Assembled / Disassembled, or, Another Equinox

Not a post about IKEA or RTA furniture.

A post half about perfume, half about perspective.

All on a day of balance.  Happy Equinox.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

Once again, a turn of the earth

Another equinox come and gone.


With me apparently lost in the earth's turnings.  Sorry about that.

I woke up with this morning with the Fleur de Narcisse I had applied yesterday afternoon a bit boozier, a bit sweeter, and still ever so wonderful.  There is something about this one that matches "equinox" so perfectly for me.  I suspect, as I have mused before, that it connects with the same part of me that so loves digging in the dirt, putting my nose in flower and foliage, and lifting a slightly cocked head to the air to catch wafts of cut grass and cooked compost.

FdN has been a guilty and peculiar passion of mine since I first smelled it.  It doesn't "develop," really, though I could swear it "integrates."  Especially during times of the year when your clothing and the temperature DO "develop" during the day.  (Layers on, layers off.  See your breath, get warmed by the sun.)  Fleur de Narcisse is something that I don't even bother to take out of its precious little crate during much of the year.

Kind of like I don't even bother to peek inside the compost pile during high summer or the depths of winter.

But now...now...let's take the fork and poke in there a bit.  Naw, let's stab heartily and turn it over and see what we've got.

When life is good, in the pile you find something dark and easily crumbled and just the right moist and know it will be good for your garden.  In the crate, you find something bright dark and with depth and though it sings the same chord you are happy to let it ring like a prayer bowl and just get lost inside it.

Both smell good.

Once upon a time I was afraid to write about FdN, because it was/is so darn expensive.  I could pull the "what with the change in attitudes and prices when it comes to perfume, the L'Artisan harvest range is now more hiccup in thinking rather than deal breaker" attitude.  Because I won't.  Because putting down more than two C-notes (see, still the guilt; really, it's straight up three C's) for a bottle of perfume is putting down a lot of hours of working-persons paycheck.  Of course, why people were so comfortable picking on L'Artisan for this, and yet openly purchasing bottles of, say, Uncle Serge, which is nearly the same price per ml, I'm not quite sure.  The "exclusive" presentation?  Please.  There's no better run cult than that of Serge Lutens.  To be sure, I love Chergui...I mean, a LOT, especially in the right season...but I'd rank my Chergui experience in the same plane as my Fleur de Narcisse one.  As in, rich, heady, takes me away...but about the same in complexity and "evolution."

I'd argue that somebody did a much better job of selling one pile of compost over another.

Nonetheless, things are what they are.  Perfume folk are trying to decide how to get their hands on the juice inside an exclusive Scandinavian bottle.  Meanwhile, somewhere Eau de Polder sits unchatted about in a cute flask.  No, not an artisan bottle.  I get that.  But I'm just saying...

Oh, fie.  "Uncle," I cry.  Quality of juice and packaging and willing climate among consumers and adept sales machines and all get muddled together often enough.  I'm going to go back to my last wafts of Fleur de Narcisse, whose tobacco-y hay-ed somewhat liquered up narcissus has been such a source of pleasure this round.

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Incidentally, patient readers with a good memory will recall that my bottle of FdN was an anniversary gift from my spouse of limited identity and only occasional mention.*  It occurs to me that there is no finer tangible substance to offer up as a gift marking many, many years of togetherness than a something which is not easily obtained, yet is easily identified (limited harvest, narcissus), and which brings hearty pleasure, yet only to the right audience (my experience, my peculiar nose).  It's nowhere near the date, but the ability to unearth the discovery of a Happy Anniversary is, as a famous fan of compost used to say, a Good Thing.

*Bonkers, as I like to refer to refer to Flittersniffer, author of "Bonkers About Perfume," once ruminated on how perfume bloggers refer to their significant others.  (See "Dear Husband...")  Nicknames abound, as she pointed out.  Here, there is none.  Whether that pronouncement should have a "yet" attached to it is yet to be determined.


Photo credit: author's own.

Belated Happy Vernal Equinox

image: author's own

Comfort Scents for Uncomfortable Times

It is the vernal equinox, and I have had a habit of writing about “balance” when the equipoise of day and night arrive.  However, I was invited to join some wonderful bloggers in thinking about “Comforting Scents for Uncomfortable Times”...and given the range of perspectives and styles of voice among this fun group, I’m gonna call this balance.  Rather, a post.  About balance.  In the form of comfort.  When not comfortable.

Okay.  Think it through.  In order to say what is comforting, I need to be particular about what kind of comfort we’re talking about.  

For example, am I seeking/enjoying comfort in the company of another?  In the arms of another?

Am I looking to lose myself?  Be blissful, without worrying out how anyone else is doing?

Am I seeking the comfort of protection?  When I need this protection to feel safe--comforted--do I need it to be low key?  Loud?  Something that will keep people at a distance, or something that will only seem like armor if you keep your distance?

