Men have a Constitution to form for a great Empire, at the same Time that they have a Country of fifteen hundred Miles extent to fortify, Millions to arm and train, a Naval Power to begin, an extensive Commerce to regulate, numerous Tribes of Indians to negotiate with, a standing Army of Twenty seven Thousand Men to raise, pay, of victual and officer, I really shall pity those 50 or 60 Men.I must see you e'er long. -----Rice, has wrote me a very good Letter, and so has Thaxter, for which I thank them both. Love to the Children.

J.A..

P. S. I wish I had given you a compleat History from the Beginning to the End of the Journey, of the Behaviour of my Compatriots. No martial Mortal Tale could equal it. I will tell you in Future, but you must shall keep it secret. The Fidgets, the Whims, the Caprice, the Vanity, the Superstition, the Irritability of some of us, is enough to ------

Yr. J. A.

To Mrs. Abigail Adams, Braintrie, to the Care of Col. Warren, favor'd by Mr. Hichborne

photo of a letter from John to Abigail, dated Philadelphia July 24th, 1775 found at Revolutionary War and Beyond website

photo of a cherry branch, author's own

And to think I saw it on my mulberry tree

2011-06-28T10:17:00.000-05:00

Aren't they gorgeous?

In a slightly ramshackle, rough around the edges, are sure sure it's okay to eat this way?

Mulberries are too often maligned. "They're messy," so many over the years have said. "Birds eat them and, well, you know..." trail off others. "They're not really that pretty."

Harumph.

In my former house, once my home, we shared mulberry trees along the property line. TREES. Not bushes. Over 40 feet tall. Probably over 50. I know I don't exaggerate, because at the time we lived in an old three story house whose two main floors, above grade, had 10' ceilings, and the attic flew even higher in the center. I estimate conservatively because people would visit, people who had even seen mulberry *trees,* and they would comment on the beautiful large trees and how special they were and what kind were they, anyway? And it was often hard to convince them that they were mulberries. Unless, of course, it was a certain time of year.

With a tree like that, one person's "messy" is another person's "thank goodness, because we would never reach those berries any other way."

In the current house, which is my home, the tree is not majestic. Nor is it a shrub. It is a something that probably was a shrubby tree a few years before we moved in, but now is a non-central trunk tree. Young, but tree. Some judicious pruning might make it more architecturally attractive, but it does not set roots from my property, so I cannot make that decision. Besides, in its tenacious shrubby somebody forgot about it even through the construction of the house on the land that was once a farm behind us means that maybe it carries the mojo of survival.

I thank it for that. For the shade it brings to that corner, for doing its part to break up a vista that would be, well...a nearly blank wall. For feeding the birds. Yes, the birds. Birds love mulberries, it is true. In fact, they are recommended as a companion crop for someone trying to raise fruit trees. I think it works.

Check it.

Mulberries and cherries living together.
Hands reaching hands.

I tell you, we get plenty of cherries.

So, yeah, birds eat them. Thank goodness.

Yes. They are messy underfoot. Yes, there is an odd fermenting smell for a couple of weeks while they macerate on your path or in your lawn. Yes, that juice is INTENSE in color and will stain just about anything it touches.

(Those beautiful bearded iris, the purple grape smelling ones? They stain, too.)

Life is an exchange. I like this deal.

I've seen trees torn down because people didn't like the "mess"--cottonwood, mulberry, serviceberry, maple, what have you. It doesn't really matter; a lot of trees are "messy" at some point in the year. The ones that are bred not to be generally end up decidedly unhardy, and certainly not productive.

Okay, fine. I'll rephrase the question. Aren't these mulberries a gorgeous hot mess?

By the way, mulberries are the one natural food for a silkworm.

Let you think I am reaching too hard to make a silk purse out of a...well, a mulberry mess.

Random things mulberry:

I found a recipe for mulberry-rhubarb shortcake that I'd like to try. Extended cool and rain (except when it has been extraordinarily muggy and hot) means I've still got harvestable rhubarb when the mulberries are ready. Hunh.

Project Mulberry is a book, for children, by Linda Sue Park. Target audience is younger than her book My Name is Keoko. In it, a mulberry tree ends up being the means to draw a diverse group of characters together. Science fair, silkworms, stereotypes both external and internalized. And the use of the term "snot brain," which disturbs some. (See Amazon reader reviews.) ((Thought I'd go for Theodor Geisel, didn't you? Nah. But you should. ;) ))

Mulberry perfume? Couldn't think of one off the top of my head. Found a 2011 release of Lily by Koto Perfumes, but the "mulberry" in it is "mulberry leaf." Going to go back out and investigate...and I'm back. Leaf torn, crushed. It's...well, leafy green, actually much like a lettuce. But, unique? Like, say, tomato leaf? Not particularly. Hmm.

And then there is this. Set your tea cup down. Pon Farr.
Get your groove on with Uhura and Spock, and settle into base notes of sandalwood, peach and mulberry. I should have known. That's what I get for urging open-mindedness with trees. Karma, returned in perfume form.

all images author's own, obtained without stainage...i think

Peace, Love, and Patchouli; or, How I Came to Love the Patch Without Really Trying

2011-06-26T11:57:00.003-05:00

Where were you in the Summer of Love?

Where ARE you in the Summer of Patchouli Love?

Me:

Learning how to read. (My mother reports my first word was B-A-R. Which says more about the nightly route we took to pick up my father from work than my adult habits. I think.)

Right here being a Patch Test Bunny.

Let the wild association ride begin.

First of all, you will recall that I have evolved in my relationship with bunnies in a manner not hospitable to things furry and occasionally named Harvey. (To wit, I "went McGregor," as detailed here.) So as cute and cuddly as that long eared creature in the lower right hand corner of the lovely logo is, I am perhaps better represented as a bunny with quills. Wait a minute...if *I* am the bunny...shoot! I need to go McGregor on myself!!

Which, as it so happens, is just the metaphor for what my greatest fear involving patchouli involves. I would not, you see, describe myself as a patchouli fan. It would be on my Do Not Go There list. Of course, vetiver used to be on the same list. Then I found two perfumes that opened the door for me (Vetiver Dance and Vetiver Racinettes), and once the door was ajar, other vetiver scents found a way to happily enter my awareness.

So, when I was invited to join the bunnies in the patch(ouli), I accepted. Because I knew that evolution happens. Plus, despite the still strong memory of my first introduction to patchouli (a friend's older sibling saying it smelled really cool, PLUS it had the benefit of covering over other, non-parent sanctioned smells), I had already pushed the patchouli door open a bit thanks to Chanel's Coromandel. Difficult, prickly, fascinating, siren-calling, multiple-wearing inducing, full of facets, eventually and quite precipitously smooth as a multi-varnished and buffed piece of warm wood, Coromandel had already taught me I could enjoy patchouli, in the right setting.

Therefore, I said yes. And waited for thirteen interpretations, thirteen settings, thirteen couchings, thirteen portraits of patchouli.

Thus began my personal patchouli dismantling.

Each of the lovely little roll on samples you see there came individually wrapped, labeled only by number. (The numbers, btw, skipped #9, so as to avoid 6 / 9 confusion, which I loved.) Rather than unwrapping them all, and then selecting by juice, I simply reached in blindly, and picked one at a time. Unwrap, roll apply, sniff, note, huff, note, wait, huff, note, repeat.

Day One. Numbers 2, 10, 5, 1, 6, and 11, in that order. Rare is the day when I will sample so many scents at once. But fate impelled me, and my sniffer cycle was on my side. I knew I was in a good place for multiple huffings, and with another eight scents to go, the combination of bare arm weather + not headache triggerable + deadline pressure pushed me to go forward. And so I did.

I returned to former standards and practices, cracking open a blank journal and using the primitive self-drawn diagram + notes method that made an appearance here --gadzooks! time flies-- almost three years ago. Check it, dude. Participating in a project that evoked impressions of the free flowing summer of love forced me to get my [one of George Carlin's seven words] together again. Who knew? Wild, man.

Thus I proceeded through Days Two and Three of Round One, with five new scents on the second day, two new on the third. Plus, I re-applied #13 (from day two) and #11 (from day one) later on in day two, because of a sub-category thing I was developing which I shall speak more of later.

Such was methodology. Now, some context.

***

This here is the summer of love in my mind.

Well, that, and: Let The Sunshine. Detroit riots. People joining hands and liking the world to sing. Unbelievable pain. Nearly unfathomable joy.

The summer of love, 1967, is a soft-focus at the edges concept, a philosophy that carried through an era which most people suggest didn't stop until 1973. Which is when I got a pair of red white and blue bell bottomed hip hugger jeans which were SO cool and made me feel just like the groovy teenage girls who lived down the block. I wasn't, but it was how I felt.

As I have assembled that era and assimilated it into my life -- and I did, for though I wasn't fully cognizant when it happened, I was most essentially a child of it, in that I was raised in and through it. I can't fathom an attitude other than equality, I smile when I see long hair, I know what a certain waft across a concert crowd or over my backyard fence is, I know the difference between the implications of that waft coming from the Vietnam vet living next door and the teenager at a Phish concert and the well coiffed older woman suddenly letting it all hang out at a Nora Jones performance.

The Summer of Love can be forever immediate and young in my mind, and yet never attached to any particular something or someone, because it is not specifically attached to me, but it is in me.

So patchouli is/was the head shops, and kind of fun crazy but a little scary friends stopping by to chat with parents or friends of older siblings. Patchouli is/was the smell of a beautiful older sister, who was so smart, and so cool, and who left and was never heard from again. Patchouli is the smell of a nearly foul oil sold in the kiosk of a shopping mall on the decline. Patchouli is a plant. Patchouli is the smell inside two kinds of VW's, a wildly painted van and a love bug. Patchouli is the smell of a smooth luxury perfume.

Patchouli, you might think, is a hot mess in my mind. But no; patchouli is a patchwork of impressions and styles and eras. Which turns out is/was just the right background for approaching the thirteen liquids in the box, and being ready to meet their portraits of patch.

I opened my mind. I tuned in, but I didn't drop out.

I smellwatched patchouli that made an appearance after a sunny opening act. I smellsaw unapologetic patchouli that greeted me from the first whiff and never left until the whole performance was over. I smellglanced a dusty plant patchouli that was a somewhat rough but always interesting mistress. I met patches of various stripes and hues and personalities. I enjoyed making the acquaintance of every one.

If this were an unorchestrated summer of patchouli love, I'd hop on a bus with all of them, and document our travels along the way. I wouldn't pick one or three of the pack; I'd just coexist, finding myself waking up with one or the other as whimsy and circumstance made appropriate.

But this is free love with a telos. I need to push myself through with purpose.

When I'm done, though, I might come back for a magical mystery tour.

When I next emerge from the patch, I will introduce you to the three scents I selected as finalists, with all of the hows/whys/gyrations involved. You may find other bunnies as you travel the perfumed interwebz. Many of them have already made their selections. If you would like to keep track of the various nodes in the project -- "noses," celebrities, and perfumers -- Monica Miller is keeping it all straight for us over at the Perfume Pharmer. See this post which lists the perfumers, the perfumes, the sniffers, and various posts about the project.

If you are just starting out, Donna's post on patchouli in perfume ("The Story of the Green Monster") is a handy review of the plant, the note, and perfumes that use it.

Summer of Love logo created by Elizabeth Whelan

photos of vials and journal, author's own

Robert Altman's photography on his Summer of Love webpage; see also his lovely books

Happy Solstice!

2011-06-21T11:09:00.000-05:00

Up here, it's the longest day of the year. Whether you are over or under, having your shortest or longest of days, here's to a happy and fragrant extreme.

the solstice explained by National Geographic
Elizabeth Flock on Takashi Murakami's summer solstice Google Doodle
things are flaring up again on our sun on this solstice (time to check for Northern lights?)
I'd happily zip along in a Solstice for the solstice

blame for the image rests solely upon the author's shoulders

Leafy Perception and Sorting out Detail

2011-06-20T14:26:00.001-05:00

When I first started this blog, I alluded to, and then briefly wrote about my experience nearly losing my eyesight.

At the time, I was aswirl with fears and recalculations of life and trying to come to terms with it all. As for many people, sight is my dominant sense. I am a teacher, a reader, a writer; a filmmaker; and a musician whose greatest strength might be sight reading.

And I am a gardener. Who studied it seriously enough to make it an avocation, and who chose not to make it a vocation, but relies upon it as a form of meditation. So it was not the generic laments of "how will I read?" or "how can I create images on film?" or "will I be valuable, can I even function happily, as a musician who cannot read music?" Each of those had their own levels of solvability.

It was when I looked across one of my garden beds out front, thinking I would scan for weeds, and realized I could not even differentiate the leaves of the wanted plants, that I was whalloped.

One of many amazing things about the human eye (and our brain) is how we can see this, this image as recorded by a camera, but then also instantly and seemingly simultaneously scan for up close detail. Standing from this point, I can look into and across the top of the foliage and identify where errant grasses and weeds are. Kind of hard here, even if you click on the picture and open it up bigger.

So I have to approximate what our eyes can do. Kind of like I needed to that day I stood a few paces away from the bed out front, and had a rapid, blistering series of realizations.

Like our amazing eye/brain communication, I was simultaneously realizing "Hey, I can't see the weeds!" and "Hey, I can't see...much of anything. Green. That's it." All the while moving in closer and closer...

The killer was I got right in on top of the leaves. Which, in that case, were siberian iris, ornamental grasses, and regular lawn grass grown tall enough to flower and go to seed.

Not that I'd know.

I was done for.

***

I take a lot of close up and macro images. For all kinds of reasons: they rarely fail to interest me, it's a shortcut to helping make a picture "work," it's the only way to be sure certain details my eye-brain is registering are being communicated to the viewer.

When I lost my eyesight--when it went fuzzy, when I watched it glaze over and out--I didn't just lose a type of input. I lost an important physical metaphor for sorting and thinking. Learning and practicing are complex things, and putting learned practiced knowledge and ability to work creating is yet another complex something.

When it comes to camera images, you can sort manually that which your brain does intuitively. See that picture there, with the angelica and the purple iris in the foreground and the peach and purple iris in the left background? Pull it up large. Let your eye scan over it. Decide what it in sharpest focus. In photography parlance, you are identify just what plane in the depth of field was made to be the center of attention.

In overblown fiction parlance, a character hones their eagle eyed attention on the pointy sharp edges of a loosely fronded angelica stalk, and notes the sharp contrast between edge and the surrounding air.

Either way, you just sorted detail that was already sorted. Look again; that picture was not taken by having the camera a foot away from the angelica. The camera is at a distance, and zoomed in on the angelica stalks. The fence in the far background is over 10 feet away from the angelica, and not a soft wash of grey, but series of sharp edged planks with clearly visible graining and splinters. WHEN one's attention is upon it. This angle/lens choice removes the option of paying attention to that.

So, you sorted a further level of detail from a collection of input that had already been pared. That's a lot of thinking. That's a lot of deciding where and when to pay attention.

All of the levels are important. When you stand back from the garden, there is a flow, a rhythm, both in the moment and over time. There are colors to mix/complement/contrast, smells to consider, heights to account for both in terms of visual pleasure and plant survival. Whose pleasure and whose survival, of course, being another set of variables.

***

So when I think about the ability to scan a planted area and pick out the wanted from the not wanted, feel the rhythm the planting establishes and determine if there are any breaks or hiccups, imagine what the textural and color palette will present in the future and if amendments should be made accordingly, I occasionally think of what I imagine a perfumer does. How they select their elements to play together in the moment and over time, in what proportion...and how they must reach in to "pluck" that which does not belong, whether instinctively (thanks to long experience) or by careful process of elimination. Or guesswork, which will lead to learning. In my imagination, it is instinctive--but as a gardener I know that sometimes it is long experience which leads to the non-thinking but correct gesture.

On the other hand, as a musician, I know that the "right" gesture can be the result of training, or instinct, or a combination of both.

