Home

I need to put less latitude in my attitude.  And maybe accept how dirty I am.

I've been so focused on parallels...on knowing that my sweet spot lies right around 45...that it never occurred to me to pay attention to longitude.  After all, I've been pretty consistent across the sweep of my home country, which was not a width that seemed worthy of dismissing.

For the second time in my life, I completed a travel that involved crossing seven time zones.  This time, I moved beyond the all hallowed Greenwich.  Which was an increase of one time zone from the last trip, but still...it meant skipping a day.  Moving forward in time.  Time travel.  Wow.

I was there for two weeks.  And never fully let go of my old clock.  Or, is it better to say, never fully adjusted to the new?  Essentially, I stayed up for two days every day...I started with the new, in the future day, but finished out with the old, behind the time day.  Good thing that daylight contributed to the phenomenon--I think--in providing light for most of both.

Maybe the truth is I need a couple of hours of non-daytime before I can go to sleep.  In which case, I should try traveling a fair distance in the other direction sometime.  As a noble experiment, of course.

But who wants to sleep through a stay in Hawaii??

****
In Paris, I visited the Dreamlands exhibit at the Pompidou.  The exhibit is constructed around the idea of utopias, or more specifically, in the museum's words, it

considers for the first time the question of how World's Fairs, international exhibitions, theme parks and kindred institutions have influenced ideas about the city and the way it is used. 

This has been a busy year for thinking about city construction in my life.  Last spring, when I visited the Phoenix area, I went to both Arcosanti and Taliesin West.  Arcosanti is one architect's vision of a perfectly designed community; Taliesin West is the same.  There's a heavier emphasis on the architect's digs at Taliesin West, but both consider home within the community, as well as the individual in the home.

It's also fair to point out that I visited Scottsdale and Sun City, a shopping/living complex called Westgate, and Phoenix itself.  Fully operating, contemporary expressions of communities with homes.  Oddly, sadly, interestingly, it would be Sun City and the shopping/living center that closest resemble the visions of Paolo Soleri's arcology and Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture.  There's a lot more emphasis on commerce in the real life applications.  I'm sure Stuart Brand would have something to say about that, if he applied the ideas he raises in How Buildings Learn to the greater community.

It's pretty clear that commodities are less present in utopian visions than in practical applications.  In one way, all of the places I've been in 2010 are at least as identifiable by their consumables as by the amount of time people spend in/with community.  The consumables, and their delivery apparatus, vary:  haute couture, omnipresent cuisine, temples of perfume, visions of art and culture (but don't touch...i.e. the museum)?  Paris, New York.  Umpteen stores of mid and low-range clothing, kebobs in the 48 pack (oh, Costco, you have changed American lives so), home goods?  Say hello, Phoenix and suburbs.  (Suburbs of any city, that is.)

***
How does this take me home?  I'm working it out.  I live outside a major city that I once resided soundly within.  I have a Costco within an easy drive, at least 5 low and high end grocery stores to choose from within the same driving radius, stores ranging from Wal-Mart, Target and Kohl's thru Neiman Marcus and Max Mara to buy clothes from (and a slew of mail order catalogs should I desire to "save gas").  The city offers temples of food (highest ranked restaurant experience in the country, by more than one opinion is here, and has plenty of similar tier compatriots), is denser, blah blah.  But I have to say, there's a heck of a lot more walking that goes on on the island Manhattan, and in Paris.  In fact, I'm not sure that any city other than NYC matches the walk factor of Paris.  Yes, San Francisco has the highest "walkability score," but honestly, I don't see a lot of people hoofing it further than a few blocks in their neighborhood.  Biking it, for sure.  Using urban public transit, you bet.  But relying on walking to do the bulk of their business, their getting from here to there?  I didn't see it.  Being "walkable" doesn't make a culture of walkers.

A few hundred years of practice seems to, however.

**
I haven't gotten down to the dirty yet.  I walked in Paris.  A lot.  In comfortable shoes.  And yes, a couple of days wearing a clothing item that led to me developing an amusing internal audio tape:

"Does this skort make me look too American?"  

The shoes, they were a bit nebulous in defining tourist factor (in terms of country of origin), especially on days I wore black dresses or skirts or pants and endeavored to look "chic, if a bit sporty."  "Arty" days were nebulous, too.  But skort days?  Totally American.

