Dans Tes Bras

I've been sniffing this one on occasion for, oh, say, a year and a half.

The two times previous to this one, I was all "hunh, it's another kind of somewhat powdery violet, really."  Which was a relief of a synthesis, because for a year I'd been waiting to smell these nearly rank mushrooms, thanks to the early word.  And, truth be told, when I finally had my "it's this simple" little epiphany, I also found the mushroom.  It was the effect of violet + something that comes out as it goes into stage 2.  Still figuring that one out, but for me at least, the mushroom "aha!" was all about the collective effect of the notes together, not a spot where one can dig and find a mushroom.

Yesterday, something new happened.  I'm going to try it again, to see if it happens again.  But all at once, I saw/sniffed the following:

Take one

and go bury it in some moderately rich soil.

Watch these sprout from the planting spot

but don't huff quite yet.  Wait until fall, when the roots have become established, and the plant is now fully established.

Now yank it out entire from the ground, and shake off most, but not all, of the dirt.  Sniff, but from the root end, not at the flowers.

Voila!  Dans tes Bras, my nose, early October 2010.

I had the best time with it ever.  There was promise in the not-quite-that-simple powdery violet opening, which revealed the reward of earthy foliage twiggy-ness, all cushioned in comfort softness.  

I want to go back.  I want.  I want even though the third act is, well, a bit of a drop off.  I'm going to drain my small portion, but right now, even as I remain uncertain of the finale, I'm ready to skip the larger decant stage and go straight to full bottle.

Which is partly intellectual--I like supporting Malle's project (as if my occasional relatively paltry investments count as "support"), but mostly emotional/pleasure based.  I want to go there, into that spot of mostly composted dirt where someone unearthed this strange new plant, wrapped in a cashmere blanket and ready to tuck in for a while.

When I wake up, I'll put the plant back in the ground, so I can come back for more next season.

Please take a moment to enter a theory on Ondee On Ice, if you are inclined and have not done so already.  You can play "Clue" style, if you like...either suspect, or accuse....


images:
Blue Violet taken by Scott Schwenk, viewable at the Hubbard Brook Project
L'Heure Bleue bottle from Octavian's 1000 Fragrances blog, in a post titled "L'Heure Bleue, Fol Arome, Pois de Senteur" 

Falling in Love, 2009

Today, I participate in a joint bloggers project -- "Falling in Love: Scents and Treats for Fall."
My treat is the falling in love; I offer but a single scent today, because I wrap my experience of re-falling in love with it with the joy that is the moment of creative flow.  Hope you enjoy; thanks for stopping by.  


The full list of participating bloggers appears at the bottom of my post.  Please visit all as you get the chance.  


Happy Fall.
✍
This is what it is like to sit in the middle of an orchestra.  You are surrounded by people, arcing to either side.  You face the conductor, who seeks to pull your heart and talent through his or her own while at the same time they reach out to you, the collective you, to seek your heart and find the empathetic waves.  Empathetic sound waves that find themselves vibrating together in pitch and creating a new sound as a result.  Empathetic rhythms that both groove together and play off each other.  Empathetic tonal qualities that respect and expand on each other.  The sum is greater than its parts.

You are dancing together.  Each of your individual movements matter, but mean so much because of what they are in the whole.

~~~~

I have loved L’Artisan’s Fleur d’Narcisse from the first time I wore it.  The idea of narcissus drew me in--not the myth, the flower.  I am an avid gardener, a passion that didn’t erupt until I was clearly established as an adult.  Narcissus--daffodils to us northern gardeners--has been a favorite flower from the start of my gardening days.  From before, actually; one of the first drawings I remember creating in response to a teacher’s assignment to “draw a flower.”  I also recall her saying “think of spring flowers.”

~~

When an orchestra is composed of talent who is young, or not top-flight, or exploring a genre outside their comfort zone, their work at arriving at a fully presented piece can be full of fits and starts.  Entire passages of beauty and ensemble, peppered with pockets of struggle from single players or an entire section.  The zone to your left may have an all out groove going on, and to your right is two people on a stand, trying to find their pitch.