I also know that my ability to garden was ominously threatened by the prospect of losing my sight. Which at the time reminded me of the dreams I would sometimes have in my youth about losing or seriously injuring a finger, as my instrument requires the use of all fingers on both hands.

Perfumers must hate having colds, right? Or the threat of brain trauma leading to anosmia? Or even the temporary anosmia that can result from certain illnesses or conditions?

all photographs author's own

In flagrante indelicato: Lilacs, a.k.a. the fallacy of sensitive tosh

2011-06-06T13:07:00.000-05:00

Lilacs. Some of you are already well past your season, others can still smell the peak in your nose, even if the actual peak was already days ago.

Here, we're a couple of weeks past the peak of the old-fashioneds, and while Miss Kim is still pumping out a honking snootful of scent today, I have a feeling that this is like when a singer pushes out the last air from the bottom of the diaphragm. It's big, it's blowsy, but it is no longer fresh, and a little hollow at the heart.

Old fashioned lilac, pumping out the volume 2011

Since Miss Kim is pumping out her final glory, I found myself out gathering armfuls of blooms for the second time this season this morning. This is a big milestone for me; in the first place, I am conservative when it comes to harvesting blooms. Not just because I have a sensitive side that feels bad about cutting them, but because I love seeing them in their environment. I plant with an eye toward how the "composition" looks in situ; in movie terms, it's a botanical mise en scene. Heck, I'll even spend time deciding if I let a weed have a few days as part of the composition, if texture/color/height fill in the scene nicely and it won't go all Godzilla and take over the area.

But there is a saying about lilacs, which is true: They like the lopping. Which is to say, trimming encourages fresh wood (and therefore fresh blooms), keeps the plant looking fully and less "leggy," and also helps manage height/width if that at all matters. It's not that "they're asking for it"--that saying has always bothered me for a number of reasons--but they do respond well to it. And, in fact, they thrive as a result.

Furthermore, lilacs stems headed for the vase need a little, well, abuse. Smashing. A simple end cut will not allow the woody stems to take up adequate water, and they'll wilt within 24 hours. Sometimes you can almost watch the depressing withering as if time lapse was accelerated in front of your real time eyes. I conveniently forgot that with the first round of trimmings. They were droopy by nightfall. This time I did not make that error.

My tool of choice was a railroad stake. Plenty of heft, and the head end provides a pseudo-cutting edge, so that in one fell strike you can smash-slash. 2-3" of gashes up from the bottom of each, and you are good to go.

It's not that they ask for it. But if you are going to do the trimming, and want them to hang out for a while in the vase, you do need to alter them. With violent measures. Because you need to expose cells, and soften tenacious structured material.

This, my friends, is the "wan" lilac.

It is a deceptive shrub. That fragrance that is so "pretty," that visits but once a year, can actually nearly strangle you. Our Miss Kim, for example, is right outside a lower floor bathroom window. Which in some ways was good planning by the previous owner. Because it offers a lovely screen 3 out of 4 seasons of the year, and is often snow covered enough for privacy effect in the fourth. Because it is visually attractive. And because in other areas of the house, and on the back patio, catching a waft can be a pleasant thing.

But if you are in that front bathroom? On a hot day? This is a situation the word "cloying" serves well. Some might even say "suffocating."

This is a clear example of when "fresh air" is not the same as "air heavy with the fragrance of {lilac/fill in your own big stonkin' flower}."

**

So when the topic of En Passant comes up, I am always careful to thank Olivia Giacobetti. She knew that the best way to experience a lilac was in passing, not in situ. Certainly not stuck in nostrilo. And too much of a good thing is, well, too much, so there's that cucumber and that bread and that ghost of Apres L'Ondee.

It's perfect. As if it were my neighbor growing the lilacs, baking the bread, me slicing the cucumber, me discovering I still had remnants of yesterday's Apres L'Ondee somewhere on me. (Alas, that that could actually happen in real life...)

I can't wear En Passant when the lilacs are at peak, incidentally. Too much input. I am too busy processing and managing the heavy full-throated single relentless note of the lilacs. Which must be some kind of siren song, come to think of it; all of this noise, and still I gather it into bundles and bring it into my house.

My favorite times to wear En Passant are early spring, when it seems (as it so often does) that it is having trouble revving up, and in the fall, for a kind of nostalgia. Plus the occasional nostalgic occasion or mood throughout the year.

There are times when the hologram, the reproduction, is just the thing.

*
Hundreds of tiny trumpets on my countertops and carpeting my floor in the area I put the stems into a vase. Because, yes, despite the volume on the olfactory noise, these flowers have peaked, and every handling shakes loose some of the florets. But they needed to be gathered.

You smash them, they last longer.

They disintegrate, but shall return.

They aren't delicate. And they aren't dead.

You conveniently tend to forget how they are capable of choking you.

As it turns out, it may be that longer term relationships with them are best conducted via stand-ins.

So pretty, they are.

image of old-fashioned lilac, author's own
V.S. Naipaul's opinions, his own
Olivia Giacobetti's genius, her own

Stonkin' Big Flowers

2011-06-02T10:04:00.001-05:00

Oh, dear.

I approached writing this three times. Rather, I started three different days since late April with the intention to write about Summersent perfume.

Three different openings, one beginning with a rumination on indigenous smells and subliminal comfort, one with an account of my time at the Chicago Botanic Garden with the person behind the perfume, and once with my big reveal announcing that I believed I had identified the "secret midwest flower" that was the inspiration for the scent.

All of those having not materialized, I determined that Today Was The Day. I dabbed on some parfum. I spritzed on eau de parfum.

And then I thought hey, maybe it would help to put on some Fracas. You know, benchmark against another Great Big Flower that like Glenn Close's character in Fatal Attraction, will not be ignored.

And then I figured since the change in the weather meant I had more skin exposed, I'd put on some Carnal Flower. And a hit of Lys Mediterranee. Because, you know, I haz issues with these beasts. So I could do some thoughtful ruminations on just why it was that my early-in-evolution nose had a strange attraction to Summersent, but Just Said No to the trio on my right limb.

Holy stonkin' flowers, Batman. I am in a cloud of confusion. It's like I have the vapors. I am IN the vapors. Dear heavens, as I type this, it occurs to me my desk space may be tainted for a week. And I spritzed two floors away.

::catches balance::

I'm going to have to start in the middle, rather than the beginning, or working backward from the end. Much like fighting my way out of this miasma.

Because, the first thing I have to admit, is that when I applied the Fracas to the crook of my elbow (dabbed from a mini, one of those cute little Piguet black-cube capped square numbers), I thought "Hey. Nice. Why am I not recoiling?" And I smiled at was striking me as a blond zaftig beauty who I had been led to believe overapplied too loud makeup and actually, while made up, was quite presentable.

Which was probably what led me to dare to spritz Carnal Flower on my wrist. Hey, Fracas used to make me run. Carnal Flower slayed me. Maybe this time I would just run. But hey, ho...what is this? Formerly dirty bits now just registering as a welcome (not dirty, just...rough) counterpoint to the stonk of the flower? C'mon, now. I mean, Carnal Flower, applied as a check and balance, was suddenly yelling "buy me! you need me! what in the world have you been doing with those reserved Malles???" Oy to the vey. Nobody told me there was a rabbit hole inside a rabbit hole.

Sanity. Reason. I'd apply Lys Mediterranee, which had previously registered as an artistic attempt to be different. By which I mean artfully rendered, but interesting to me only as an exercise. Except no, now that sharp opening is the near side of bracing, and I am thinking "hey, ginger" instead of "whoa, ginger," and instead of it being one of those paintings I look at in the exhibit and register how talented the artist is, it becomes one of those paintings I simply enjoy looking at and falling into the contours of one line against the other, happily aware in the background of a pleasing harmony of arrangement but no longer intellectually processing it, but just being there with it, sort of in it. Except this was a perfume, and I *was* in it.

Cr@p. What about the Summersent?

Now that I've written all this, can I actually review that which sent me down the spiral in the spiral??

I guess I'd better try.

Since I started this inside out, how about I continue that way. The publicity for Summersent leans heavily on the story of the creator walking in the garden and catching a whiff of a beautiful flower, a midwest flower which became the inspiration for the perfume. When I met with Marjorie last fall, she told me the real story, which is essentially that story: She was walking with a friend, smelled the flower, and it resonated deeply with her. She was able to identify it, and bring it to a parfumer, who explained to her that that flower could not be distilled directly into an essence. It would have to be re-created.

This was an opportunity for me to share with her the story of Edmond Roudnitska and lily of the valley and Diorissimo, and how it, too, is a flower that cannot be directly pressed/enfleuraged/distilled. We talked and talked, about the process of working with a perfumer to create a fragrance, how Marjorie put her extensive PR background in fashion and beauty into play in creating a product that was perfume, what inspired her as she told the perfumer what she wanted, etcetera etcetera.

But never once did she reveal what the flower was.

A few weeks ago, the annual blooming of a certain bush outside my window. And an A-ha! moment.

Do you know this flower?

Here, let me pull back a bit.

Viburnum carlesii, my gardener friends. Commonly known as Korean spicebush or Korean spice. Which would, in name, and in provenance, seem to put a bit of a twist on the midwestern angle.

Nonetheless, indeed, there it is. Right under my nose. I think my cultivar may not be the exact one that inspired the perfume. On the other hand, the perfume is, by necessity, an "imagination" of the note. And I doubt I'll get Marjorie to confirm one way or the other. So...for now, we're going to play Clue.

I accuse Viburnum carlesii of inspiring Marjorie Midgarden in the midwest garden.

::gathers self::

Sorry, I need a moment. I am still aswirl in a huffy puffy cloud of mega flowers. An hour later, and I still do not have a headache, which would be a milestone with ANY of the three vamps on my right arm, let alone a gathering of them in one lineup.

That, plus the heady excitement of sleuthing my way to what I think is an unveiling...well....

::pause::
::ready to proceed::

What do I think of Summersent?

I think it is one of those pretty perfumes. I overheardread a conversation yesterday in which somebody referred to Apres L'Ondee as a perfume that merits the overused, generally underdescriptive term "pretty." I agreed. I think of it as a category, one which may be a subset of "girly." Not sure. Will tease that out in a bit. Wait, yes, a subset...rather, a partially attached "subset." Because "pretty" I can do, if not often. "Girly"...well, girly tends to irk me in its worst versions, and simply amuse me without making me want some in its best versions.

So. Summersent is "pretty," meaning it goes in that category.

It is also clearly a thickish without being too cloying (on me) or too brackish whiteish flower perfume. It is, apparently, popular in Europe, where it makes a large share if its sales. (Interesting, I think. Midwest inspired. American made. Over the top packaging. Big flower. Hmmm.) Make no mistake; this perfume wears not as part of your skin, or a melding even. It is a layer applied.

But hey, so is most lipstick. And certain styles of shoe. And particular ways of arranging your hair. Or a cravat.

::cloud vapors::

I think I should come back once more to Summersent, on its own, to suss it out for those who might be curious. Meanwhile, it's June. ("June June June...June is bustin' out all over...") And some profound change in season has happened.

Not just summer.

But the season of my Big Floral Appreciation.

images author's own
spritzes and dabs obtained via author's own collection

Things that smelled, May 2011

2011-05-31T17:43:00.001-05:00

For me, the Smelly Month of May started with daffodils. And rain, and dirt, and crabapple blossoms.

Then came a road trip. The smell of the air on the Taconic parkway, detergent and stale water in a car wash.

Alliums, with the one revealing itself to be a maturing morpher. Starts out vaguely ozonic, hint of vegetation decay with a whiff of onion. Turns into intoxicating sweetness.

And then, there are the deep purple ones, which have a hint of grape. Fake grape. But not at all fake. Very huffable.

Homecoming. More dirt. Hyacinths. Tulips. Winter onions pulled and spring onions planted.

Oh, yes, you potent permeating thing. Viburnum carlesii, you reek. In a knock you over with white flowers of the northern latitudes way.

Tartarian honeysuckle, which like certain perfumes (remember my time with Apercu?), registers best from a distance. A new potted rose for planting, with full blooms while those in the ground are still working on shoots.

Lilacs, and more rain.

Just rain, rain + pavement + traffic, rain + fake car air. Rain in freshly cut grass. Rain, just rain.

Rhubarb. Sweet alyssum for tucking her and there. Sweet woodruff, late for May Wine on May Day but welcome always.

Scented geranium starts.

Always dirt.

Always something new.

And, of course, the irises. Irises come, like pallida and some of the german bearded. Smells of sharp lemon and soft sweet lemon chiffon and an impossibly lilting sweet grape.

I have not been with words much in May. I have been some with perfumes.

But I have been much, much with smells.

I hope you had a good month. See you in June.

all images author's own

Remembering

2011-05-30T12:30:00.000-05:00

"The peonies should be out by Memorial Day."

"Whites, starting Memorial Day, ending Labor Day."

Parade.

Barbecue. Which I want to spell "barbeque." Or Bar-b-que.

Three day weekend.

~~~

I grew up through a particular commodification of culture, I think. I'm pretty sure I remember at least an equal emphasis on parades and honorings, though outdoor cooking and the unofficial start to summer were part of the equation.

But it was almost as if you had to be solemn first. It made sense, like a blessing before a meal. Let us take a moment to remember those who, whether by volunteering or by conscription, whether known to you or merely an idea, gave their life in service to their country.

And I would see all of us gathered at the parade, and off to the cemetery, all of those grown ups who would later probably vociferously argue about what justifies war and whether there should be a volunteer army and military industrial complexes and greater good and all sorts of ideas that started off as syllabic swirls and eventually became part of the swarm my own mouth formed...

...I would see all of us gathered in one location. Out of respect. Remembering perhaps with different sortings, but remembering. Quietly.

~~~

Currently, a blow out isn't even a rout at a sporting event. It's a mattress sale.

~~~

I'd like to say I'm not passing judgement. But I probably am.

I try to remember instead of whinge.

~~~

Nobody warned me about the salute. And I was just young enough to have it not occur to me, and just enough at the front edge of my adulthood to have it slay me.

When you make it through the funeral of a dearly loved one, when you are pacing your reserves like you do in the pool and are trying to swim as far underwater as possible before coming up for air, when you are doing the best you can to balance giving supportive looks and sneaking shared glances of agony without completely losing it, this calculation is very delicate. The calculation becomes even more important when you feel like if you do lose it, you don't know how you will come back.

So you sit in your seat, and stare fiercely ahead when you realize the talking is half a sentence from being over. It's nearly over. You figure you can make it to the end after all, you will follow the cues, you know will never look upon that person living or dead again, but you will somehow either precede or follow them out of this room with the rest of these people sitting so stiffly in unusually formal clothes. You get distracted for a moment at realizing just how many of them you have never seen in these kind of clothes. You realize that these people who are usually familiar but currently in unusual clothes are still sitting, there is no cue to move. Then there is a rustle in the rear, and an honor guard (you remember that term from parades in years past) enters, and you think, "oh, they will lead him/us out. How nice."

But they don't move right away. You need a cue. You desperately need a cue. You sit forward again, the air starting to swish in your ears, but figuring you'll just roll with whatever movement comes next, you can make it, you can make it, so long as you don't make any eye contact now, you can make it.

And then there is an explosion, and you leap out of your chair. Your cousin looks at you, giving you the same evaluating look as when you started to come out of the roller coaster seat heading down the big hill that year long ago and you both knew that you were on the precipice of Trouble. At that moment of eye contact, the rifles, for now you realize they are rifles, fire again, and they pierce your veneer, and you start sobbing. It is too much, this fright and this ceremony and this ending and knowing that people are already trying to remember. The third and final shot is just loudness in a swirl.

And then Taps begins, and you realize you *thought* you lost it before, and you go back years before, when you saw your first eagle and found a tin cup hanging by a stream as if by magic and turned and saw a certain smile and it all goes into some odd expansion compression as you realize that your past was well into his future at the point that earned this Taps and it makes sense that the bugler is out of tune.