Still, I like to think I rocked the skort.  Wasn't any other streetwalker wearing denim like I did.

Ermmm...

ANYWAY, I walked a lot.  So much so that I challenged my Achilles tendon, a new entry in the (still short) list of personal injuries.  Learned the metro, walked plenty of streets, parks, stairs, hills, etcetera.  And in all of those miles of walking cobblestones and concrete and park and metro and marble stairs of hallowed institutions, my nebulous comfortable but somewhat chic sandals never once collected dirt.

Not once.

Because in Paris, there is no dirt.  Unless it is in a pot, with a plant growing out of it.  Even in the parks, the area underneath the trees is generally a sandy mix, suitable for boules and heavy foot traffic.  There was dirt underneath the occasional grassy knoll, I am sure, but by the time I had passed the one week mark and ticked off at least five arrondissment on my generous perambulations, I realized I had seen no dirt.  I watered pots on the terrace of the apartment every day, and that was my only contact with dirt.

I learned that at 2'20° east, 48'50° north, I was sweating and getting grimy at times, but never getting dirty.  Not how I am used to.

Which is probably why when I returned to approximately 41'59° north, 87'54° west, one of the first things I did was go to my dirt.  It was weed infested, but present.

I'll need to go back and investigate those utopian communities with a sharp eye for the dirt angle.  Ironically, both Arcosanti and Taliesin West are going to lean Parisian, being in the desert and having to deal with non-loamy soil and all.  The Dreamlands exhibit consisted of a lot of artistic concepts on paper, and of World Exhibitions...I'll have to research.  Maybe I'll write the next World Expo-based bestselling fiction based on my findings; I'll call it "Dirt Haul in the White City."

*
So, I'm dirty.  And tired.  But happy.  And thinking.

Thinkings that will probably infiltrate my next post, a musing on things Mediterranean, prompted by an invitation from my blog correspondent Ines over at All I am - a Redhead.

Meanwhile, my "French manicure" (what I call it on the rare occasion I apply lacquer to my nails, which is almost always a color that is transparent and neutral) already has dirt under the nails.  Perhaps that is one of the best answers I can give at the moment to the question "What is home?"

"Home, end of July 2010"

image the first from the Basic Navigation page of Flight Simulator Navigation
image the second author's own


requisite music link which is inevitable but still, connections enough ... this

Where am I?

Rain is rain.

A simple concept...a cliche...the sun shines everywhere on the globe...day turns to night turns to day...rain falls from the sky.

Yet, somehow, due to my romantic? gullible? narrow? mind, when rain fell the other day, it was a fell whomp of familiar and Oh! and I am in Pareeee all at once.

Why should the rain do this?  Why not the sound of the children's voices in the courtyard?  Perhaps because the "foreign" language suggests distance.  Why not the sound of a door closing?  Honestly, the sound of a door closing tends to be different.  Different mechanisms, different doors...and then there is the ubiquitous process of needing to press a button before passing through a portal...so, no, door entry/exit not profoundly universal.  Why not the sun upon my face?  Um, that *is* different...a more northerly parallel stretches the "magic hour" beautifully, and even if I didn't have a filmmaking background, I'd be struck by the quality of light.  Why not the huff of perfume on my wrist?  Dare I point back to how my Poussiere de Rose seemed to smell different?  No?  How about I stick to my one shop experience so far, where my limited language skills were most vexing.  NOT universal, not for me.

But the rain.  The rain, it grounded me, and seemed like something new, all at once.

It was gentle, just beyond a drizzle, and didn't last for long.  Didn't really do much to alter the pleasant but clearly summer temperature, either.  It did alter the light, it did act both as a soundtrack and sound damper, and it entirely brought a new focus to my senses.  I was in Paris.  It is raining.  I am on someone else's fifth floor terrace.  I am among someone else's plants.  I am among plants.  I am outside, in the rain.  All the ways in which I was alien and familiar burbled and then settled at once.

I mentioned magic hour to some friends, and one asked if I was wearing L'Heure Bleu.  Entirely logical. It does not happen to be one of bitty decants I brought, so no, I was not.  And I wasn't even sure if I wanted to...I knew that if I had, if I do, L'HB will forever in the future be strongly Paris.  And I love so much what it is to me now, I don't know if I can give that up.  Maybe I'll run into a Guerlain shop toward the end of my stay, and spray some.  For now, I have the rain as my bridge between what I know and what I don't know, locating all in one moment.