~~~~

Narcissus bulbs are planted in fall.  They are, according to some books, full of “potential energy."

~~

There is a moment in rehearsal when you know you are nailing it.  Collectively, individually, single player to conductor, within the section, across sections...all the possible ways to pick apart the composition that is the piece being played.  Part of you may even feel a certain joy as it observes the experience from a slightly detached viewpoint, but the rest of you is in the moment, a moment that is not frozen but ever proceeding.

~~~~~

There was a moment I had with Fleur de Narcisse the other day.  It was one of those fall days that had been grey, cold without the crisp promise of transition.  Then the sun came out, and the clouds sat in stark relief against a sky that had patches of brilliant blue even as areas of grey hovered at one horizon.  It became crisp.  Fall became fall, that season where you feel both where you have come from and where you are going.

I huffed at my wrist...a thing I do on a regular basis, now that I’ve developed this passion for perfume.  I was expecting that happy snorfling around I usually have with FdN, rooting around in hay and tobacco with an aura of warmed by sunshineness that I have always gotten from it.

Instead, I got daffodils.

Narcissus poeticus, the vegetal parts with a hint of that odd scent from the flower, stretching up out of its bulb, green stem poking up between compost.  Hay and tobacco compost, yes, but THERE WAS THE NARCISSUS.  Holy cow.  A year with this scent, and I am having an epiphany.  The narcissus was always there.  

It just needed that moment when I experienced the empathetic chord.

Oh. my. 

And, like those times when you are inside the music and it is all working just so, you are having a moment.  But the moment is not frozen, it is the point of realization plus all that flows from that moment.  

~~

Fleur de Narcisse is me falling in love.  Fleur de Narcisse is fall.  Yes, it is a spring flower.  But our knowledge of the spring flower rests on the previously established potential.  

Our appreciation of fall lies in the knowing that another spring will come, while reading back through the history that has defined us to that point even as we prepare for another regeneration.

Falling in love occurs in that moment when you recognize what lies in front of you, how beautiful the moment you are having together is, and what it is going to be to drawn out of that empathetic moment...and the potential yet-to-be created moments.

~~~~~

Thank you, Fall 2009, for bringing me my epiphany and accord with Fleur de Narcisse.  I’ve fallen in love all over again.

other bloggers in the Falling in Love project:

The Non-Blonde

Bittergrace Notes

Under the Cupola

Mais que Perfume

Ayala Smelly Blog

Savvy Thinker

Olfactarama

Ars Aromatica

Mossy Loomings

I Smell therefore I am

Tea Sympathy and Perfume

and, she who led us all in to this happy project,

Perfume Shrine


photo credit:  "Autumn in Sepia" by Rick Lundh (via gallery.photo.net)

Autumn heart in a bottle: Bois Blond

You know, people can get gloomy in the fall. Shortening of the days, plants going underground, chill in the air, blah blah blah.

I love it. I love every season when it comes, to be honest. But now it's autumn's turn to get the love.

There is something powerful about the sun at this time of year; it is sweet and warm in character as well as color and temperature, if shorter in duration. The earth gets warmed just enough to have a good loamy smell before settling into a cool uncomposted leafy something. There is a gentle urgency to the chores in the garden, the knowledge that they must be done now, even as a few moments of basking are allowed.

That pause between urgency and lounging...the overlay of one on top of the other...put into relief both the beauty of sunny warmth and greyish brownish chill.

Bois Blond is all about the foreshortened sunny warmth of a fully lived season. It's the hay after a full day of sun, cooked ambery, still sweet with greenish vegetation. It's an embrace on a bright autumn day. It opens all about the tobacco and the hay, and ends up with both cooked in the sun, part of a moldering compost heap that has hints of the sweet Guillame-ade. "I heart BB," says the text to my BFF. It's so wonderful on a sunny autumn day. It's all joy that understands melancholy--it might even have been there before, but isn't going to go back...yet.