You remember that you can never fully know another's life. But you deem it important to remember what you do know.

And in the case of Memorial/Decoration Day, you vow to remember what you don't know.

A NYT article exploring the backstory to Memorial Day in the United States. David W. Blight, "Forgetting Why We Remember."

Thanks to Buglers Across America, because digital taps just doesn't play.

The Smell of Fury: Mr. McGregor's Revenge

2011-05-24T12:24:00.000-05:00

Among other places I've been lately is my own backyard. Where I do attempt to garden. Things intervene at times -- Mother Nature, life. I generally roll with it. One of my tenets for gardening is I only want to fuss if I feel like it. Otherwise, the joint should be able to largely run on its own. (I give it roots to grow, it needs to use its leaves to fly, so to speak.)

All is very Zen. Weeds come, they get pulled. Probably. Edges are maintained, but not religiously. Experiments in cohabitation (will it be okay if I grow this iris in the asparagus bed?) are made. Harvests are assumed to be about 1/3 of potential, given the fact I like to maintain things wildlife-friendly. Why 1/3? Calculate 1/3 loss to wildlife, 1/3 potential loss to whatever, leaves 1/3 for us humans. This sets the bar at a level that leads to minimal disappointment and maximum happy surprises.

Unless this happens.

Decapitation by rabbit.

In which case, The Peaceable Kingdom gets all rumbly. The young me who cringed whenever Mr. McGregor menaced Peter Rabbit needs to go in a closet and hide, because the old and wizened me starts looking around for a hoe.

And I don't mean to start weeding.

Until I started growing vegetables, I never felt this kind of id-like response when dealing with things dirt. I've seen hostas munched down to nibs, and merely shrugged, knowing they'd be back the next year. But when it came to produce...tasty, fresh, labored, contemplated, organic, so fully imagined I drooled fruit of my labors, fruit whose cost came partially out of the family grocery budget...well...

...like a pea, I snapped.

The first year, I took to letting the dog out and encouraging him to go chase the leaping lepus. I had to rethink that strategy when he was, erm, VERY enthusiastic about discovering a bunny den. With babes. (Turn away. It gets worse. I won't discuss, but yes, I had to practice "ethical" euthanasia.) So I turned to prevention, which of course would have been best to practice from the very beginning. I've tried hair, pet and human, red pepper spray, row covers. Hair works erratically, and then only until it rains. Red pepper spray works, unless it entices, and in either case, only until it rains. Row covers work, until it gets hot, and then they need to come off.

And I don't like the way they look. I like looking at greenery in my garden, not gauze.

So, it's a hodgepodge of prevention and acceptance around here. With the occasional bout of mind-noise anger.

I inadvertently brought this topic up with some 'fume friends. And, because I had sympathetic ears -- none of which quivered or were floppy -- who inspired me toward a particular slant. A scented slant. A proposal for Christopher Brosius. To wit:

The Smell of Fury: Mr. McGregor's Revenge

The title came to me in a flash. But it took a little time--and some painful honesty--to compose a proposal/inquiry.

TO: Christopher Brosius
FROM: A Passionate Gardener, an Avid Scent Wearer
RE: Brief for a New Project

CB, you're one to tackle this one. It doesn't tell a story so much as take you down of (garden) path of personal development, vegetable patch style.

The story: Discovery, Delirium, Reconcilement
The backstory: Innocence lost, Peter Rabbit
The smells: AT FIRST dirt, fresh air, other vegetation--for this writer, a rub of sage, a hint of garlic chive, the sharp medicine of creeping charlie, the ozonic yet odd decay of an allium flower, the hint of a leather glove, rubber and feet (hello, best garden clog ever). A HARSH SMACK of tomato leaf which leads to a SHARP TRANSITION as the smell of metal glints invitingly in your nose. Other writers might propose a hint of gunpowder at this point, but I'm thinking fur and the brush of pine and sweat and the smell of a blister forming as a runner tries to gain on a rabbit while wearing rubber clogs. A SWIRL again of transition as you briefly but disturbingly ...oh, dear, it is so harsh to say...but you are bold, and you will go where I can't...it is only imagined, but my visual will become your fur plus blood, I think. So QUICKLY a waft of the fresh breeze only hinted at in the allium now writ complete and non-compromised, green and ozonic all at once, leading to flowers and the crisp smells of green beans and peas and the oddly sharp (gee, is there a connection to the blood here?) smell of a properly ripened but not mushy tomato. Perhaps a lovely balsamic vinagrette?

Fava beans, your call. I say it is over the top. But I have a friend who wants the whole denouement to be rabbit stew.

Can we talk?

I dunno. It's a start. And certainly a catharsis.

I'm more demonic in my head than I ever am when it comes to real life. In real life, I bought more tomato plants than I had space for. Already, I'm mourning that I did not think to put Pink Lady, that modern faded something, in the ground first, for then I would be swapping it out for the robust vintage Mortgage Lifter. But I tend to think positive (oh, hush), so was hoping I would just be offering up the extra plants to a neighbor.

So I brush the dog -- who has fur, I know, and does not offer any sebum-ish moments as I groom him. I let him roam. I make homemade non-toxic but hopefully highly repellant sprays.

But mostly, I putter where I am inclined, let the rest go, and hope for the best.

Maybe one day, I'll be sneaking huffs of a new scent I'm testing, shorthanded as McGregor's Fury amongst perfume folk. Wait, no--better yet--I'll be a pre-release tester. You know.

{Beat)

So that this cosmetic can be identified as not having harmed rabbits in testing.

photo of decapitated tomato plant, (sadly) author's own

"stop animal testing" image found on various websites, including Amy's Gripping Commentary

Things I Remember I Know When I am On The Road

2011-05-09T20:01:00.000-05:00

*I used to get carsick when I was a kid. There is no escape from your own --or anyone's-- perfume in a car cabin.

*I generally like amber as a category. I tend to think I ignore it during hours 2 and 3. But I just pretend to ignore it, or ignore it enough. (see above)

*when traveling alone, there's no one to blame but yourself. (see above, plus stands alone)

*you can smell cow manure at any speed

*when I was a kid, a house with its own pond and diving raft seemed to be all that and a bag of chips. Today, I saw two ponds with "narrows" and footbridges over. Footbridge = bag of chips. Pond still desired.

*last time I was on along road trip, Amouage sandalwood attar nearly killed me, then was my happiness. Luckily, I remembered this without recreating the incident.

*you can smell freshly cut grass at most any speed

*tandem trailer trucks make me nervous. Triples scare the bejeezus out of me.

*the Falling Timbers rest stop is still frozen in time. With the addition of the smell of Cinnabon.

*I used to be able to smell a lit cigarette is a passing/passed car. I don't know if I still can, but I do know these days there is always a spot near an entry door where the few, the unrepentant, the smoking crew congregate. And it smells like it used to when you opened the door to my dad's office,

*I may never afford a car that does not have cabin noise.

*tomorrow, I will not challenge the scent gods. The next 450 miles will get a cool iris, thank you very much.

Grafting (a review of Boyfriend perfume)

2011-05-04T14:21:00.001-05:00

Ah, spring. The dirt smells great, both of renewal and remnants of decay, along with a suggestion of worms. The trees here are finally starting to bud. We're finally moving beyond daffodils in our blooms, though it's still pretty bulb heavy. Hello, tulips. Hello, crown imperials with your odd extra-terrestrial upside down-ness.

Lots of walks through the garden. Where one can't see much, really, but the vision...the vision imagines what is here, and there. Attention marks when the asparagus roots come up, and how quickly. Rotates a few vegetables in the mental array and makes note of an adjustment of where to put the seeds and plants for this year.

Looks at the fruit trees, and allows the brain to do a little ruminating on the advantages of dwarf versus full size trees when one's back yard is not an orchard. Thinks of the rigorous near torturing that is an espalier. Cringes a bit at the Frankenstein that is a 5-in-1 apple available in one's favorite catalog.

Grafting. Slice and suture. Thank goodness it works in surgery. And while I cringe in principle when it comes to Frankencrafting plant life, I have to admit to having a couple of roses that rely on it. Not to mention how many of those dwarf fruit trees owe their presence in our gardens.

Heck, I've even tried it once myself. For propogation of a species. In my garden.

But that does bring me to a treasured Saturday afternoon horror flick memory.

And Kate Walsh's Boyfriend.

***

If it's perfume that brings you here to the Ledge, you've already read about Boyfriend. "Why should I have to give up his scent?," or something like that, asked Kate Walsh apres relationship. Keep the scent, ditch the dude. But, since one still lives within one's own skin, put in one bottle that which you liked smelling on him...and then that which you liked smelling on you.

Grafting.

Which brings me to Ray Milland and Rosie Greer. The first time I smelled Boyfriend, the citrus/cologne-y opening was clear. And then it fell, rather than transitioned, into a pleasant woody vanilla.

The cleft graft is used for topworking older established apple and pear trees, either on the trunk of a small tree or on the side branches of a larger tree. {...} Cut the cleft (avoid splitting if possible) with a grafting chisel, large knife or hatchet. After a few trials you will learn the proper depth of cleft. {...} Open the cleft slightly with a grafting tool or screw driver. Insert a scion on each side, with the inner bark of stock and scion in contact.
- University of Minnesota/Extension

That there is a cut and paste from instructions on how to perform the cut and the union in a cleft graft. A cut and then a union is of course symbolically (and literally) appropriate when it comes to surgery.

I'm not sure exactly how it worked for the chemists who worked on Boyfriend, but let's take a look at how it worked in The Thing With Two Heads.

You see, unlike in one of my other favorite horror flick memories involving heads and grafting. I won't say the title here, but fans love quoting this exchange:

Girl's head in petri dish: Don't tell me, I've been in a terrible accident, and I've lost my legs. Mad Scientist Boyfriend: No, it's worse; much, much worse.

But I digress. In The Thing With Two Heads, Ray Milland's head (okay, his CHARACTER's head) gets grafted onto another body. Rosie Greer's body. In the ways of memory and time and mental processing, I forget all about the important civics lesson the movie intended to impart. (Milland's character was an SOB bigot who wanted to live longer, and needed to learn to get along.) Instead, sunny side of the street
child that I was, I ended up remembering only the image of the two as one. In still frames, except for the moment when Milland first sees the other head growing in the mirror. Somehow, I split off that movie (a sort of Twilight Zone episode in my weak mental sorting) from "the other" movie, the part that happens after Rosie's head becomes full size. Which is a faint awareness stored way back behind The Defiant Ones, and has overtones of learning to get along.

I share this with you, because at some point in the history of this blog, I had to reveal just how faulty and meandering my collective awareness can be. Mind you, there is a certain logic to be found, even when not obvious. But, nonetheless, since I usually review/think of perfume in context and not as a series of notes in my nose, well...fair and complete disclosure.

Anyway, The Thing With Two Heads involves putting two personalities into one vessel, as it were. Which is how I came to think of it when imagining how I would review Boyfriend.

What's that you say? I have not yet reviewed Boyfriend?

Right. Okay, first start with what I said up there about pleasant woody vanilla. As it turns out, the "boyfriend" part doesn't always darken my doorway; sometimes, it's straight to the heart of the matter. Whether or not the boyfriend appears, the girl with wood is a consistent thing, and once she arrives, that's what you've got until it's over. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Sometimes I get a hint of chemical-ness (this is where I suspect the affordability comes in), and nothing about the vanilla or the wood is notable. BUT. Hey. It's okay. And given that I prefer my vanilla not too sweet, when I'm wanting to wear some, I appreciate the woody aspect.

It is about here that I believe it is appropriate to note that it would seem Kate didn't really need that boyfriend after all. Just a reminder that she had one/could have one. And then go use her own wood.

Ba DUM bum!

By the way, the body butter is quite nice. Works pretty darn well as a product, and has the nicest parts of the vanilla wood without the hint of chemical.

It is here that I will say that on the Thing With Two Heads scale, this one works in reverse motion. The one head disappears, instead of growing.

**
By the way, the body butter is quite nice. Works pretty darn well as a product, and has the nicest parts of the vanilla wood without the hint of chemical.

*
Also by the way, if you want a real mash-up, where both heads have equal weight, that would be Jose Eisenberg J'ose. No, not Jai J'Ose. Eisenberg J'ose. I talked about it here. Turns out, in retrospect, it was ahead of its time. (Get it? It was aHEAD of it's time??? Ahhhhhhhhhhahaha.)

image of grafting for asexual reproduction from TutorVista dot com.

image of Rosie Grier and Ray Milland challenging even the tailors at Men's Big & Tall from Badass Reviews, which proved itself to be just where I should borrow my image because not only did I entirely enjoy discovering the blog in general, this particular entry includes the movie poster (totally awesome, please go see) but the Burt Reynolds Cosmo centerfold which caused one of the longest threads of discussion I've ever seen among some perfume-loving Facebook friends recently. In fact, I so enjoyed finding this level-headed review of the movie and its director that I forgive them for clearing the cobwebs in my mind and reminding me what the film really was. Because that scene on the motorcycle with the mannequin head was worth remembering, and it came back full chortle, erm, throttle.

Sweeping generalizations

2011-04-25T10:15:00.000-05:00

I started my day by sweeping. Outside. An activity which here in America was often depicted as the bailiwick of immigrant women who had trouble speaking English and a penchant for wearing housecoats all day.

There is a threat of rain, and I figured it would be a good idea to gather me maple buds while I may, before they were all washed toward the patio drain, leading to a clog and the creation of a sort of wading pool inhabited by metal furniture and a firepit.

I also enjoy being outside. It is spring, for realz. A chance to breathe fresh air, listen to the birds, redirect the energies I would rather be putting into the garden (it is still EARLY spring around here). And, quite frankly, a chance to avoid sitting syndrome, a malady to which I fear I have become quite prone in this the most recent act of my life.

So I swept. I swept, and I felt a callous building. I swept, and I thought. I swept, and a pile slowly gathered. I thought about big ideas, about the second half of life. I swept. I thought about...nothing. I swept, and I sniffed Ineke's Field Notes from Paris on my wrist. I swept. And I swept. And I swept.

And I came up with an idea for a post.

Care to come sit?

***
Why Field Notes From Paris this morning? Because a friend sent it to me, as an expression of something she thought I might like. Which made me eyeball Field Notes in a different light. "Ah, creature; someone else knows you, and based on what we've gleaned of each other's nose preferences, thinks I would, too. Hmmm." Now I had stereoscopic vision: in the one frame, an assembly of my previous impressions, which were a mix of yes no intrigued ultimately not worth a full bottle. In the other frame, a swirling of potential reasons why the matchmaking review set me up on a date with this one.

**
Shhwwwipsh. Shhwwwipsh. Shht sssht. Shhwwwwwwipsh.

I swept. I sniffed the Ineke on my wrist. I thought about activities that don't bring us information or data to process, "simple tasks." The kind of thing that in years past I might have done to music. Aha! To music! Could I be providing my mind with background noise, a low demand but still processable track to attend to while gathering ground bits from various locations and assembling them in one area? Was "listening to" a scent akin to listening to...a symphony? a pop tune? a concerto? Perdido, as performed at the Newport Jazz Festival? Perdido, as performed to meet the time constraints of a recording? Was it right to limit it to one tune? But it had to be, right, because one perfume was but one presentation, even if it had multiple acts in its development? Is a symphony to easy, too snooty an approach to thinking of multiple acts? Maybe a mix tape is more appropriate?

The answer, of course, was "all of the above." Depending on the scent.

What I had on my wrist was Ineke Field Notes in Paris.

Instead of making a musical connection, my brain headed to the language of 'fume. And not in a thoughtful way, either. "Masculine," said the voice in my head. Sssssht. Sssssht. SHHWIPSH.

Well, drat. So much for deep insight. But, yeah, once I process the gentle tobacco that first hits me, the whole thing seems rather...linear. Pleasant, mind you. But linear. Like sitting alongside a channel to have a beverage in a tight space. The view is pleasant enough, and you are enjoying yourself. Your eyes feel happy. But you are essentially drinking one thing, and you cannot adjust the parameters of your sliver of a view. With the exception of the occasional glint of light (something does sparkle in FNFP every now and then--citrus?--and occasionally something else flits by), what you have is...that.