I thought.  And came up with some scents...and a couple of surprises.  But I get ahead of myself.  First...

Comfort.  For the Vernal Equinox 2010.  

Comfort, as I am thinking of it today, is something sought.  It’s not centering which brings peace.  It’s not “happy.”  It is a place...some perfumes can take you there.

But there is variety in the where that is “there.”

SNUGGLY:

✒Just me?  Doesn’t matter who might smell me?  But I want to feel...

     Sensuous ~ Feminite du Bois

     Wrapped in warmth with a hint of elation ~ Attrape Couer

     In touch with my inner bitch ~ Bandit

     In touch with my inner naif ~ Acqua Allegoria Aqua Fresca

     Gently reminded of beauty, on and off but throughout the day ~ En Passant

     Is there anyone else in the world? ~ once upon a time, this was L’Ombre Fauve.  Liz Zorn’s Journeyman was there for a while, but it is discontinued.  Position is open.  Please apply. 

✒Me and someone else?  And I’d like them to enjoy, too?

     Sensuous ~ Magie Noire

     Cozy in cashmere ~ Chergui

     Mmmmmm ~ Ava Luxe Vamp wafting up from my top drawer.  

     

PROTECTED:

✒Makes you think I’m a cool customer...until you get to know me ~ Chanel No. 19

✒Cozy, warm, but strangely unavailable ~ Bois Blond 

✒Hey, you smell good...what’s this force field? ~ Pick a cool iris.  Like Hiris.

The surprises?  Two of them.  One, a realization that something that something I like, that as a note is generally guaranteed to get me to say “ahhhh, nice,” actually serves as a kind of chain mail.  No, silly, not chain mail that is super annoying and against postal law anyway.  The woven metal kind.  The lighter than full-out armor but still provides protection stuff.  The kind butchers and fishmongers wear as gloves to this day as protection from sharp blades.  The kind that is apparently beneath the note than can be warm orris root, but when chilled and earthed out a bit, still says “beautiful”...but Not Vulnerable.  Iris.  Cool iris.

The other surprise hit me after I drafted my list.  Bois Blond?  But that’s my happy sunshine scent!  Of course, there’s comfort in laying in the sun on a spring day when you can smell the grass and the ground and know everything is warming up, right down to the bones...yours...the earth’s....how in the world did that end up in the “protected” category?  And it struck me.  It’s the opposite of the chilly reception followed by the reveal of a warm heart that is a scent like Chanel No. 19.  Bois Blond is...warm heart, on your sleeve, everything in motion toward joy...with a hint of resolve.  Not steely resolve, like, say, a cool iris.  Not Imma Gonna SmackYa resolve of leather.  No, it’s strong, tenacious, stubborn resolve.  The note that I think does that is tobacco.  The effect, whatever the note, is very appropriate. The effect tells you the wearer has a back which is flexible but is not going to be easily broken.    

No wonder it came to me for both protection and the equinox.  As you lay on the earth on a warm mid-spring day, and can smell both dried plant material and growing greens, all being coaxed out by the heat of the sun on the dirt which is coming up to temperature but not quite ready for planting, you rest.  Assured that whatever the challenges, the earth will keep turning.  

With a smile on its face.  Resolve doesn’t always have to be grim.

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Here are the other bloggers participating in today’s project.  I always enjoy reading their various perspectives; hope you do, too.

Roxana's Illuminated Journal ** BitterGrace Notes ** Perfume Shrine ** Scent Hive ** The Non Blonde ** Perfume in Progress ** Katie Puckrik Smells ** A Rose Beyond the Thames ** I Smell Therefore I Am ** Olfactarama ** All I Am A Redhead  ** Savvy Thinker ** SmellyBlog


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This group blog was coordinated by Ayala Sender.  I thank her for the invite.  Ayala informs me the title of the post is an homage to Michelyn Camen's original article of this same name on Sniffapalooza Magazine in 2008, in which she interviewed several perfumers to comment on what botanical elements make their perfumes comforting.

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.

Equinox: Balance

We just passed an autumn equinox. While the equinox is commonly understood as the point at which day & night are equal, it in fact refers specifically to relative placement of sun to equator. Day/Night equality has not been reached for most, not quite yet. Every point on the globe is now approaching its day in which day and night will be in balance, in equal length.

So here we thought balance had arrived, when it was truly just ahead...

...a story I know all too well.

In terms of perfume, I profess to be the person who would much rather spend time with a scent, inhabit it, let it inhabit me...discover what season, time of day, weather, mood all do to what happens after I put it on. I shall profess and protest it to be true for always. One side of the pendulum...be in the moment, explore the moment, savor the moment, discover the many moments across time.