***
Other such connections, not quite as "vortex of all experience in one":

Household dirt.  I spent some time cleaning the charming apartment we are using for our stay.  "Surface dirt," as my mom would have said.  Vacuum the floors, dust/clean flat surfaces.  Okay, and wipe down the tile walls on the bathroom.  All of which yielded results which were sufficient enough to veer beyond "satisfactory" into "um, I'm really glad I did this."  And why was this so important to me?  I don't know. Yes, I do.  I am not fond of surface dirt.  I'll tolerate it in my house, of course...just try to stay ahead of the dust bunnies and dirt in a house with gas forced air heat and two cats and one dog and lots of books and teens galumphing through and a gardener trudging in and out.  It's almost as if there is something personal about dirt...would I rather share a home with my own dirt?  Hmmm.  And, lest you mistakenly get the impression I am staying in a place en désespoir, the linens in the closets are all ironed.  ALL of them.  And everything is in its place, and there is a lovely amount of "stuff" (books, art, etc.)--which I love having about--without having so much that it starts to feel "noisy" or overwhelming.  Nope, it was more the feeling of...somebody else not having a chance to attend to that element, and then handing over the key.

Anyway, why do I bring it up?  Because, honest to Pete, the dirt was...different.  A different dirt to dust to grease ratio, which could have everything to do with this being a more urban environment than I usually clean in, combined with no screens on the windows, plus the proximity of the kitchen (and cooking issues) to the rest.  Scientifically, I remain skeptical.  In my heart, I know that stuff I was wiping off the walls was blacker and "threadier" than what I clean off my own house.

When I do, that is.

**
The walkability of this city is awesome.  Really.  I am still a little puzzled by the street layout, which I shouldn't be, because there is a certain logic in the radiation of the boulevards and such.  Heck, I grew up in a city whose grid was laid out by L'Enfant.  It's just...well...for one, the lack of a hard edge.  Where I grew up, the river was a hard edge, because it was an international boundary; where I live, the lake is a hard edge, because, well, it's big; in New York and San Francisco and Seattle, other cities I've gotten to know and love, water gives a hard edge.  Here, the Seine flows through, and physically speaking, you can flow back and forth...though yes, I am full aware of the cultural distinction between Left and Right bank.  Which are south and north, incidentally.  Which perhaps is the second factor in my confusion.  Really?   Where I come from, we have these east-west lines, too.  Mason-Dixon line, Michigan-Ohio, North Dakota South Dakota.  But left-right is for things like the Continental Divide, the Mississippi, East Side West Side.  Things that are left, or right, according to true north.

And it's hillier than I expected.  Well, roll-y.  Well, something in between.  European street proportions, combined with the necessary sharp angles on street intersections because they were carved to fit contours.  I dare say this out loud, though somehow I suspect there is a Great Work of Literature that is absent from my reading that one of you will point out and say "Hey, graduate student of Literature, how the heck could you not know that?  Haven't you read X?"  That, or some basic piece of history that shows how Napoleon had to run uphill three ways when he came home to smell Josephine which should have suggested to me the contours of the city.  But no, I didn't have it in my pre-impressions.

*
The best smell so far?  Food smells have been great, of course.  But I have to say, my favorite to date has been stumbling upon that rose plant outside the fleuriste, followed by the unmistakable smell of old books and dusty wood in a used book stall inside a charming arcade by the Bibliothéque Nationale.  Making the scent of those few blocks a floral with an unusual but pleasant drydown.

A confession

I am traveling again.  Rather, I have traveled.  J'ai voyagé.  I am happy, the whole family is with me, we are adventuring.

So many things are right.  I am above the 45th parallel in the summer, I am staying in place for nearly two weeks so that I can soak up as much as I can of a new experience without falling prey to or imposing some sort of tourist whirlwind on the proceedings.  I am, for only the second time in my life, learning how my body responds to jet lag.  I am hyper aware of budget, just like when I traveled as a near-student; I am equally cognizant of when I toss it to the gutter as the locals sometimes do with their trash.  I am savoring every bite of fabulous food.  I am enjoying every sip of aperitif and every moment of light refracted through the atmosphere during the magic hours that suspend themselves over us at the start and especially end of each day.