Shhwwwwipsssh. Shht. It is nice, mind you, that. There's an advantage in calming down monkey mind. Shhhwwipsssh. Shhhwipppssssh.

*
Later, after I came inside, and grabbed my camera so I could grab a picture to illustrate the post, and ran for the phone which was ringing, and reintroduced a little noise to my meditation, I heard the word "masculine" cross my brain again. And I thought "Aha! Caron masculine...yes! Third Man!!" And made note of the moment so I would write about it, and ran to gather my decant bottle of 3º Homme that another friend sent me back at the start of my descent, spritzed the opposite wrist the the nominative* masculine, and came back to my computer. With relief, I realized I am not crazy. They are not the same, this Field Notes and this Man Who Came After One and Two, but they both smoke. They both roll in a flower. The both don't play out so much as sit with you, but in a playful mood.

They do kinda smell the same, in other words, and in the same way. The Caron is sweeter. I'd pick Ineke for warmer weather, if choosing between the two, because the Caron sweetness might be to cloying in heat and humidity.

~~
As you can see, I've gone from empty mind to busy brain all of a morning, and we're not halfway to noon yet. But I needed that time with the broom as much as I relished the firings of the brain as it sought new ways to say "this reminds me of...".

Which, in the way of a sweeping generalization that says "these scents are masculines," is a metaphorically generalizing way of saying "Sorry I've been gone, but I needed that."

Too much input. Too much sitput.

Not that anything is fixed. But I think I've figured out a way to navigate the rhythms of the current set of stuff.

The nice thing about the Ineke is that it reflects that idea of stasis and change all at once. Modestly.

Very modestly. But there.

Ssssswwwwipppfffh.

"Secret of Chanel No. 5" Interview (FYI)

2011-03-22T10:28:00.000-05:00

Will be posting this link as an addendum to our Weekend Book Club discussion, but thought I'd pass along this interview with Tilar Mazzeo from The Sisterhood blog.

Anti-semitism is discussed, and reference is made to research that suggests "we like scents that highlight [...] the 'scent' of our immune systems"--I believe she is referring to research chatted about in perfume bloggery as "the sweaty t-shirt study."

Green, of course

2011-03-17T08:20:00.002-05:00

I'd complain about what they do to fresh water around these parts on Saint Patrick's Day, but pouring a bunch of green dye in the river ain't the half of this particular waterway's story. I mean, it's been a dumping canal for the stockyards, and they managed to make it flow backwards, among other things.

I won't even start carping about that Asian fish. Given the holiday, I suppose I could start *harping,* but as I wouldn't be using a lyre, and likelihood of being lyrical is low, I'll skirt that harangue.

If I'm lucky, tomorrow I'll skirt around the hungover as well. So many "honorary Irish," so many green gills.

***
Yesterday, I took some batting practice for the wearin' o' the green. I put on Gap Grass lotion, then generously spritzed (two times! one arm!!) some Martin Mariegla Untitled. Guess what? Very nice.

That Martin Mariegla is an interesting creature; it manages to infuse galbanum--good old dry cool wind, hint of cigarette ash tray galbanum--with a vaguely resin-y sweetness that immediately said "add me to your green galbanum line-up, oh she who loves it so." And the pairing of it with Gap Grass made a sort of complimentary harmony, seeing as Gap Grass manages to sweeten up green grass without needing to cut it down and turn it into hay.

Yup, it was a very "nice" green. In the same way the "Irish Holiday" has been mangled into something that hyperfocuses on one story from an often turbulent a complex island, one story which has evolved into a vague tale of a sort of benevolent skinny Santa Claus who lifted his rood and walked all the snakes to the shore where they magically forever went away.

But--and here I raise my hand against the force of fierce edgy perfumistas--I do find that pleasantries are often, well, pleasant. Sometimes we need to sidle up to a challenge like galbanum, serve our dark brew with a dab of honey, put caramelized onions on the cooked bitter greens, whatever, to help adjust to the taste. I'm okay with that. I'd say that Untitled makes a good gateway galbanum drug.

And a fitting way to wear the green, happy cleaned up American style. You know, kind of like Saint Patrick used a shamrock to get across the idea of the holy trinity.

image of the Chicago River from Chicagoland Real Estate Forum

Do overs, awakenings, and fresh whallomps

2011-03-16T12:13:00.000-05:00

It's happened a few times in the past week. Been plonked down into a fresh look at things, musical style.

The other evening, walking out of a restaurant, hearing The Beatles "The End," right as the "...and in the end..." began. This morning, hearing Bach "Air" Orchestral Suite #3.

I cried. Both times.

At this point, what you might like to know about me is whether or not I am a weeper. Of people who know me, the answer would vary. Some know me as a rather emotional sort (what was someone said...a "raw nerve"?) Others think of me as the ultimate Stay Calm and Carry On sort (what did someone else say..."all head, no heart"?) The truth encompasses both. But this is not about my personal truth.

Because this isn't about whether or not I'm an emotional nutcase, or the descendent of that guy who fainted when he heard the first chord of "Rite of Spring." (Is that the story? Somebody remind me what I'm thinking of.) What this is about is the astounding power of the human mind to find itself looking at something familiar, familiar to the point of having background noise, a cliche, dismissed, even...and discovering that for some reason, it still has the power to whammy.

When it comes to music, I find this power can be experienced three ways:

1) It's as if I never heard it before, and am back to something raw and primary;
2) It's as if I never heard it this way before, that somehow the life I've lived since first being introduced has circled me around to some sort of fresh yet now full of depth of understanding "a-ha";
3) I am sitting inside a collection of musicians playing a piece and the literal physical experience of the music (oh, those thrumming vibrations, ohhh, those harmonics, oh, the way we're playing together and the way this line is coming together) turns into an emotional/psychological reverberation that is raw, primary, and ahhhh aha all at once.

There are other arts, other life experiences that can be familiar and yet gob-smackingly profound. To Kill a Mockingbird. The opening to Wings of Desire, or the scene in Murnau's Sunrise where the husband realizes he really does love his wife. One human quietly reaching for another's hand, no eye contact required. The smell of lilacs in the spring. Feeling the breeze across the lake on your bare skin. Calvin & Hobbes. Toast.

**
This phenomenon I am trying to grasp is not to be confused with the concept of a do-over, which anybody who has spent time in playground games or sandlot sports well knows. Something goes awry, and the gathered throng has a sort of collective ruling that, yes, somehow Universal Force was unjust or somebody acted against an unwritten but understood rule or the neighbor's dog grabbing the ball and running back home justifies something that is neither an erasure nor an elision of time, but a second attempt, with the first being struck from the record. A la "the jury will disregard those remarks."

**
Nor is this to be confused with an awakening, where you feel like for the first time you are fully able to apply your senses and understand something, realizing you never really got it before. Granted, there is a kinship between an awakening and the second of my conditions, wherein you have a fresh and fuller or different view/experience. But in an awakening, you realize you never got it before. In a fresh whallomp, you realize you are getting it again--perhaps with a new angle--but still with that knowledge that you have been in that spot before. And that you have been given the gift of the whallomp without taking away the gift of your past.

Fresh whallomps require the simultaneous knowledge of prior and current, even as the current seems entirely new.

In perfume parlance, my recent happy dance with Mitsouko was an awakening. My relationship with Chamade or Bois Blond or No. 19 involves fresh whallomps.

**
I love being whallomped. Okay, so maybe not always right as it is occurring, seeing I prefer being reserved when in the company of strangers, and having tears descend out of the blue in what might seem to be an inexplicable and alarmingly precipitous way makes me at least as uncomfortable as any casual observer might be. But I love that humans have this gift, this gift to both have a past and a powerful present that all at once suggests the ability to relish beauty and the opportunity for renewal, to adjust and/or amend our understandings.

Which I've obviously been tracing as a principle in my perfume journey. But is best recognized as a theme in my general journey. I hope that you have it in yours.

I'm still trying to come up with a good word for what I am trying to describe here. Rounded up and being held in the corral for consideration are gems and commoners such as gobsmacked, surprised, astonished, ambushed, thunderstruck, overwhelmed, awed. Thunderstruck and gobsmacked keep rising to the top, but how to get in the sense of wonder and awe? It's a "fresh whallomp" for posting purposes, but if you have ideas, please share. Along with steering me toward the dude who fainted at the beauty of a single chord.

Morphing

2011-03-13T10:19:00.002-05:00

Frozen in the garden trug a few weeks back
When reading the runes, the "ice" symbol represents "the element to which all things must return before they can change"

I've been on a perfume purchasing hiatus for a while. I go on them from time to time, for one reason or another or some combination thereof. The most common themes are: 1) Health, 2) Budget, 3) Nose/Brain fatigue. And by fatigue, I don't really mean being twisted dry from too much smelling -- though that did happen a couple of times. I mean more that I am done with the input portion of my {now recognized as} cyclical pattern...that it is time to either ponder, or just let things lie fallow for a while.

It's a combination of thinking patterns (sometimes described as "creative," sometimes just "proceessing") and physical patterns (migraineurs know full well there are times when certain sensory inputs are a Do Not Enter zone of high danger). To tell you the truth, I don't mind. Many passions and interests in my life have involved nearly manic hunting/gathering periods, followed by intense exploration, followed by thinkings, followed by time off. (Or an overlapping progressing more or less following that pattern.) Filmmaking, for example, is structured that way: pre-production is the hunting and gathering, production is a crazy intense exploration/application time, editing is thinking/application, and then you are done. So done. So quiet, after all of those people and all of that noise and all of that thinking. Teaching, too, runs that way with me: creating and preparing a class is the hunting gathering, going through the semester and guiding/leading is the exploration (because any good teacher knows you aren't simply delivering information, you are ready to process and learn based on feedback from students, whether the learning is about the subject or your own teaching methods), and then the evaluation of the "products" the students come up with at the end of the class.

Not to flog a prone horse, but I could build similar cases for gardening and the never ending process of child rearing. And those are all longitudinal...gardening, filmmaking, teaching, child rearing, they've all played and replayed the cycle over time. There are other things, like my passion for cooking, that had one major cycle and has been on a slow simmer with occasional flare ups ever since, or my interest in antiques, or or or...a whole slew of stuff that involved One Big Dance and has since simply been folded into the repertoire, revisited from time to time.

I'll figure out how to categorize my music playing over this paradigm later.

So while the third thing I listed, budget, is an external reality that affects purchased acquisitions, it is really just that: An external factor. Sure, if I had a more generous budget...which means at times simply having a budget for it...I'd probably acquire more perfume things. More splits, more venerated discontinueds, more wacky explorations into the unknown. But the fact of the matter is, I'd build a back catalogue. I already have one of a sort; it's not nearly as extensive as what some of us perfume people have amassed, but I'd be deceitful if I didn't acknowledge that the typical consumer would check out what I could sniff at any given moment and cock their head sideways and adopt one or more looks from a list that includes incredulous, suspicious, pitying, evaluative, and pondering intervention.

Who knew there would be a day when I use my piles of books as a shield, a diversion, a way to deflect possible condemnation? As if there are more respectable things to hunt and gather...which to be honest, I think there are, in a public perception sense...I mean, folks reveal their libraries, their recorded music collection, their Lladro figurines, their orchids. Funny, isn't it, that in some households, Beanie Babies went on proud display, but meanwhile you'd have to dig around to find my Intoxification, my back up bottle of Black Cashmere, my boxes of splits and decants?

But I digress. Somewhat.

And somehow, I wanted to get to Parfumerie Generale Aomassai.

Right! So, I've been on a triple threat smelling/purchasing/thinking hiatus. Mmmmm...let me clarify the thinking part. I've not been thinking about perfume on the "smells like" level for a few weeks. Not directly, not metaphorically. I've been thinking about perfume occasionally, and wearing it occasionally, but not actively, if that makes sense. Not with the heightened consciousness of taking in something new, not with the extra awareness I often like to apply to an "old friend" to see if things are the same or changed in our relationship. So I've been low on perfume reviews. (What? What's that chuckling?? Oh, right; I'm never much one for a straight up review. But they did used to happen more regularly.)

A couple of days ago, I got my first "new" scents in over two months. (What? What's that chuckling? A non-perfume person happens to be reading, and that strikes them as a somewhat silly sentence? Yes, I understand. But this is the world of perfume. Try to imagine yourself without a new book, a new movie, or heck, a new foodstuff, or a fresh skein of yarn, to explore for nearly a whole meteorological season. It's kind of like that. Non-tragic, but notable.) Splits of Parfumerie Generale Aomassai, Eau d'Italie Baume de Doge, and Caron Coup de Fouet.

I can nutshell the second and third for the moment: Coup de Fouet, the edc version of Poivre, is just how I like a carnation delivered: spicy, with depth...in this case the depth is provided by a woody creamy base, but being an edc, not a dense chewy one. Early in the wearing it reminds me a bit of an old chewing gum--Beeman's? the clove gum? something on my grandfather's desk. Anyway, a nice way to blend light delivery with serious notes.

Flowers from Sicily, found on James Hull's Italy Photo Blog

Baume de Doge also takes me to something food-related, but in this case, a fine execution of what on the surface would be a simple cake. I have to go for cake and not cookie because it is not dense like shortbread...it's lighter, airer, like something that would have "crumb"...but still has enough density that I don't want to go to cocktails. Though come to think of it, I'd like a cocktail version of this on a warm spring day. BUT (getting back on track), the cake I'm thinking of is a vanilla with orange zest and a shot of Fiori di Sicilia. The sprayer is broken on my decant, and I need to fix that in order to see if I get more development like Kevin at NST does. I'll come back.

But the whomper here, the magic morpher that entered my life just as I was thinking "hey, I haven't met a good morpher in a while"--which I happened to think while wearing my beloved Chamade during the period of not thinking, one of the uber-morphers in my playbook--the crazy morphing something from Parfumerie General, Aomassai.

Unlike Chamade, which is pretty and then stunningly beautiful, Aomassai is intriguing but difficult, then nearly ugly, then a small fugue of those two plus a third, kindly smell personality. The burnt caramel opening is one of those things that triggers the "check the oven!" danger reflex, but also pulls me in to sniff it again. And again. Is it burnt badly or not? Then some chocolate thing, not sweet, starts weaving through. Then sweet somewhat threatens, then the not sweet chocolate tones it down, then you worry about calling the fire department again.

And that's just the first round.

Then you get placed in some sort of grass hut, it's kind of damp, and you're pretty sure it's started to molder. It's interesting, but like the first round, you don't know that you really want to be here. In fact, you start realizing that for all the challenges of the first round, this second act could possibly suffocate you if this is going to be where you are left. Because you might dare visit that grass hut, you might wear that wet basket on your head, but you would never plan on carrying through the rest of the day that way.

For me, thankfully, then comes a breath of air. Of course, whatever was cooking in the oven comes wafting back through (it was at this point I realized I maybe had smelled burnt hazelnuts earlier on, which is a horrible smell, btw, but never came fully through), but at this point, it's more than okay. And, if you are patient and wait for it, you'll live through a fugue of where you've been and what is coming and then finally settle in a zone that is comfort scent. Yes, intelligent, intriguing comfort scent, perhaps held cozy all the more so for the earlier tussling. Now the caramel is just toasted, but has depth from the spices, the cocoa, the wood...and the tussling.

So there you have it. I've been on a perfume hiatus, and actually still kind of feel like I'm yawning and stretching and getting ready for whatever is coming next. But then I blindsided you (and myself) with a trio of new smells.

You go deep, you come out. Cycles.

first photo is author's own
fiori di sicilia from the King Arthur online catalog

Check out Wikipedia's disambiguation page on Morphology -- linguistics, astronomy, math, rivers, more. It's a fun launching pad for hunting and gathering. Food for thought in terms of how things change. And a bit of a chuckle...would that I could disambiguate myself...