But I am also a collector and a preserver, and a person who has rudimentary knowledge of how to operate spreadsheet software. Combine that with the desire to learn and discover, and you get the other side of the pendulum...what is out there, how does this one note get expressed in these various formulations, ooh what's that...and the pendulum swings the other way, putting me smack dab in the midst of an orgy of scent and finding the many moments in one spot of time.

Where is the balance? Not sure yet. I think the escape is in the sabbaticals I take...in the realm of perfume, total stoppages of scent. Sometimes, it gets to be all too much, noise of many kinds, and I need a time out. The first time that happened, I freaked out a little bit. I thought that something I had just started to learn about, that I really had taken an interest in, fell off my radar never to emerge again. Lost in a Bermuda Triangle of my brain. Very disorienting, and a bit disconcerting...what about the investment? what about the STUFF?

And then, when guilt panic abated, sadness. What about the joy that the solid hits had brought, time and again? Would I never experience that again?

Then the desire came back. And I realized that my foray into perfume was merely echoing other passions in my life...intense soaking up of all possible input periods, equally intense soaking up of single/unique expressions periods. It would seem that, much as has been true of other creative endeavors like music for me, I would require a period (or periods) of complete hibernation. And I would have to accept that I could not predict when it would return.

So, I'm going to continue to think of myself as capable of a committed relationship to certain perfumes, even as I accept there will be times when I explore the field. There will even be times when I'll be ignoring every one altogether. But I'll always be thinking about our history, and our current moment, and ponder our future.

Therein will be my balance. I think.

Renewed Romance: Bois Blond

Here's one indication spring finally has opened the door:  I'm in love with Bois Blond.  Again.

Bois Blond is one of my original triumverate of "me" scents.  But it was set aside for other explorations, and for fear that I would run out and never, ever have it again.  Time passed. Then I tried Bois Blond a couple of times in the depths of winter.  It was just not the same. Which made me sad, because I had loved it so profoundly, and it made me scared, because I had loved it so much I invested in back-up.  (A full bottle of anything is rare for me, let alone a spare bottle, for which I do not have a temperature perfect hermetically sealed time travelling capsule.)  I could only console myself with the knowledge that as a "limited edition," I might someday have the heart to sell the back-up bottle and invest in other loves.

Enter today.

Here it is, returned, in all of its hay dappled in sweet with hints of tobacco glory.  Hooray!!  *This* is the power of perfume for me; the ability to capture my thinking fancy while putting me into a strong emotional zone.  For me, that zone from Bois Blond is deeply happy calm.  Not placid calm, but centered calm.  As in, there can be plenty floating (bouncing? banging?) around in my head, but it won't bother me or even sound like noise if I have this on me.

Marina reviews it here; Aromascope posts a guest review from BB fan Elena Singh here; Sakecat and her fascinating perfume project get something entirely different from it than I do.  Mind you, Elena picks up on the galbanum, which I tend to gravitate toward but do not find in this.  I guess my feelings are closest to Marina's, who mentions damp hay; I'd agree, but put it squarely out in the sun and sprinkle honey over top.  And the warmth of the sun goading out wafts of tobacco.  Then again, Nathan Branch gets a similar vibe.

All I know is, I'm glad to have it, glad I tried again, and delighted to have it on.  Some loves are best in specific contexts, I guess.  It probably will take quite a few dates, in quite a few venues, over all the seasons, to decide if ultimately this is romance can be a marriage.

Guess I've found a place in my life where there's room for big love...

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UPDATE...6 hours later

Just would like to point out that I am STILL feeling the love, with plenty of reward when nose goes to wrist.  Thank you, lasting power.  This is like my LZ Journeyman (or Cuir de Lancome...or Chergui), only for the other side of the global year spin.

Which has really gotten me to thinking...perfumes that are "through the looking glass"?  More anon....

Equinox

Consider the equinox. Sun directly overhead, day time equal to night time. Things in balance.

What perfume to wear for such an occasion? Do we bring in those which continue a balance throughout their development? Or which turn equally from one extreme to another, as our day will turn to our night today?

Balanced presentation throughout: Lancome Magie Noire, which continues a steady if subdued rose underneath is animalistic veneer. Armani Pierre de Lune, which keeps the violet and lightly metallic whiff of green going throughout. L'Artisan Fleur de Narcisse, which keeps the tobacco and hay going against narcissus and leather throughout the run.

Turn arounds: L'Artisan Poivre Piquant, which starts as a sharp peppery single note on me, and transitions into a creamy blended skin scent. If you've been reading for a while, you already know that SIP Black Rosette goes here. Molinard Habanita, which continually bounces back and forth between gently fruity floral and tobacco on me--which I guess means multiple turn arounds, so it is good for a few revolutions.

I'm not ready to vote one approach more correct than the other; after all, it's important to maintain a balanced view of these things. But if you've got additions to either list, I'm all--erm, half--ears.