A couple of things are desafinado.  I never learned this language.  I am doing my level best to gain traction as I go, because I would feel so much better if I had at least a rudimentary working ability to communicate.  Sometimes, 

lamento que yo no pudiera hablar el español.

  De temps en temps, je regrette que je ne puisse pas glisser en espagnol.


I wish I could slip into Spanish.  Just to show that I am not a self-centered American who doesn't care about bothering to learn any other languages.  (Or an American who was never given the opportunity, or whose "opportunity" was two lame years of a mock high school requirement.  Oh, wait...that was me...it was college where I learned.  Anyway...)


...things are conversationally desafinado.  And, the other thing that is slightly out of tune...I have not yet run to the shrine, the altar, the Mecca, the whateveryoucallit.  Three days, and no visit to an olfactory temple.

Yes.  I am in Paris, and I have only pressed my nose to the glass of a Guerlain outpost on the day when all shops are closed.

I don't think that it's the age of the internets and swappage and sharing that has led me to this, a potential sacrilege among the devout, a potential revocation of any perfumista card I might have laid claim to.  My lack of homage is not a result of abundant sniff opportunity.  It has more to do with the dual realities of my broader life--interest in many things, and the logistics of sharing this experience with other folks who have their own agendas (and from whom it is more difficult to separate).

I am here for the whole enchilada...erm, the whole tortiere.  There have been fresh baguettes and croissants, pastis on the sidewalk, meanderings down boulevards, expeditions up constructions of wrought iron, boats on the Seine.  There will be exhibits, and mansion museums, and parks, and more food and more walking.

And yes, I am sure, there will be perfume.  Parfum.  But there is time.  First I wish to inhabit.

***
Meanwhile, let it be known that TDC de Sens et Bois is lovely on a moderate summer day in its upright posture gently cutting way, and Parfums de Rosine Poussiere de Rose is somehow sweeter.  Perhaps the barest hint of that which might be skank?  No, not really.

Palimpsests

Somebody hid Archimedes under a painting.
There's something of my grandmother in my grand-aunt, and of my Papa in my son.
I'm pretty sure I found Emeraude in my Ormonde Jayne Woman yesterday.

I have been fascinated by palimpsests since I was a kid.  What a combination of issues:  The need to reuse media, and therefore actually *write over* previous text (the idea of writing in, dog earing pages, or cracking the spine of a book was anathema to me until grad school, where suddenly books became giant notepads).  The idea that something lay beneath.  The literal layering of history.  Mysteries to be discovered.

I was just at a family reunion.  Happens every three years, and I see people descended from my maternal great-grandparents that I would never get to know otherwise.  My own two children, who have no cousins and started their lives with only three grandparents and one uncle find themselves suddenly in a world of large, extended family full of cousins (removed in various ways, but still related) and (grand- and great-)aunts and uncles and bodies and noise and immediately observable similarities and a ream of differences.

At these gatherings, I approach a doorway, and hear my grandmother speaking, even though she has been dead nearly ten years now.  I sit behind one of my grand-aunts, and see a gesture that was entirely grandma's from a body six inches taller.  The hauntings are very strong and frequent here.

Of course, these hauntings happen all the time.  I saw one in the face of my first born when he was two years old, when he looked at a new food and his face flashed "curious/wary/preparing to jump in" in a way I had seen on my Papa and my brother.  I see a flash of my grandfather-in-law's impish humor crinkle the eyes of my other son when he prepares to deal out a particular type of joke.  In fact, these are often the most powerful hauntings for me--the gestures, rather than the physical replications.  The cadence and timbre of speech when they echo a person the child was never able to meet.

**
I traveled, as usual, with an assortment of perfume samples.  The one that I came back to in the thick, humid, 94 degree heat was Ormonde Jayne Woman, which seemed at first would be too thick itself for those conditions.  I found myself using it more than once, because it had a delightful "green dust" aspect to it.  A little raspy, as I've mentioned I like, suspended in sweetened green.

It ended up being doubly appropriate, because as we were driving home, I could swear I smelled my mother's Emeraude, as I did when I quietly "visited" her darkened bedroom sometimes when she was busy elsewhere and once or twice dared to venture to the perfume and give it a sniff.