You go right ahead and take that tone with me: Caron L'Accord Code 119

2011-03-09T02:05:00.009-06:00

The cello, played well, is one of my favorite musical instruments. Okay, fine, that's almost an unnecessary equivocation; I mean, how many instruments do you enjoy when poorly played? I point that out, though, because while almost every one of my favorite instruments in terms of sound requires being played "well," there is an exception: the sound of a simple flute. (As in a pan, or three holed wooden.) But my trinity of saxophone, cello, and guitar? No hackers, please.

Any one of those, played the right way, is capable of seducing me. Flat out. Because if you can play it well, a) you've got talent (an intrigue), b) you've got expression (an intrigue), c) and your instrument is doing something to me that is beyond my brain (an entanglement). And that something beyond my brain involves the resonance of the sound, the aspect of the tone, the comfort of the register...high enough to perhaps modulate and perhaps "say" things, but low enough to simply go there. As if the sounding board is in me. Harmonic vibrations and all.

In the case of the cello, this is a significant trick. Drag horsehair across a string, and you are likely to produce a sound whose effect is just shy of nails on a chalkboard. (Sit down already if that sound doesn't bother you. It sends shivers down my spine even as it rakes bony fingers up my back skin, and makes my innards cringe, and my head try to close the security shutters. It is BAD.) Then there's the issue of playing in tune. Forget rhythm and expression for the moment. What I'm pointing out here is that the same case of wood that can be the instrument of seduction can also be an instrument of torture.

photo by Tristen K

In other words, there is the ability to use the power of those f-holes for good or for evil. (By which I assign the sexual consorting to "good" and the fleeing from the room in distress as "evil," so if for some reason your moral code switched that around, please adjust your dial.)

I think it's rather the same when you threaten to assemble some rose, some blackberry, and a "vanilla/heliotrope/musk base." Were I to see these notes, with the accompanying phrase, I'd turn and hightail it to the next county. Because my assumption would be the net effect would be evil. (Which in this moment is NOT a good thing.)

Fortunately, nobody told me what was in L'Accord (Code 119) when I first smelled it. And I was (and likely still am) too much of a rube to know. Therefore, I was able to experience it as Rostropovich behind the cello, and not a drunken frat boy who once mock-played a fiddle in a production of Oklahoma.

Sure, say it has fruit and flower. But say they are presented dusty, and somewhat darkly. Allow that while it is rather dense, it will not suffocate. Point out there is a rasp throughout that will never, ever let it be treacly. Say that the musks, if there be musks, are not those white things that are detergenting so many perfumes lately. They are the dusk of musks, the ones that start to reach down into the animal register without getting base {ha ha! a pun!!} and make sure there is a bountiful harmonic range. Make sure that it is made clear that the patch is the kind of patch that makes Coromandel "al dente" but doesn't suggest a head shop.

Make sure, in other words, to say that Richard Fraysse has used his power for good, and not for evil.

Because me, who shies away from patch, who generally likes vanilla dry or bourbon-y, who can handle musk only in judicious amounts, who does indeed like "amber" (but finds that to be a term with range), who can find jasmine piercing and rose cloying, is happy when I wear this. Musically, L'Accord has the register of an alto blended with a tenor, the warmth of the wood (with the addition of lower registers in its resonance), the tension of the vibrating string that doesn't irritate but rather somehow stirs even as you tacitly sit and take in the whole.

***
If you were here yesterday, you know that in the interest of self-preservation, I just spent nearly a week without perfume. I am not one inclined to wear perfume when ill; definitely not for certain types of ill. Given my old relationship with perfume, whenever I return from a scent-free period, I am loathe to start with a "challenge." It occured to me that the raspy chewy goodness of L'Accord might be a bit much to launch into. But I had no choice. I needed to revisit, to make sure I didn't miss anything. So, with a bit of a wince, and a pair of nostrils ready to close up, I spritzed.

Happy.

Like meeting up with an old friend and picking up after a long interim had passed. Perhaps on your way to meet them, you worry whether things will still be comfortable, maybe even consider the possibility you will no longer enjoy their company. But once you get there, no awkwardness at all. You pick up where you left off, and immediately slip into a comfortable zone.

**
So that's what I got: a full package of pleasing texture (raspy bits over chewiness) and plush depth (layers, such layers), delivered in the right register. I'm co-posting with Marina over at Perfume Smellin' Things today, so if you haven't been there yet, go take a look and see what she has to say about Caron's L'Accord and fruity florals.

I hold her accountable for that picture, by the way. I went off searching for a sensuous, artful, loving picture of a cello, one which centered around the bridge, allowing you to feel the density and follow the grain of the wood, notice the tension on the strings, sense the frail aspects of each individual horsehair in the bow but see how together they formed something which would goad the string into making sound. A visual representation of that idea of pulling together illogical ingredients for a pleasing result.

I ended up with a scantily clad willowy brunette draped around a centaur cello. Somehow, it seemed right.

What's that? I can't hold Marina accountable for my dip into those prurient waters? Fine. I'll blame the remaining waft of L'Accord. Which, by the way, lasts and lasts....*ahem.* Right. As I was saying...not Marina's fault. But I'm still holding her feet to the fire for a few perfume purchases I've made over the years.

Tempus Fugit (but not from A to B)

2011-03-08T13:33:00.002-06:00

That there is the hyacinth I introduced you to a few weeks ago. This picture was taken today, March 8. It started popping the flower stalk a few days ago, and every time a new one of those flower "bubbles" opens, a fresh burst of hyacinth smell gently wafts out. Not far, mind you, but I'm more than happy to bring my nose to the vase.

It's particularly pleasant to be able to do so after nearly a week of scent-free living. Well, seeing as one can't really live scent-free, let's call it "scent-avoidant" living. As in, steering clear of purposely applied fragrances, and known tummy rumblers like the TJ's chili my spouse is so fond of, certain fried foods, and pet incidents.

My own child and his variation of The Thing That Passed Through? Well, I'm a parent. Can't really avoid that.

Anyway, time moves on. Time. As in "Time is the thing that keeps everything from happening at once," which someone posted on Facebook today. Or as in the thing you must endure to finally experience the smell of a hyacinth. The thing that heals all wounds. The thing that allows you to get a glimpse of how Mitsouko could be beautiful. The thing that has etched my face with charming character when I smile or puzzle to comprehend something. The thing the boy wanted to see fly when he threw his alarm clock out the window.

It's been a week since I've written here. Not my intent.

***
Yesterday was Pulaski Day in Chicago and portions of its environs. Growing up in Detroit, I was aware of the contributions of one Taddeus Kosciuszko, because there is a big honking stature of him charging on horseback there. Wikipedia tells me that "in Poland, every major town has a street or square named for him." An engineer who became friends with Jefferson, rebuilt forts, was entrusted by Washington to rebuild West Point, and served the USA for seven years, Kosciuszko ultimately dedicated his estate for purchasing the freedom of slaves. Kosciuszko was difficult to spell, but easy to become a fan of.

I moved to Chicago, and learned schools and city offices closed because of another Polish national who fought in the Revolutionary War, Casimir Pulaski. What with no spelling challenge and free time to share with friends, it took me a while to motivate and dig up just what Pulaski did to merit such recognition.

At the oversimplified expense of a guy who seems to have served our country nobly, I've picked up that he was a Polish noble who fought the Russians who then came over here and took a hit of grapeshot.

And therefore shares company with the pirate known as Black Bart.

The mind reels at the potential for local political humor, but I'm going to bring it back to perfume. Or at least smelling. Believe it or not.

**

So, thanks to Not Black Bart Pulaski, much of my local universe has the day off. Including Younger Son. I decide that after last week -- a Black Week in our health indeed -- we would be well served to get fresh air and stroll the grounds of the Botanic Garden. The fact that we are at the 42nd parallel, more or less, and that winter and spring are still playing a mean game of chicken does not daunt me. Time to move. Time to find that evidence of spring's inevitable arrival I saw during the near 50ºF outburst last Friday.

It was near freezing. And terribly grey. So the air was fresh, but pretty pictures were hard to come by. As was evidence of the impending turn of the earth. Time, more time, required.

We slogged forth, nonetheless.

It was too cold to catch a whiff of that wonderful humus and dirt smell that a certain kind of spring day carries. Too cold even to smell the kind of moist air that says "spring." So we walked, and took pictures, and I spent a little time observing the thing that garden landscapers know: Nature doesn't work in boxes, and neither should you. Amorphous shapes, curves...phi.

There was something really quite wonderful about remembering that. Because I had just "lost" a week of time. And was feeling a little lost myself as a result. Usually I'm pretty good at rolling with it. But this was a day when I really, really, really, could have used a dose of spring. I thought.

What I was given was the reminder that when given time, Nature works in contours, not straight edges. And that ended up being being a fine gift indeed.

Now I'll show you the snowdrops.

Because I remembered that, when given the choice, I don't go for the straight edges anyway. I remember that, as I've been saying, spring will come, but you've got to give it time. So the snowdrops were a delight, but it was important to remember time and contours first.

Tomorrow, back to perfume. Marina and I are going to give some thoughts on L'Accord (Code 119). And it will be just about the right moment to follow the curve back to sniffery.

Meanwhile, I'm still poring over garden catalogs. Going to pick out a grapevine to plant. You know--so that every time I see a bunch hanging, I can nod to Black Bart and Casimir.

all photos are author's own

The Mind Moves in Mitzterious Ways

2011-03-01T11:55:00.002-06:00

I knew this day would come.

I knew it from the first. I felt it, I recognized the direction, if not all the contours, of the path, and that eventually, I would get to the destination, even though from the first, I felt no need to go there.

In fact, it felt like I did not WANT to go there.

Yet, here I am. Mitsouko, I found my way to you.

I WAS A HATER
Should any of you run into me on the trails of the interwebs, or if you have been a regular visitor to me here, you will know this: about two years ago, I decided life was too short to hide certain truths. I outed myself. I do not like Mitsouko, I said. The more I said it, the louder I got. It is screechy. It has fangs and claws, and I do not mean that in a good way. The peach kills me. This one is a mean spirit with tough skin. Yes, I said those kinds of things. And more.

Though sometimes I would just raise my hand, meekly, and say "me...over here...I, erm, haven't found the love." Because part of me is Sally Field, afraid that you might not really like me. And while I refused to drink the KoolAid, I knew there were those out there who said "if you don't love Mitsouko, then you really aren't into perfume." Perfumista card revocation, all that stuff and nonsense.

I don't buy it for a minute. But you can feel the attitude, even when not expressed. "How in the world can you not LOVE it?" your super attenuated ears hear thought, but not spoken.

I'll tell you how. A headache THIS BIG how.

But that was then. This is now.

THE REVEAL

Meet Ms. Right, Mitsouko edc, in the watch bottle with the gold plastic cap. According to a fantastic website with pictures and everything that I must have found on a day not available in my browser history and I didn't bookmark and I will search and find and replace this italics with eventually, that means it was manufactured sometime in the 1970's. Which probably has a lot to do with what I am about to describe, given that oakmoss was still wantonly harvested and stuffed into a variety of perfumes.

Oakmoss. I hate that it is endangered. I appreciate that it is protected. It is, unfortunately, a common thread among many of my favorite perfumes--in fact, given that I am a chypre fan in general, it is nearly unavoidable.

Well, it WAS unavoidable. Until overharvesting and allergies and IFRA came along. Shoot. Actually, shoot me twice; another favorite note? Sandalwood. Mysore, cruelly overharvested sandalwood. Gotta love the universe's cruel twists on the grown up who started life as a passionate fan of Ranger Rick and has in general followed a predictable trajectory on things involving flora and fauna.

But I digress. Here's the real story, the story of how patience, and a bottle of naproxen sodium, helped me find my way.

THE WAY IN

I've always known that I would *likely* find a door into Mitsouko. I mean, if it is so bleeping iconic to a range of noses, then, well, something must be going on. But I felt no need to push the issue, not hard. There were so many other things to discover and to love that Ms. Mitz could just sit over there with her fawning dance partners and I could stay on my side of the hall and we'd twirl around each other as circumstance allowed.

Because I am patient, and somewhat stubborn, I collected a little of this and that of the Mitz along the way. An edp, relative modern vintage. A vial of vintage parfum. A decant of a vintage parfum de toilette. Hell...I'll go ahead and 'fess up now...I even have a full size edp of the next to last formulation, because I got it for less than $30 and knew full well I could place it in a foster home if I eventually decided to cease all hope. But nothing did it. Screeeeeeech. BONK. Thwackomp. Nasty old lady. Every blasted time.

I started creating iambic feet for "cursed persicol"; I lambasted the supersaturation of what was probably a worthy chypre with something that didn't toll my end, didn't chime it, but rang it in with a triangle and a gong. It was my first and generally only example of a raspy perfume that did not please, of something that presented as a low alto but had the effect of an off-key soprano. The powerful, belty kind, not the warbly Jeannette MacDonald kind.

Am I clear about how Mitsouko and I have gotten along?

Okay, good. Now dig this. I ordered a full bottle (that's right, now going to be my second full volume of something that, no matter what the iteration, has not played nice with me) of Eau de Cologne. Why? I played the odds. The package suggested vintage, and I called the vendor and confirmed the pictured item reflected the something I was ordering. I knew that at the price I was getting it for, I could turn around and re-sell it to one of those fawning fans for the same price, and we'd both be happy. And because...well...I realized I had never owned one of those iconic Guerlain watch bottles. Fine, I admit it. It was a purchase that could easily be covered, egged on by a little bit of collector syndrome, and very little logic when it comes to love for what was inside.

Respect, though. It had my respect.

What I didn't know it had was smooth. That's right. Smoooooooth. I opened this bottle a week ago, put some on my skin, and...sonofagun. No screech. No nasty raspy bits. Just smooth, moderately amplified green. With that peach, but this time the fruit didn't have a billy club. In fact, the fruit felt a little more diffuse, even while behaving a tad more citrusy. It was a layer that didn't clog the pores of the rest of the composition; it rested somewhere on top and gently meshed with but not behaved like a loudmouth. Nor, in fact, did any of it.

Ms. Mitz had become a very cozy blanket. Unh-hunh. I said cozy. I said blanket. As in something I wore, but didn't wear me. As in a something that might be a particular type of blanket (this one more on the wool side, but not itchy), but chosen by me, and which then becomes a part of my ensemble. A Woolrich cloak, or a serape.

My friends, I found the secret door.

LABYRINTHS

Sometimes I think of a perfume I can't wrap my head around as something I just have not discovered my own key to. I allow myself the possibility that I still might not like it in the end, but I might understand it. And respect it.

With notes, I have the same approach, but have the advantage of a little more flexibility. Because notes can be presented in different ways, in terms of emphasis and co-notes and the hand of the perfumer, so there I am finding my way into a labyrinth. Which opening is it going to be that lets me walk around and enjoy myself? Vetiver was like that. Struck me as medicinal and/or "useful" but not attractive in a perfume. But I knew that I should take time and play with various presentations. I had to go slowly, seeing as I actually had a bit of a distaste for it at first. But one day, in one fell swoop, I found it. I set myself up with a variety of vetiver containing scents, and let myself "feel" how each one worked. First, the "trick" one let me in, then another one; perfumes that enrobed or wove vetiver with equally strong notes. Now, I kind of appreciate vetiver straight up, but it took that kind of experience to get there.

I recounted those experiences here and here.

With a specific perfume--especially a big honking monolith like Mitsouko--it's a little different. I mean, there it is. It's more about approaching it from different angles, approaching it in different moods, trying again after finding your way in to other scents, because it's not like there are a slew of presentations (sweet vs dry, up front vs hidden, etc.) to play mind games with.

