When memory is a seeing eye: DSH Pandora

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)

Ephemera

Nothing lasts forever.

Unusual are resurrections, real or illusory.

Nature provides us with a little bit of magic each spring.  Out of seemingly empty ground rises life.  Most of this life stays with us through the growing season.  Those that last the season and then return for another round are "perennial."  Those that pump up the volume, ever churning out the blooms for a constant production of seeds and propagation, but die at the end never to return, are "annual."

Then there are those that appear but briefly, disappearing back into the earth well before the growing season is over, nearly disappearing from our understanding of the very landscape they lie waiting beneath.

The most common of these is bulbs...the crocus, the tulips, the daffodils, the hyacinth, which come up, pump color into an otherwise still waking tableau, and then retreat as the others start to fully develop.  These bulbs are kind of showy, like the supporting actor in a show who chews up the scenery in the second act but has nothing to do for Acts Three through Five.

Less considered are the quiet, more fleeting ephemera.  The ones with gentler blooms, that lurk tucked in shady areas and under the emerging canopies of other plants.  Or which might pop up in plain sight, in an area that the rest of the year reads as "there's nothing there."

Just listening to some of their common names is fun: trout lily (aka dogtooth violet, lat. erythonium americanum)...skunk cabbage...bluebells...dutchmen's breeches...May apple...Jack-in-the-Pulpit...bleeding heart...coltsfoot...lady's slipper...wake robin.

From childhood on, a springtime activity in my life has been keeping an eye out for the ephemerals.  Some would appear in your yard; others required a walk in the woods.  You never knew just when they would appear.  You never could say precisely where they would appear.  Basically, you simply had to be aware and ready.

Looking for ephemerals carries an unfortunate similarity to snipe hunting for those who have never seen them before.  How can you know where to look?  Whether or not you've found what you are looking for?  You need a guide.  My favorite guides were not bound and in my pocket.  They were other humans, people I cared about very much, and who had this magic ability to find a sort of "abracadabra" in the humus.

Loving ephemerals requires both patience and a willing suspension of disbelief.  Patience, to ride the long interval between appearances.  Willing suspension of disbelief because, unlike those showy bulbs, ephemerals present no identifiable presence underground.  Ever.  So, if you miss them, you can't go digging for gold. They're just...roots.  Among other roots.

At the top of the post is a photograph of a patch in a shady part of my yard.  I went back there this weekend on a hunt.  I've been in this house but a few years, so I still find myself pleasantly surprised by the hosta and the bleeding heart that follow the daffodils, all of which are additions I made to a basically bare patch.  You can see they've come up again this year. You can also see a surprise that greeted me back there, a classic sign of the cycles of life, an empty bird's nest.  I look past the bird's nest, still searching.  I take note of something else.  You, of course, can't notice what I can't see, because it isn't there.  I, as you might have guessed, notice it because it isn't there. That something?  Trillium.

Somewhere beneath the dirt here, and in two other patches of "ideal conditions" of the patch of earth I tend to, are the defunct root systems of Trillium grandiflora.  Wake robin.  Ephemerals are tricky.  They tend to live where they choose, not so much where humans decide they should go.  Despite great care in site selection, the trillium I planted have not chosen to reappear.  What is not there is the substance of today's story.  What is not there...but might be.

Yes, my goal is to successfully bring into existence something which by definition will shortly leave.

I am not frustrated, though.  Fleeting beauty has a place in my life...as does accepting that you can't grasp all that you reach for.  I'll continue to cultivate, and wait.

Non-gardening ephemera I cherish:  A belly laugh from a friend.  The "A-ha!" look on a student's face.  Those moments when an ensemble of musicians totally connects with each other in a live performance.  Witnessing an aurora borealis.  Flow.  The smell of En Passant.

En Passant?  Oh, yes; the perfume part.

Perfume is by standard definition ephemeral when an application's duration is measured against the wearer's life span.  But it is not horticulturally ephemeral; it doesn't magically reappear once it has disappeared.

Unless...

Unless that perfume is En Passant.  Olivia Giacobetti's creation for Editions des Parfums Frederic Malle offers the kind of softspoken* scent that a woodland ephemeral could be proud of.  But it's the magic that En Passant pulls off on my skin...drawing me into the bread-y lilac dissipation through a cucumber-y rain with this haunting echo of the thing that connects Apres L'Ondee to L'Heure Bleu (what is that? heliotropin? it's that meringue marzipan desert thing)...making me love it...and then...disappearing.

And then...abracadabra...it's back.  Pulling a wonderful meta-trick; the perfume that is supposed to allow the ghost of Apres L'Ondee to haunt it now haunts you.  You need to be patient...you can't watch the clock...but if you are open to it...you'll find it.

Magic.  Real magic.  That creates the illusion of bottling the ephemeral.

Maybe by the time my bottle runs out, the trillium will come in.  

*please remember that softspoken does NOT equal "simple"

image credits:  Top image author's own.  B& W photograph of trillium undulatum from Chest of Books.  Third image of trillium grandiflorum appears on the Scottish Rock Gardening Club bulb log diary of 2006.

Today's post is included as part of a month long festival of flowers coordinated by artist/perfumer Roxana Villa.  Use the link on the upper left of this page to see Roxana's list of contributing writers and artists, or go to the opening page of Illuminated Journal here.