It was, of course, the Ormonde Jayne.

*
Today is one of my favorite days in the calendar, the summer solstice.  As opposed to the equinoxes, when day and night are in balance, this is a day that is a physical manifestation of extremes.  We here north of the equator get to enjoy the longest term of daylight in the year.  In childhood, this was exciting, as it meant rules like "be home when the streetlights come on" were stretched as far as possible.  Always, I feel it is like the moment you crest on a roller coaster; you know things are about to start tumbling away, but for this moment, this day, this dusk, this day into night, it is as full as possible.  And you get to witness it.

Cultures across the globe and throughout history have had various ways of noting this day.  Sometimes I feel that, as I glance up to the sky when day turns to night, whether I am lighting a fire or letting darkness finally fall around me, I am echoing the gestures of people whose language and culture I could not otherwise understand.  They could sit behind me, and recognize my behavior.

Looks like it might be an OJ Woman night tonight.  Or is it Emeraude?


image is the Archimedes Palimpsest, which contains three layers of content:  the painting seen on the right, 13th century prayers, and text by Archimedes.   Walters Art Museum image visible at this article from National Geographic, and this sciencewriter.com article, among others.  See the Archimedes Palimpsest Project here.

Monday Madness

image of "ice baseball" from brooklynballparks.com

Finally.  They've stopped playing hockey for the season.  I grew up with hockey all around me...was living at the right latitude, spent the majority of my youth in a town with the league attitude, could get broadcasts of CBC Hockey Night in Canada--which fans enjoyed with gratitude.  The chops and sheuusshs of skates on ice, the clacks of the wood sticks, the drone of the announcer in the background that was always shaped around the words "blue line," the odd way the game came into your ears.  (What IS it about the acoustics of an arena where the center portion is frozen water and the fans are quiet/loud in a way not equalled in other sports...when they are quiet, you can hear everything moving down there except for the puck.  When they are loud, it comes at you from every angle, including your gut, and each point of entry is also somehow a sounding board.)

I went to a couple of pro games at a place known as The Barn.  Where if you were up in the third tier nosebleeds, the rake was so steep I was convinced that one wrong step would put you in the seats just behind the ice, if not on the glass.  There were some seats, in fact, where I'm pretty sure you'd end up on the ice, as floppy and lifeless as the octopi that occasionally dotted it.

Seasons are so long these days.  I know, that's an old whine.  Regardless, when you grow up not being able to overlap ice hockey with baseball because if you are playing them outdoors, the required conditions for one negate the ability to play the other, the idea of co-mingling them is preposterous.  Hockey in Phoenix?  Seriously???  That's laughable.  Okay, L.A. is laughable, too...maybe more so under the old franchise name ("The Mighty Ducks," one of the worst cross-marketing ploys known to sports fans--though recent college bowl names are pretty awful, too).  I lean toward Phoenix, the hottest city in America, surrounded by desert, being the more ridiculous.  Maybe it should be L.A., also a desert, but even though they import their water from another state, there's something about it being next to an ocean that makes needing ice to play a little less heinous.

A little.

I breathe, though.  The Cup has been placed in the hands of this year's winners, the streets of a certain downtown became arteries for approximately 2 million platelets fans, appropriately dressed in red jerseys.  We're back to being bruised black and blue (black on the south side, blue on the north), with green grass dominating the area under the players' feet.

Hey, riddle me this, Batman:  What is up with terminology in these two sports?  I mean, you play hockey on ICE, right?  But cross those blue lines the wrong way, and the zebras start tweeting their whistles and you get called for icing.  But take some baseball players, put them on the FIELD, and they get praised for their good fielding.

Sports can be messed up.

Anyway, I pay a little attention to baseball.  Once upon a time, I paid a lot more.  But I still know that if you hear the sound of wood in a baseball game, it will be when it cracks against the ball, and that if that happens, even if you weren't looking, it's eyes up to see what's going on.  (In hockey, the sticks are always clacking about.  Plus, now that "old time hockey" is pretty much the norm for all modern teams, there's plenty of sounds of bodies crashing against the boards, if you want to include that sound of wood.)  There's all kinds of down time, not much in the way of sound coming from the field, but a kind of hum from the crowd.