Except...except the history of Mitsouko *does* allow for some variations on theme. Nearly ninety years old, its main formula has been offered in various concentrations, and like any perfume covering that span, certain adjustments have been made in the formula. PLUS, there is the issue of the oakmoss, real versus synthetic. So, unlike with certain things that came in one "batch" only (because perhaps they only existed for a brief period of time), there is potential for nuance here. The kind of nuance that says "here, this one; when it is this weight, and this emphasis on the notes, this one will work for you."

I pretty much hang my hat on that reason right there, when it comes to my truce with Mitsouko. It's this batch, the one that comes in this bottle. But I don't doubt the power of iconography, and it could be that other factors came together as well. Remember that Aliage I wore as a winter hints of spring scent? The citrus so sharply against the leather? A memory of that passed through my head as I pondered my ability to live with this Mitz. In fact, it passed through just as I was realizing that piercing peach note was still there, had never gone away, really--I was just able to see other things first this time. So maybe me wrapping my arms around Aliage conditioned them somewhat for the contours of Mitsouko.

Maybe its the oakmoss.

Maybe I just changed my tastes a little bit. (Okay, fine; a big, whomping, earth fissure of a bit.)

LESSON LEARNED

As has happened before, and will happen again, I find myself eating my words. Hence the "changed my mind" tag; been there, done that. Sheesh, I think I was just charping on (that's a harsh chirping, btw) on Victoria's blog about how I just couldn't get Mitsouko.

The full truth is not so simple, though. Because the fact of the matter is, I got brave while I was writing this. Put on a couple of my other iterations, to mark my progress with them. FAIL. Same response. Claws, headache. So, for now, the magic is only in the big round bottle. {chuckles} The one with the dunce cap on top.

My take away is the same as it is with certain people I have met and learned to enjoy limited quantities of time with. The pleasure is there to be found. You may need to be patient. Very patient. And it pleasurable company may only manifest itself under the right conditions.

But it's there. Makes you glad you remembered to respect it. But you don't have to love it, by the way. Other people already do.

I think I'm going to go hug my Chamade.

ADDENDUM 7 March 2011: There are many fine reviews of Mitsouko out there. Helg's over at Perfume Shrine is one, and I bother to add it here because I found that she posted the same week (cue Twilight Zone music), and while she talks about all sorts of interesting historical details and does some wonderful cultural readings, she also notes the different effects of various vintages, concentrations, etc. So I self-servingly note a post that supports one of my own observations, and which tickled my fancy. Besides, if per chance you haven't been there yet, chances are you should. I think you'd like it.

photo author's own

Book Discussion: The Secret of Chanel No. 5

2011-02-26T14:11:00.000-06:00

So here we are, me without my hoped for comment threading widget, and no way -- YET -- to cluster our subtopics. Because when it comes to this book, subtopics, I've got a few.

Despite the lack of fancy gadgetry, I'm going to plunge forward. If you like, when you comment, you could use a Twitter convention, and #hashtag certain discussion points, so that you can refer to them. You know, things like #CocoSexLife or #CleverMetaphors, or #AtHomeRecipes.

Unfortunately, the book's contents lead to only one of those three hashtags being applicable. I look forward to any you identify.

I propose that you first write a comment that either represents your "review" of the book, or a Major Point you wish to make about it. Then, we'll start responding to each other, and track the traffic via hashtags or simply by referencing to the idea we are responding to.

YOU ARE NOT EXPECTED TO LIKE OR DISLIKE THE BOOK. You are not required to agree with me or anyone who registers an opinion. I trust you all know how to be polite without squashing your or someone else's Good Thought.

:), the emoticon said.

We'll start with my thoughts:

I came to The Secret of Chanel No. 5 with no expectations, other than possibilities raised by the title itself. (Will this deal with formulas? With marketing strategies? With the powerful personality responsible for its success? The little known fact that Allied sympathizers found a way to hide messages inside the iconic simple square flacon?) I have not seen either of the Coco biopics, and while I've read the usual suspects when it comes to perfume history and primers and such, I far from consider myself "schooled" on the subject.

So, The Secret of Chanel No. 5 could have chosen to be a historical fiction, an industry analysis, or a written documentary of how one fragrance influenced boudoirs across geography and time. (The subtitle is "The Intimate History of the World's Most Famous Perfume," after all.)

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what to call it.

Read the preface, and the author will tell you "this is the history of the world's most seductive scent." Indeed, you'll get a hit of Chanel's orphan story, a hit on her collaboration with Ernst Beaux, a review of the flacon history, mention of the who's who of society at the given period under discussion. There is, in fact, a bag full of good data here, and this is worth reading if you are a fan of perfume or fashion.

I am just torn about how to describe how *good* a read it is.

There is an odd combination of attention to detail that veers toward pedantic and a tone that reads, well...as a tone, rather than a voice I want to follow through the wilderness. I got the distinct impression that the book was developed in chunks, and a through line was never fully developed or followed--relying on a time line to pull us from beginning to end, rather than say a single or evolving mystery that slowly unravels. (Just one of a few choices.)

Somebody commented on my Facebook page with encouragement to keep going--it gets more interesting, they said, as you get further into it. True. But not in the sense that sometimes happens with a narrative when you suddenly realize that you've become concerned with the characters involved, and must keep going to see what happens next. More in the sense that you've already spent this much time and energy in the relationship, you might as well play out the whole hand.

I don't regret having this book. But I am rather frustrated with how hard I had to work beyond the narrative to pull things together. What in the start of the book is a "signature scent" (for the House of Chanel, not for a wearer, an important distinction to point out to perfumistas what with their understanding of the word) and on the book jacket is "the smell of seduction" is at the start of Chapter 17 "an elite cultural icon and an object of mass market-appeal." Mind you, No. 5 may well be all of those things.

I just think that it was the author's job to more clearly (and entertainingly) connect the dots to show me how. By all means, go find a copy if you want various historical bits gathered in one location. Do not expect a "good read."

I have not reconciled myself to a positive review.

I will say this: As for the scent itself, if Mazzeo's theory is right, and Chanel wished to basically put into one bottle the Cisterian values of soapy cleanliness and the lush rose and jasmine content of a "O-De-Kolon" favored by the Russian aristocracy...well...let's say that in my nose, the soapy clerics totally wiped the floor in a victory over the czary flowers.

What Does Reconciliation Mean?
An accounting process used to compare two sets of records to ensure the figures are in agreement and are accurate. Reconciliation is the key process used to determine whether the money leaving an account matches the amount spent, ensuring that the two values are balanced at the end of the recording period.

- Investopedia

Reconciliation \Rec'on*cil'i*a"tion\ (-s?l'?*?"sh?n), noun [F. r['e]conciliation, L. reconciliatio.]

1. The act of reconciling, or the state of being reconciled; reconcilenment; restoration to harmony;renewal of friendship.
Reconciliation and friendship with God really form the basis of all rational and true enjoyment. --S. Miller.

2. Reduction to congruence or consistency; removal of inconsistency; harmony.

A clear and easy reconciliation of those seeming inconsistencies of Scripture. --D. Rogers.
Syn: Reconcilement; reunion; pacification; appeasement; propitiation; atonement; expiation.

- define.com

A Dress

2011-02-24T22:28:00.001-06:00

Life puts interesting things in your path. Some are objects, inherently fascinating.

Objects from family add a level of connection and investment, and in a way, responsibility for the owner.

Many times, these objects will appeal to a romantic notion of "would have, could have"--had you been alive at the right time / had the right talent / in the right place, the object could have been yours. Used by you, worn by you, admired by you.

However, some objects are removed from your sensibilities, and only your love of history, your sense of human hand, your willingness to step inside another mind, your realization that something exists in front of you that, given the right attention, will allow you not only to understand the object more, but also give you a fresh view onto yourself.

So, you dare go open up.

And find a way inside.

***

I am but one of my Nana's six granddaughters. Nana was a saver, a collector, a provisioner...not exactly a hoarder, but certainly someone who held on to things. Hence, at the end of her life, the basement of her modest two-bedroom bungalow, in which at one time there were--let's see, husband, two kids, wife of third kid, father--two kids and four adults living. Plus the eight dogs. And some cats, I think, but they were what we would call "outdoor" cats, though that distinction made not a lot of sense at the time. The house, suffice to say, was full. And much life was lived there.

The magic of being a collector, a treasurer, an appreciator of objects and artifacts, was that life as the granddaughter of this woman yielded many interesting somethings. A chunky comic book...a tea cup from the war...a woven fishing creel...a costume jewelry parure...photos. Toward the end of the ten year period over which she was slowly handing out things, I put together that she was slowly doling out to all of her granddaughters, according to a system which somewhat related to who their parent (which of her children) they descended from, but also some sense she had of what you would treasure.

I do not know why, in the end, I was chosen to get her mother's wedding dress. I had not married conventionally, I was not the daughter of her daughter, and I was among the most tomboyish of her granddaughters. I did not sew, though my other grandmother and my mother did, and perhaps that plus the fact that her mother was a seamstress played into her conclusion. Perhaps because I had cooed at the detailing of my father's baptismal gown--an object which should be noted was not again used for her son's children, or by her son's children's children.

Perhaps it was as simple as the fact that we shared favorite colors. Or somehow, in some way, the fact that I shared her husband's stubborn streak. Or maybe she had given all of the other of her mother's significant objects to the other girls, and this was what remained for me.

A wedding dress.

**

I am truly amazed at the details of the handwork. Handwork which I have never attempted, mind you, but which I learned about thanks to a treasure given to me by a friend from the basement of a house he moved into. (Once again, from the damp depths...) A turn of the century how-to book on tatting and needlework. Which also came with two pamphlets I prize to this day, "How to Dance and When to Dance" and "The Dangers of the Slave Trade in the City." But this book, this odd combination of Victorian typeface and photographs, and its details instructions on how to tat and crewel and all sorts of sub categories for making certain sorts of empty space in fabric, or how to add raised shapes.

My Nana, it turned out, liked to embroider. As did my Grandmother. My Nana was fond of the empty spaces kind of work, the stuff you would do at the edge of tea towels. My Grandmother liked the crewel work, the kind of stuff that made things bumply.

You may have inferred I learned neither.

I stare at this wedding dress, and try to understand it by the hand that made it. A hand that was not the hand of my Great Grandmother, but a dress touched by the hand of my Great Grandmother as she committed to the man that would sew back together the nipples my Nana's baby bottles, even though Nana was supposed to be too old for them, these objects that my Great Grandparents would not have had as the accoutrement of their youth.

Each generation touches something new, something old. Whether or not they are aware they are doing so.

I try to be aware.

So, because I fear too much contact from my actual hand upon this fragile, 100 year old garment, I touch it with my eyes.

I note the changes in texture, the kind of dexterity to create, the kind of feel it must have had.

I imagine the body inside, other eyes seeing, joy, apprehension, welcome. It is never me I imagine in this dress. I know that some people would. In fact, I have done so with other pieces of clothing. Part of it is the era; I never fancied myself Victorian or Edwardian.

But part of it, I think, is I feel there is someone else in that dress. Still. My Nana had stored it as her mother had, and pulled it from the crypt that was a modest bungalow's fruit and coal cellar, carefully packed away in a box. She had never fully examined it, she said. She was, from a curatorial point of view, afraid to expose it to light.

I'm trying. To examine it. To expose it to light, which is the information our eyes use.

Because, here, my eyes are my hands.

I'm trying.

It is interesting, feeling with your eyes. Putting on clothes which do not fit. Knowing that you could never be this, but someone needed to be this so that you could be here now, feeling without touching.

Yet feeling.

all photos are by and property of the author, taken while wearing blue jeans, a pashmina, and vintage Mitsouko edc. Which just this day, this very wearing, for the very first time after many many tries, makes sense. Turns out it does not screech every.single.time.

Ice at the margins

2011-02-19T08:42:00.000-06:00

There was a hint of the turn of the earth yesterday. We stood in a transition, a hard one, with collisions of sharp wind and bright sunshine, soil uncovered and ice still floating, the smell of water melting and of organic matter still thawing.

It was but one day. Winter will roar again, but Spring will poke in, then grab hold of a few spots, then eventually lay over everything.

In past years, I might have reached for Silences. I do love it when it is nearly time to literally turn the earth, when remnants of chill remain, but the soil is nearly ready to turn. For no discernible reason, I picked up Aliage instead.

Turns out it was perfect. The citrus wallops back against the greens, just like the bright nearly harsh sunshine pierced the fierce wind...and the bitter wind ended up holding its own against any hope of solar warmth.

Allowing oneself a glimpse of spring at this time of year at this latitude is not for sissies.

Blue (a musing)

2011-02-18T14:48:00.000-06:00

WARNING: No perfume today. Follow the bouncing ball. A sketch from a sketchy brain.

jeans sky mood moon sea lake yonder flu Monday language humor cheese

There we go. Cheese.

Had to take a while to get to food. Something food. That's edible. Even if that's mold I'm consuming.

"So in conclusion, {cough, look down at notes} my subjects were more willing to eat the food with the green dye than any other alteration {raise hand to point at bar graph}, and the blue food {brief pause, smile that might be a smirk flashes across face} was the least chosen."

Science fairs. Ever been to one? A sea of tri-fold upright poster boards, visible schisms between parent aided and student dependent projects, kids giving their spiel to visitors, kids bored out of their minds, kids totally distracted by their projects.

Next to talking to plants to see if they will respond to kindness (or, alternately, music), one of the most frequent themes and variations I have seen is playing with your food. Specifically, messing with the color of it to see if one's subjects can be ~~grossed out~~ influenced in terms of preference.

"BLUE: the absolute worst. I had blueberries all day. And Gatorade. Dinner was this gross blue ice cream I saw at Baskin Robbins. This was so, so gross. Most people tell me they started to worry because they were feeling sick just looking at the photos. Blueberries aside, there is nothing blue that isn't synthetic. And don't try to argue with me here. There are 30 people that each said 'let me think, I know I can think of something blue for you to eat' and I would respond with 'no, really, you can't.' [...] I hated blue day.

"Diet Sunglasses" available at Yumetai
wear them to reduce your appetite

These words from Johanna's TokyoHanna blog. Johanna's mind (and blog) wanders a lot of places; a girl after my own heart. She undertook a week of monochromatic eating, which is, of course, the polar opposite of eating across the rainbow. Nonetheless, there she was, and on the last day she was sticking with BLUE, not purple, because photography was an important element of her diary project, and the foods had to register as true blue.

Johanna was unhappy with the fact that there are not many "blue foods" to choose from in the first place. (Fortunately for us rainbow thinking eaters, we can also find other foods fertile with flavenoids, such as cabbage, kale, spinach, asparagus, lima bean, garden peas...even onions.)

Hey, while we're here in blue food, have you ever come across that helpful diet "tip" that occasionally appears in women's magazines? The one that says when trying to lose weight, blue food and blue plates are your friend? Of course, they were thinking more about our predisposition to avoid blue when it comes to food, not to the paucity of purpleness in food. They're back at the science fair.

"Try this," he said, plonking a potato shaped object onto my plate. "Go ahead; guess what that is." My eight year old self searched her developing brain. "A potato?," I ventured. He looked a little disappointed. "Wait; don't guess yet. Taste it." So I did. "A potato?" I suggested again, this time more boldly. This time, he was pleased and disappointed. "Well...yes. But don't you find it kind of mealy?"

Conversations with my grandfather often veered off into unpredictable directions, often just as much because we didn't talk all that often as the strange tacks they could take. But produce was generally predictable. And a topic of discussion every year we were both alive and capable of conversing. He grew all his vegetables in his garden. He was a man of patterns. He would plant 4/5 of the garden with known favorites, and experiment in the rest. My eighth summer was the first he first grew blue potatoes. They became a kind of in joke between us, the innovation that wasn't an innovation--he had researched; turns out some scientist in a lab hadn't created the potato, they were an honest genetic strain--but a novelty item. Because when it came down to brass tacks, they weren't the best potato, or even a good potato; they were just the purplest.

But he amused himself with them. Many years later, when his granddaughter started her first garden, there was no doubt what kind of potatoes she would grow.

And when she had trouble with the novelty item that was supposed to be "perfect for growing potatoes," but most certainly was not, she avoided getting purple in the face but managed to let loose with some blue language she learned from her gardener grandpa.

No matter / How you slice it / It's still your face / Be humane / Use / Burma-Shave

I have enjoyed the sensory writings of Michelle Krell Kydd for a few years now. Over at Glass Petal Smoke, she has written some beautiful pieces on things that smell and what smell does to us and for us. Hers was one of those blogs where postings were infrequent, but almost always gems. Then things slowed way down in 2010, and I wondered if we blogosphere attendees were losing her to other projects.

The worm turned.

She started a Twitter feed. I followed. And suddenly a mass of tweets about blue potatoes, an Oxo™ ricer, and an upcoming pie recipe. While the onslaught of Burma shave like tweets was a little onerous, the promise of something insightful or beautiful or maybe both regarding blue potatoes kept me in the game.

Finally came the recipe. And the pictures. And my first two thoughts were, I know what the science fair kids would say. And boy, is that purple. (See post here.) The flavenoid involved is apparently anthocyanin; while the Wikipedia article linked within the post explains that the "cyanin" part comes from the Greek for "blue," but you know that I am leaping across the Greek root and landing on another "cyan" word. Yup, just like those smarty pants kids would. Smirk.

Incidentally, some of those smarty pants kids would be telling me that if food is so good for you, why are there cherry pits and almonds, hmmm? Because that's where cyanide comes from, you know, Teach. Inevitable diversions into botanicals (digitalis, anyone?) and or misleading labeling (the mistake of equating "all natural" with "healthy for you," for example).

NONE of which is to suggest that the sweet potato pie recipe, which happens to be purple, and uses specific proprietary natural foods ingredients, is poisonous. I'm just laying bare the easy associations my particular brain takes when the purple potato path is opened. Also, perhaps, as additional warning that my brain can wander, even while focused. As in...

The pie recipe calls for muscovado sugar. Muscovado sugar is different from other raw sugars, like say demerara, because instead of being process via centrifuge and then having molasses re-added, it is allowed to dry in the sun. Now, you combine "dry in the sun" and "musco-" and in the background, my brain is already seeing grapes in the sun and smelling a muscat. In the foreground is the question "why not call for a specific muscovado, but go ahead and specify a particular company's prepared Graham Cracker crust?" I am disappointed to discover that my answer is related to the noise I find in Ebert's Amazon tweets. But hey, I could be wrong. And even if I was right, we all have the right to monetize as we see fit.

I miss the old posts, though, the ones that seemed to come from various paths of the heart and mind but didn't go down a highway in South Dakota toward Wall Drug.

In the interest of Science Fairs and fairness, I should point out that the pie is purple. Not blue. And I haven't made it or tasted it. Not so sure how rosy the outlook is on me actually doing so.

My grandfather met my grandmother in South Dakota. The purveyor of the blue potatoes and nearly every other thing he planted in his garden and yard used to be based in Yankton, South Dakota. Cary Grant once dangled from the face of Mount Rushmore in a movie, and in the same movie, is menaced by a crop duster. The Badlands wasn't just a movie, it's a heckuva place. I kinda feel for Cary Grant. Being lost in the Badlands would be awful. Would I rather have a purple potato, or one from Idaho, if I were lost in the Badlands? Can you stick two electrodes in a potato and power a compass?

I miss my grandfather. I miss my garden. But the snow is melting, and I know I'll be turning over the soil in a couple of months. This is the year I plan to introduce potato hills into the garden, something I haven't had since moving to the new house. I'm looking through the catalogues, trying to find the right combination of options I know will do well in my climate, and a little something to experiment with.

I like experimenting. I like it in my own life, in measure, and finding it in other places. I like seeing the excited kids at the science fair, the ones who were able to find a topic they cared about, whose boards are maybe not beautiful, but whose minds are. I like a person who says "why not?" to purple pie, and sets about making some. Like most people, I have things I like, and things I don't like.

I know a compass uses a magnetic and not electrical current. But my mind goes places. Into the wild blue yonder and back again. And again. And again.

The Straight Dope on cheese, specifically blue cheese.

Pleasures of being diverted: I found a recipe for Jack Daniel's Orange Zest butter. Kid you not. Though I suppose if ever we wanted to avoid the "appetite stimulating" spectrum of color, it would be when encountering butterfat. Ah, well. Maybe I'll pour a shot of JD and bake some blue potatoes tonight, all as a sort of half-baked homage to making the butter and the pie.

Flavenoid food lists: Care2, BBC

Bill Mitchell's Poynter Online article about Ebert's tweets, which Ebert tweeted a link to saying it supported his enterprise, but which I would qualify by saying it supports the action in that he is in the clear for doing so because he writes his own [advertising] copy, and is wiser to do his own rather than use a service such as Sponsored Tweets. Which then becomes another numbers game, and a search for begetting followers as revenue stream rather than listeners ensues. Folks who toil in online content and need to pay for shelter and food are, of course, interested in revenue streams, sooner or later.

blue diet sunglasses found at Inventor Spot
cyanide bottle image at Firefighter's With Parkison's Disease
Deliciously Different Purple Viking potato image is my own, from the Gurney's catalog

Avon Timeless: Is it Soup Yet?

2011-02-16T08:57:00.004-06:00

When I was at the Smithsonian seminar on the history of perfume last fall see post, Luca Turin interjected a point about perfumes that pretty much put a lot of elements into a perfume without them ever coming together as a whole, and/or cram in so many parts that it just goes over the top. He said he refers to such perfumes as "soup."

The Avon Timeless recipe, per Basenotes:

Aldehyde, Lemon, Bergamot, Gardenia

Cedarwood, Patchouli, Rose, Orris

Olibanum, Opopanax, Amber, Musk, Vanilla, Tonka

Yes. Those are there. In the same way you can put flour and butter and eggs and vanilla and milk into a bowl and not have a cake, but have have the smells of flour and butter and eggs and vanilla and milk, all of those elements are there.

Actually, push down on the stuff a little bit. There are times when some blend, at least in short bits.

Remember, I am a scent amplifier, and tend to run things in slow motion. Even so, to see/hear/smell nearly every one of these notes pop out was both kind a Dick and Jane reader whose theme was "see perfume run" and Chinese water torture. The worst part of the slow drip of the water torture was that there were times when I wanted to like it, and thought maybe it was going somewhere. (Which never happened.) And times when, a full day later, I caught a whiff of something that smelled good, and went in to huff with the eager hope that magic had happened. (It didn't.)

I'm sorry. I love cheap thrills. I won't back off of admitting my fondness for things that aren't cool. This one has its fans; you can find thrilled happy people partaking of the Timeless on Makeup Alley. I've even met a few.

But initial runs tell me that, on me at least, it's not soup yet.

For opoponax soup that works, see March's review of Memo Manoa. That one also packed it in, but somehow pulls it off. Also, for fellow opoponax fiends, I remind you of the cheap thrill Olfacta once shared: L'Aromarine Opoponax. I enjoy both, though the second in very light doses. Manoa has gelled into a worthy soup. The L'Aromarine is not a fully rounded something; it's more like cake batter, but the kind you like to eat off the spoon.

photo author's own.

You voted: Spring Scents Yet?

2011-02-15T08:43:00.000-06:00

Yes, I like to remind myself it is coming	4 (19%)
Yes, because it has started behaving like spring	1 (4%)
No, because that would just be cruel right now	9 (42%)
No, because they're "in storage"	2 (9%)
I don't believe in seasonal scents	5 (23%)

Have tweaked the type color on the poll results so I can read them. (Grey on white?? whose idea of a joke is this?) Half of the voting public said wearing a spring scent at this time of year would be unkind, and most of the other half was split nearly evenly between going ahead and wearing them to remind themselves that spring was coming, or dismissing the idea of seasonal scents altogether.

Should you be curious, I was in the cruel camp, but I cheated a bit. I could have pleaded storage issues, because most of my spring/warm weather scents are housed together and currently not in the rotation zone...but it is not so difficult to get the them. I mean, I could go splash some Eau Imperiale right now if I needed to, without any trouble. You see, I think by season, but don't strictly adhere.

Fair warning: I've released my (older version) Hermes Amazone. Going to see if it is suitable for a greeting/heralding spring scent. Not today, but soon. Soon.

Scarves and scent

2011-02-14T11:54:00.000-06:00

Have I ever not been aware of references to the smell of perfume on a scarf?

Have I ever not been stricken dead in my tracks, frozen as if in a bad dream, at the thought of purposely applying a scent to a scarf for purposes of imbuing it in a scent? I mean...I love scarves. I love them because of how they feel. And look. And would applying perfume change that, compromising the fabric, shortening its life, ruining dyes? What if the perfume I wanted to wear on a day I want to wear scarf X is not the perfume I want to wear the next time I wear scarf X?

The answers used to be "not that I can remember" and "yes, always." Until a few weeks ago.

'Twas a decant that slayed the beast.

Turns out that vintage Houbigant has a tricky trigger. Such a wide swath of spray, that it dribbled. Had this been a replaceable perfume, I might have felt a certain constriction of my chest, a certain sadness, but would have said "sayonara." But this was precious vintage. It was only going away, never coming back.

I saw the scarf. I reached. I wiped.

Know what? Apercu makes a mighty nice scarf scent, in a classic perfume way. Not too heavy, enough flowers to say "perfume," enough lift to keep the flowers from smothering, enough other elements to keep it from being boring. And, to tell you the truth, I'd rather my scarf smell like that than like sebum.

Go figure.

The damage was done, fiber & dye-wise. If any were to be done. I found myself going off in search of a few other scarves...after all, there were more perfumes to be decanted. There might be other accidents. One should always be prepared, after all.

Turns out I had two more accidents. Which probably require those quote marks in the air -- I'm raising and curling my two fingers on each hand, drawing them down and saying "accidents."

I consoled my not-so-shaken but not-so-certain cautious self with the reminder that I could always hand wash. Sure, even the silk. Sort of.

**
This sent me on a pleasant rumination about how one could go about assigned scent to scarves. Of course, there is Tradition. Which means signature scent: "Her scarf was all she left...it still smelled like...her." In my brain, "smelling like her" has more to do with smelling like sebum and onions and such than perfume, but hey, I came to perfume later in life. It works for some. Especially if they have a trademark perfume. In my world, the line would be something more like "Her scarf was all she left behind...it still smelled like she did on a sunny day in early spring when she felt like a chypre but still snuck in a spritz of hay."

Obviously, I needed a different system, scarf-wise.

The first step was easy, I thought. Sort scarves by season. Oops, not so fast; certain scarves carry over. Only the thick chunky woolens and the very sheer gauzy veils end up ghettoized by the weather. The rest can move up and down in the batting order. Okay, change tack. Texture. That's it. That's good. Texture and thickness.

But then I started thinking about that, and my blue and green nubby scarf seems like it could handle a fresher scent than the maroon with flecks of gold. Shoot.

At this point, I had completely bought into the idea. So I was bound and determined to scent a couple of scarves on purpose. But I was lost in the woods with no compass. How to get out of here?

Kabonk. Match one scent to a scarf, or find one scarf to match a scent. Which meant pick two or three scents I wouldn't mind being imbued in a fabric I had about my neck. And then see if I had a scarf that "looked like" that fragrance.

Now the game was fun. And seemed manageable. Though, truth be told, it was a heckuva a lot easier to just toss responsibility in the air and do things "accident" style.

*

Which is Aperçu?

Besides the Aperçu, my conscious decision scents were Amouage Epic, and Magie Noire. I already have an "outer scarf" that wafts L'Accord -- pretty wonderful, and works well with the cozy depths of the scarf, but must admit that was incidental, which makes it accidental. I picked Epic because it is one of my occasion scents, something I wear when I want to smell fabulous and yes want the smell to not take backstage. Figured it would be interesting to see how it behaved on a scarf, since the Aperçu did smooth out and focus at the same time on fabric. The Magie Noire, well...that was because it is a favorite of the other lodger on the Ledge. Add in the fact that I like it, and it easily becomes a something I wouldn't mind too much if that was the recognizable "me" on a scarf I left behind. That part of me, at least.

Did I choose well? I chose in winter. I'll probably try a couple of other things with lighter scarves. Will I fall into the habit? I doubt it. I'm still a little nervous about damaging the scarves. And, truth be told, about commitment. Remember, with perfumes, I'm Big Love. And I like to have my options at the start of any given day.

Speaking of options...did I tell you about the scented hankies? No? Ah. They are small. They are plentiful. They can be found for a song second hand. And, if you were really particular, you could sew the initials of the perfume you assign to a given hankie and have handy to toss in a bag...

...but we were talking scarves. And scents for them. So many possibilities. So impossible to choose just one.

first photo, scarves akimbo, author's own
photo of Grace Kelly in scarf from The Gloss
photo of Alan Cumming from Broadway World

Channels and noise

2011-02-12T15:46:00.003-06:00

Do you tweet? How's your RSS feed? IM'ed anyone today? What's your junk mail percentage in your e-mail inbox? Whose pet performed some antic and ended up with a picture of it up on Facebook?

My answers:
Yes. Not maintained. No, but I Skyped my kid the other day. Way up, over 50%, since some "friend" sent me a link to a coupon site. (Raises hand in affirmative response).

And that's just the citizen me. ScentScelf tweets, keeps a Facebook page, and blathers in a blog on a regular basis.

Time for some meandering.

****
Once upon a time, there was a summer of adolescent awakening. No, not that kind. But, among other things, I:

temporarily swapped away my books #1 and #2 of Nancy Drew, which had been my mother's, and were first edition WITH their jackets, for a couple of Dana girls mysteries, so each of us could experience the other series;
swam in an in-ground kidney shaped swimming pool with a diving board at one end;
rode my bike to the edges of my town and into another;
went to slumber parties, a phenomenon now dissed by Tiger Mothers and studied by cultural anthropologists;
was snuck into a friend's father's den, an area of the house oddly dim even in the bright midday, and warned twice warned to NOT TOUCH before a panelled wood door was opened, so that I could see this:

Breaker break one nine, good buddy. Did I know what this was?

Such was life in certain suburbs before the great divide that I could hazard an educated guess. Sure, that was...a CB radio. Which another friend had told me about, because her dad used them in his truck, and by truck I don't mean Ford F-150, but a serious Mack, baby. On my block, truck drivers, line chefs from the GM cafeteria, engineers from Ford, electrical salesmen. Down the street, kidney shaped pools. On the other end of town, where I rode my bike for slumber parties, a favorite "ride by": the house that had a heliport.

Hold that thought.

Meanwhile, return to the hushed plush carpet quiet of the dim house and the cupboard housing a magical communications device. One that was "don't touch," because one shouldn't turn it on before knowing the rules of operation. By which it wasn't meant so much how to actually operate the thing, but the conventions of participating in the conversation. You didn't just hop on an start talking, you made sure you had a clear channel. Once you had a clear channel, you weren't supposed to yak about what cookies you were making, or what Uncle Don brought home last night. That was telephone talk. You could discuss the weather (potentially useful to travelers, such as truck drivers). And you could simply listen to the appropriately focused conversation underway.

I hushed to carpet quietness. This was Serious Business, and while I grasped that the reason this particular radio sat in this particular location had plenty to do with why there was an inground pool in the backyard and an expensive sports car in the driveway, I still held respect. For it seemed that the radio's power was being used for good and not for evil.

My guide then proceeded to turn the device on. I nearly gasped. She shot me a look of shush, which I did. "I know what I'm doing," she said. It was okay. She found a channel, said all the proper introduction phrases. Respectfully listened, answered a question. Moved to another channel.

Then tossed her long hair out of her eyes and said in a voice I would later learn to call "coquettish": Hey good buddy, how's the weather where you're at?

There wasn't much talk of rain.

Lady breaker...