The announcers talk to each other a lot more in baseball.  That's part of the rhythm of the game in the background, too.  They have to, given the spaces in time to fill in terms of playable "action."  Fans at the game know to look around at all sorts of things that are going on, even when "nothing is happening"--check to see if there's action in the bullpen, watch how the baserunner is behaving, observe the interaction between pitcher and catcher.  Heck, one fabulous summer, you could watch the pitcher groom the mound.  A lot.  And talk to the ball, too.

Baseball and hockey have never been in the center of my attention.  But they have at times been an important part of my peripheral landscape, whether conscious or not.  I usually think I arrange a calendar by academic year, and break it down into meteorological seasons, punctuated by holidays.  But, truth be told, I retain an awareness of the movement of the sports season.  Baseball, hockey, basketball.

I refuse to name the sport that lends the irony to the day on which I have chosen to post this musing.

If you do, I'm going to go all wide-eyed, and say my team is Cote d'Ivoire.

**
Contained in the embedded video within a recent post on Katie Puckrick's blog, Katie mentions that her frequent correspondent in perfume Dan Rollieri likes to wear Chinatown to the ballpark.  Uff-da.  That's a swing and a miss if I'm up to bat in that one.  (I wrote about my experience with Chinatown here.)  I've been to more minor league games than majors in the past ten years, but I spent the last third of one personally notable game at Wrigley under the grandstand, trying to recover from a bit of heatstroke.  Yeah, I know, heatstroke is serious.  Pale, clammy, woozy, nearly fainted in the stands...I know what it's about.  Seeing as Chinatown nearly put me there in the temperature-controlled quiet of my own home, I can't imagine what it would do mid-summer at the ballgame.  And I don't want to.

However...I can imagine vendors walking up and down the stands, hawking colognes and floral waters and such: "4711!! Getcher refresh here!!"  "Sage and lemongrass essence in neroli!  Straight from the 'fridge!"  Or, how about just "Ice cold water, with lemon slices, in a glass and on a cold compress, just for you!!!"

It don't ring like "red hots," do it, now?

From soul of pine to PineSol: Wazamba, Fille en Aiguilles

This time I didn't bury the lead, I put it in the title.

Let me make clear up front, I think that my reactions to Serge Lutens Fille en Aiguilles and Parfum d'Empire Wazamba have as much to do with "your mileage may vary" and my own backstory as they do with the contents and delivery of the juice itself. That, and I am apparently a perfume philistine. But I share my story anyway...

First up was SL Filles en Aiguilles. I was excited to score a sample*--FeA was getting a fair amount of love from bloggers who I respect, and often line up with when it comes to what works for me. The heart of the pine forest and all. I'm down with that; I proudly claim the 45th parallel as my comfort zone, and a mixed deciduous/evergreen forest is part of the experience. Pine isn't just about the cutting down of trees or branches to decorate your home for the holidays; it's about the smell of needles as you brush by, the warm crunch of dead needles underfoot, the unbelievably sticky sap that won't leave your clothes or hair (or windshield) and makes for little spectacles when put on the fire. It is sharp, with a hint of warmth. It would be much better at clearing your sinuses than say, coffee beans--or at least that how it feels. (Avery Gilbert explains that the clearing of the nasal palate is a bunch of bunk in What the Nose Knows, but I shall tackle his debunkery in a different post.)

That's what pine is, to me. Then there is this other creation, an all-purpose cleaner for your house, the one a woman in a television commercial will tell you provides an odor that tells you your house is clean. (I have a friend who swears that Murphy's Oil Soap is the smell of clean, but I digress.) This other creation has always been oddly sweet, peculiarly fake, and definitely the smell of other people's houses.

This second creation appeared on my wrist as the opening of Filles en Aiguilles. Big time. And then the opening got pinpoint holes, and honey started to come through, but PineSol didn't leave. Eventually, I got to a warm Lutens-like sweet woody drydown, but ask me if it was worth the trip. I had to scrape through PineSol to get there. I'd rather skip the production and get to the final act, and to do that, I could just put on Chergui.

Hence, I ordered a small decant of Wazamba with no small amount of trepidation.