***
ScentScelf writes this blog, keeps a Facebook page, and maintains a Twitter account. In this blog, my chapbook of sorts, I mostly write. It is a place to assemble ideas and data and discoveries into more coherent chunks, sometimes more so, sometimes less so. On the Facebook page, I link posts from the blog -- a kind of Facebook user friendly RSS feed, a heads up, or warning, that there's fresh material here. I'll also post links to articles I think are interesting, that I'm ruminating over, to things that I find interesting but veer beyond whatever I think the edges of the blog should be. On the Twitter feed, I'll put up posts that are either blog-type-material expressible in 140 characters or less, or items related to my passion for fresh water.

All of which is a way of saying I see them as somewhat different creatures, with perhaps overlapping but ultimate different character. I *do* think about it, somewhat. Because I can't see why you'd want the same noise from multiple channels.

Breaker break, good buddy. Baby blog bear here. Brush your teeth and comb your hair, catch ya on the flip flop. Nice to have you in the chain gang.

**
Not only does the same information repeated over and over again read as "noise" in my head. So does blathering just to keep fresh content in your feed. And so does shilling.

As a case study, let's look at Roger Ebert. Ebert is prolific. He is a curious guy who bothers to process things and then write thoughtfully and engagingly about them. He blogs on all sorts of stuff, has a ton of good leads to other interesting material, is thoughtful, and a good writer. As a result, he has received many accolades for his blog. He also writes a newsletter, to which I subscribe. And he has a regular gig as a movie critic. These things bring him a variety of rewards, but not surprisingly, only one brings him real income. Should I need to point this out, it is not the blog. As a result, Roger found himself addressing the same question many bloggers and writers find themselves facing: How can I make money at this? His answer was to put up an Amazon link on his blog. Amazon links work on a simple principle: post one, and you will earn a percentage of sales that result from traffic entering through that link. Pretty straightforward.

But here's the rub. Roger started using his Twitter feed to post links to products available on Amazon. Mind you, he's a clever guy, and generally devised a tie-in to something he had discussed or was discussing in his writing. However--and this is an important however to my sensibilities--what had been content rich was now 50% junk mail. Chatter had become noise. And Roger sounded like a shill.

He's taken some guff for it, and has answered the complaints. He believes he is right. He wants to earn money from his efforts. He is disappointed the more people haven't voluntarily signed up to subscribe to his output (something he admirably offered on a sliding scale basis), and has decided that advertising is the way to go. Subscription versus sponsorship versus advertising. (We don't seem to have old world patrons anymore; a MacArthur grant after a years of effort for a notable few is about as good as it gets.) Old story. I get it. (I wonder if Octavian is paying attention?) It's a tough balance. Time is spent. Effort is made. Ebert has a day job, one which cushions the blow. In that case, his employer (The Chicago Sun-Times) does the dirty work of soliciting and charging for advertising. That's what lets them hire people. Which allows someone to be a "salary man." Which comes with its own costs.

There is no easy way out. No clean, pure solution. Roger drew a line in the sand. He thinks he is right. I don't.

My line? Shilling is shilling. And noise is noise. It seems to me, while our tolerance levels may vary, there is a way to moderate the traffic so that we turn on and tune in, not tune out. If the content provider can't respect that, the only choice for the listener is to tune out.

There is no clean shot. Best get dressed for the ball before you drop the hammer down. Right now, it seems like everybody must be walking the dog. Too much jaw jacking and you're going to put us all in the mud.

Don't want a SNAFU from that sonnet.

*
When I first started having control of who and when I had conversations with, my choices were: Walk to their house and see if they were home. _OR_ Pick up the phone and see if the party line was open to make a call.

At one point, I used a dial-up modem (listen to the tones! wait for the connect sound!!) and could share interests with like minded folk on a BBS. And, oh, joy when the day came...you could pay for an e-mail account with AOL.

No, the point is not how complicated communication is these days. Though it kind of is. So was an awl and a tablet, in its way; just more in the production than the reception. The point is that there used to be all kinds of visual and context clues for what kind of sounds you were about to hear: meanderings about nothing with friends were when your were hanging out. Using the phone to determine where meetings would happen, and who had a parent that could get you there. Hallways were for finding out who was on the basketball team. Classrooms were for pretending to learn but really passing notes; libraries were for pretending to pass notes but really learning.

Advertising wasn't signified by a jump in volume on your television set, or a banner across the front page of your newspaper where a headline used to be. Not that there weren't overlaps in advertising and editorial content. But that was generally seen as poor form. Or so my mythology goes.

Today, you sit with these devices, this input, this constant ready state for the next bit. Byte. What have you.

There is power in these new communication forms. Twitter and Facebook helped a revolution, they say. They've also led to suicides, career and actual. With great power comes great responsibility.

My copies of The Secret of the Old Clock and The Hidden Staircase are still not on my shelf. Waiting next to the incomplete set are both Dana girls books, ready to hand back. I have a feeling I'll be holding on to them for a while.

But I hold out hope. And I try to mind my communication manners. My glass is generally half-full. So I like to believe -- time to retrieve that held thought -- that we can all get along.

Like Rodney King said. When a truck driver made the news.

I know, I know. Meandering. Miscellany. But there it is. Modern communications, older communications, keeping the input clear, grabbing the randomness at will, finding order.

Pass the numbers. Ten-Ten, we'll do it again.

Get help with CB Slang at CB Gazette. Learn why Concrete Blonde is not just a band.
Photo of Louie Louie's CB station found at The High Desert Cobra 200 Club.
Algorithm for deciding whether or not to follow a Twitter account created by Dan Shapiro.

Didn't think you were going to get away without a link to C.W. McCall, did you? Watch a 45rpm disc of Convoy played on a turntable in a Magnavox console, because there hasn't been enough nostalgia for those who remember, or cabinets of curiosities for those who have no idea what I'm talking about. But if handheld makes you tipsy, try this link and enjoy the Kristofferson/MacGraw movie poster. Of course, you can shake your head and try to figure out why movie geeks (including Ebert) have praised Sam Peckinpah. It wasn't because of the movie adaptation of the song, that's for sure. I do miss that United Artists logo. I wonder what Fairbanks, Pickford, and Chaplin would have thought about Rubber Duck. Their producer sides might not have minded. I'm pretty sure D.W. Griffith wouldn't have.

If you've made it this far, maybe you'll want to follow me on Twitter after all.

Two Weeks from today... reminder

2011-02-12T10:04:00.000-06:00

Book chat

Saturday, February 26

Hope to "see" you there!

Mixed Fruit News

2011-02-11T08:44:00.001-06:00

Yesterday Cafleurebon reported that Caron's L'Accord (Code 119) would be released in the U.S. this summer. This is good news, to me at least, as my love for L'Accord has not diminished since I wrote about it last summer and spent time basking in my waft.

The bad news is that they are calling it a fruity floral. Which is too bad, because to me that conjures sweet dreck celebuscents for the young. This one is not cloying, it is not too sweet, the flowers (rose and what??) are imbued in a gently raspy chord of patch and musk with herbal elements that emerge as you wear it.

I've enjoyed it in Paris heat and Chicago blizzard. If the report is true, I'll be one happy camper, knowing I don't have to get my passport stamped in order the replace my bottle. That's some expensive ink, after all.

EDIT TO ADD: Marina has done some sleuthing, and cloak and dagger operations reveal that the stateside release will happen in March. Which isn't so far away, after all....

Figs, wanted and unwanted

2011-02-09T11:51:00.001-06:00

Another post reviewing the oddities of scent and mind.

There is an outfit by the name of Upper Canada soap company, and I am about to write about one and only one product of theirs, and I am not going to be happy about it. Not because it did not perform as it should--it certainly did--nor because it did not smell as advertised. That it did, too.

It's just that nobody warned me dish soap could smell like perfume. That's right, folks; we're going on an inverse to the usual trope you'll find in perfume chat. My issue was not that a perfume smelled like soap. My issue was that a (dish) soap smelled like perfume.

Aldehydic perfume.

Perhaps you've not been here often, or perhaps I've somehow gently phrased and backed into my thoughts on aldehydes enough that it my come as some surprise to you that this should be an issue for me. But trust me, I rarely like bubbles in my nose unless they are gen-you-wine bubbles from a semi-dry sparkling wine or in a perfectly drawn bath. If I find the smell of perfume accosting me in my dish pan, tormenting me with every scrub of a pot, every swish of a dish, well...I am Not Happy.

Add in to that my vein of frugality that says "this stuff is working perfectly well and clearly does the job you asked it to do and nobody is really going to say thank you to a gift of used dish soap so you'd better suck it up and use the resource" and you end up with a rather displeased dishwasher.

Did I mention that the dish soap also performed so well the generous sized bottle lasted and lasted? Thank you, Upper Canada, for manufacturing such an efficacious product.

(Thank you, wonderfully robust English language, for offering me an honest word of praise that allows me to say something so close to "effing" at the same time. ALDEHYDES, I tell you!!!)

My bottle is finally, FINALLY, gone.

I have now moved on to Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day dish soap, Basil scent. Riddle me this, Batman: Why would a candy version of basil, something that I might find cloying in a perfume, please me so much in my kitchen sink? Does it benefit from being held against the ~~aldehydic terror~~ perfumey fig that was the Upper Canada offering?

Am I okay with candy in the kitchen, but not perfume? It is true; I never like to spray perfume in the kitchen, not even when I have my hot mitts (as in my eager hands, not my protective gear) on a fresh package from the mail that I know contains the latest something....

Sorry, Upper Canada. I promise I will try another offering. After all, I can see that on a value per penny basis, yours is a good choice. I also see that no online source offers the fig scent, so maybe there's a reason I found my bottle at the closeout store.

Wash on.

***
Don't feel too sorry for me. There is such a thing as a happy fig.

As it turns out, it's not a perfume, either.

images, including bite mark, author's own

Texture and trees

2011-02-05T08:01:00.000-06:00

all photographs author's own

Mica dust / L'Ombre Fauve

2011-02-03T09:56:00.002-06:00

One thing that never ceases to fascinate me is sparklies upon the water. In the summer, sunlight glints on the water, making sparklies that hover just above the water's surface, sometimes seeming to lie on it, but not a part of it.

In the winter, snow, frozen water, offers its own special sparklies. Bits that remind me of mica chips I used to love to find in rocks. Tangible, now lying on but also embedded in the surface. Unlike the glints on the lake, these you know you can touch. They add a beautiful texture to the surface of the snow.

If you click on the picture, it will enlarge. And you can see some sparklies. Sorry I can't offer you a handful to actually touch.

***
I reached for L'Ombre Fauve this morning with eagerness and trepidation. I love this fragrance, this rough on the surface deep pile beauty. It's a scratchy dark amber that ends up all animal cozy. The scratchiness is in the same way I've talked about before in Chamade, and the same way there's a rough powder in Habit Rouge. I think I've said here a variation on the idea that it's like wrapping in an animal skin inside a wool blanket and laying down in a gentleman farmer's barn?

I've been so busy with other scents this fall/winter--testing or lolling about in a given for a while--that I missed wearing this during my traditional L'Ombre Fauve happy time, cool and cold fall into early winter, when the air is snappy but the sun still has a shot at warming you up. Once the holidays came, then my foray into counter-season scents in January, I had lost my window of opportunity. It was either wear it now, and take my chances, or wait until fall equinox 2011.

Why be afraid? Because I was pretty sure the deep, deep cold (still single digits here, Farenheit, and covered in this just blizzarded two feet of snow) would render L'Ombre Fauve cruel. That the depth would disappear (no sun to warm it up), and the sharp edges would have time to actually cut.

On the opening, I was afraid I was right.

But given a little time, it is behaving like the big cat I hoped it would. Threat of danger, but ends up purring under my layers. I'm glad I dared.

photo author's own

Announcing...

2011-01-31T07:48:00.000-06:00

The winner of "The Secret of Chanel No. 5" is horror movie fan Nancy H.

You can find my e-mail via the Information page.

Miss World 2010, Alexandra Mills, from TT Owonubi.

Offskin, aka The Space Between Us

2011-01-27T12:32:00.001-06:00

One of the worst professors I ever had said two of the most memorable lines from my undergraduate life.

The first was part and parcel of satire: {cue gravelly voiced, tired, tousled, deigning, gray haired presence at front of room, with what might appear to be the somewhat older denizens of Fast Times at Ridgemont High filling seats in a classroom furnished more like a high school than a college} "The mind, class, is like a sieve..." {Various reactions make clear that this is a refrain as familiar, and perhaps as frequently punctuated, as "...take one down and pass it around..."}

But the other, the one that I have revisited many times: "It was not the icon itself, but the space between the icon and the viewer, that was worshipped."

Score one for Byzantine history, the Orthodox church, and the professor. This one has not fallen through the sieve, and will not, ever.

•••••
Recently, I have worn two scents that have struck me as beautiful, but never when snarfed/huffed. Only when experienced as that which floats above the skin. It wouldn't be fair to say their "sillage," for in my mind the idea of "sillage" is a nearly visible vapor trail that is left in a wearer's wake. No, this was the air above my wrist, discovered as I leaned over to pick up a paper, or reached up to open a cupboard. If I tried to put nose to skin to discover the source, I got something different. It was only as I pulled back that I got a hint of how to find the source.

It was a space above my skin, waiting to be discovered. It would not be left behind as or after I left the room, but hovered there, somewhere above me, but not exactly part of me. It took a combination of perfume on skin, plus a "viewer" searching the area above, to discover it.

•••••

"Many people make the mistake of thinking that these images were created as idol worship. That is wrong. They were an image of an idol, or perhaps more accurately, a concept, something to be reminded of. The purpose of the image, which you will notice is rather two-dimensional, was to allow for an interaction between the viewer and the representation. The act of reflecting, of contemplation, caused the space in between to be sacred. That space was only "alive" or sacred during the act of contemplation.

Thus, it was not idol worship, but idol contemplation, if you will; but do not confuse reverence for object deification. Or, indeed, deification of a person. It was as if the idol allowed for, in combination with a reverential viewer, a sacred space. It was the space that mattered, and it only mattered during the act."

•••••
Vintage Houbigant Aperçu and Nina Ricci Filles de Eve are two examples of perfumes that I find are better experienced off skin than on it. Filles de Eve in particular; when I go in for the close up, it falls apart. It's all old lady perfume, and not particularly complex. I persisted in trying it, because I had smelled it on a friend in perfume, and remembered it as beautiful.

The trick of memory was to adjust the preposition. I hadn't smelled it on a friend; I had smelled it off a friend.

Sure enough, I've caught the cloud a couple of times now. Much better. I am still sussing Filles de Eve out, and not sure if I love it, or I am just having fun visiting. In fact, I may decide I have fun visiting, but don't like it at all. Aperçu is actually more likely to be my bag, though I am still not sure why. For one thing, it has more layers to it, at least as it plays out in my nose. The thing is, taking time to think about exactly what is playing out in my nose is distracting me from that space, that beautiful space just off of my skin.

•••••
I'll be spending time in the future sorting out whether or not I find this phenomenon more prevalent in older style perfumes than newer ones. As it happens, I am wearing Andy Tauer's Reverie au Jardin as I write this, and this is one that I love discovering offskin. But, and perhaps and important "but" to consider as I try to sort this out, Reverie au Jardin is pretty faithful in the huff. What you catch in the cloud is what you find on your skin. Not that I'm complaining. Just saying.

Today, I am all about offskin. This space between us. Present, perhaps, only when someone stops to contemplate it.

image of Saint Stephen icon from greek-icons.org

Bulb bumps progressing

2011-01-26T12:24:00.000-06:00

Slaying dragons beyond the blog, but am here to remind you that I will draw names for the free copy of "The Secret of Chanel No. 5" tomorrow. Late tomorrow. Go comment on Saturday's post if you are interested.

Posting a picture of the hyacinth bulb progress. Am continuing to turn a blind ear (yes, blind ear) to yearnings for spring. Winter has what it has.

I love the way the roots know to reach out for water that is just beyond. Soon enough, they'll have engulfed the marbles, and I'll have detangling to do when all is said and done. Things change.