After all, another prickly pine, right? Wrong. Oh, happy space of well played pine. Mellowed by spicence (spice + incense?), as if you could do that. An evolution that plays with smooth interactions, not some odd stippling effect. I've been waiting for somebody to play the forest-as-cathedral. I don't think Wazamba captures the forests I am accustomed to inhabiting, but these will do just fine, thank you very much. And, oh happy day, it sits close to my skin, not requiring me to snorfle to get a hit, nor wafting beyond my safety circle. Just right for wearing to orchestra rehearsal: something that settles into comfort but remains inspiring and well composed. And stays by me.

I'm going to run around the block a few more times with both of these, but I'll say this: I've already gone back for seconds of Wazamba. Thank goodness for decantery. Next up is going to be a split or a swap. Because far from needling me, Wazamba keeps me thinking while wrapping up all cozy and nice. Filles en Aiguilles just gets under my skin.

*I've said it before, but it bears repeating: carrying vials with you at all times can prove worthwhile.

Dirt and Mothering

Mothers know a lot about dirt.

Dirt that needs a bath.  Dirt that needs laundry.  Dirt that the dog brought in.  Dirt that one neighbor tries to offer about another.  Dirt that just won't get out from under the fingernails.  Dirt that gathers into an astonishing mega dust bunny within 24 hours of a vacuuming.

(Hmmm...maybe that's more than 24 hours...but boy, those "bunnies" sure can grow to impressive diameter.)

Anyway, I happen to be a fan of dirt.  Because I'm a gardener.  I like the way dirt smells.  Humus, quality loam, potting soil...I love it all.  I'm a fan of the right dollop of dirt in certain perfumes, too.  Of course, there are variations on what "dirt" means to different sniffers.  Today, since I am chomping at the bit and go out and dig in my own little patch of green, I'm going to offer up a couple of recent favorite scents with "real" dirt inside.

CB I Hate Perfume Wild Hunt   Yum, yum...and not in a gourmand way.  Not at all.  This is violets on the forest floor, remembering there is green about you, and you get to go for a ride and continue deeper into the woods and stop and smell the humus.  The smell takes you up above the ground to discover the violets (which waft a bit in the air), and then drops you down on the ground again, then mixes them around.  Nice.

Ayala Moriel Rainforest  Okay here's a brand new one to my sniffer, and I am infatuated.  Brings together a couple of passions of mine, galbanum and dirt, on either end of a really fun deep dark dense evolution from one to the other.  Oh, lawsy, where Wild Hunt lets you linger a few feet above the ground on the waft of violets, Rainforest insists you stick with the leaves and the needles and the ground and remember that this growing thing is vegetal, baby.  Ayala calls it a "coniferous chypre," and I can see why.  Vaguely resiny, definitely the green of a mixed forest.  Remember, rainforests don't just exist in tropical zones...you can also meander through a rainforest near the 45th parallel on the Pacific coast.  You won't find piranhas, but should be prepared to encounter socks with Birkenstocks. 

I'm heading out to dig, which has become a traditional Mother's Day gift to me:  protected time in the garden, with ready labor as requested.

Happy Mother's day to all who mother, and all who are remembering their mothers.

L'air du Desert Morocain

Okay, on this one I have to skip the traditional approaches, either in my own or more traditional perfume writing.

I smell L'Air du Desert Morocain and I smell my grandfather's hands. I remember the look, smell, and atmosphere of the corner of their family room by the fireplace which had the door to the garage/basement stairs, and I smell his woodshop. I am in a whirl of memories, and yet laser focused all at once. This perfume doesn't smell like my grandfather, or remind me of him; this smell puts me back there, in that house, smelling those hands which smelled like the freshly cut wood from his band saw, like something from his basement was left inside the cedar chest he made me, like I am inside that house that he built and I've been left alone and I am having another one of those "I'll never forget this particular moment" experiences.

I know Andy Tauer imagined himself in a Moroccan desert. I'm in a house in the woods nearly on top of the 45th parallel; there was a fire in the fireplace last night, fresh wood on the hearth ready to burn, the knotty pine panelling on the walls is 1/2" thick, my grandfather's "coveralls" are hanging on a hook in the hallway waiting for spring and the garden, and I'm waiting for the grown-ups to call me to dinner.

It's not the trip Andy intended, but I'm incredibly grateful to be given it.