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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.

Mitsouko Musings

It was time for another whirl around the dance floor with Mitsouko.  I'd been practicing, I've learned a few more steps, there was probably a chance for me to better understand, if not appreciate, it.

As happens for many wearers, Mitsouko prompted musings far beyond my sniffing experience.  I drew steps closer to the fragrance, still experiencing it as "old," but liking it more.  I even found the peach, which had eluded me until now.  (If you happen to have trouble smelling it, too, try holding your sniffer a few inches away from your skin rather than burying it against your skin.  That's where I found the fruit...dangling, if you will.)

I'll come back for more dances with Mitsouko.  Meanwhile, what I'll take out of our recent time together is not so much the sniffery, but the reflections that resulted.  As I spent time with Mitsouko, I realized that I didn't necessarily love it--yet--but I wanted it to survive.  Just as it was.  Not modernized.  Because I might not love it, but I value it.

Around this point in my ruminations, my thoughts hopped onto a different subject:  my former house, and my current house.  My old house was old; today, it is more than 110 years old.  I loved the full timber beam that ran down the middle of the basement, the balloon framing, the original wavy glass windows.  It was challenging to live in:  2 closets for the whole house, a layout meant for entertaining in another era, and a "modern kitchen & bath" that were over 50 years old (and remuddled at that).  We waited to collect money to rebuild the front porch right; solid cedar columns, tongue & groove panelled ceiling, a hint of our personality in the rail baluster pattern.  We did projects we could handle on our own -- ripping up carpeting to expose hardwood, stripping paint from moldings and linoleum tiles from a fireplace mantle, etc. --according to what revealed the house's innate beauty.  We were still waiting for the right money to fix the kitchen appropriately, faithful to what that house called for, when we moved.

That house had personality, and earned my respect and devotion from the day I first slept in it.  I still mourn leaving it.  But...and this is the critical insight my latest dance with Mitsouko taught me...that house was not the best reflection of me.  The architecture I currently inhabit, for all I bemoaned it, reflects the actual me more than I cared to admit.  Friends of mine saw this long before I did.  I dismissed the new house; I was disappointed by what it didn't have that the old house did.  I had spent so much time making sure the old house was honored that I fit myself into it.  And, it did reflect a layer of me.  A few layers of me, in fact.

But this house I live in now, it is more honestly who I am.  Can geometry reflect personality?  I think so, even if I cannot explain how.  An open floor plan, multiple levels visible from one spot, plenty of closets to store stuff, clean lines with the fussiness placed here and there but not something that need be edited at the very bones...this "landscape" is more me.  I will defend, love, and admire the old house always.  And it is a part of me.  But it may not be most of me.

I will also do all that I can to preserve and protect a classic like Mitsouko.  Folks should. But, truth be told, a more "modern" scent composition may be a better, fuller expression of who I am.  

Time will tell.

(And I'll try to remember that the fruit might be just beyond where I am expecting to find it.)

Memory, Place, and Perfume

It's Thanksgiving in the United States.  Time to travel home, or have folks travel to you.  

No, this is not going to be about the scent of pumpkin pie.

This year is a travel home one for me.  I spent a long time on the road yesterday--twice as long as it should have been, but musings on congestion, cars, and American habits I will save for another day.  By the time I started rolling through what qualifies as "home turf," Andrew Bird was singing about a tic on the left side of the head through the car speakers, and I found myself reflecting on the geography of home and the question of whether or not you can go home again started weaving through thoughts of perfume journeys.

Let's see if I can lead you through this.  It's about how we become who we are, and whether or not our descent into and through the realm of perfume follows a similar pattern.

I have long been fascinated by, and believed, the idea that geography helps shape character.  I also think that somehow, we can find pieces of our very essence in places we might not expect or have never been before.  In other words, home geography might help define us, but it doesn't have to BE part of us.  Hence, some people ride into the turf that was their childhood, and have a visceral sense of connection, place, nostalgia, longing, relief, desire.  For others, crossing through the turf of their childhood may evoke a "I'm so glad I got the hell out of Dodge" kind of response.  Some may not experience much of anything...no connection, no repulsion, just "meh." When I drive back to the terroir that incubated me, I have the first kind of response.   

Geographical nurturing  influences some of that response.  But our inner nature can be powerful, also, and I feel some of that comes into play for me.  For someone like my mother, nature trumps nurture; she finds her emotional connection in the desert southwest, even though she was born in the northern plains and raised in the northern woods.  When it comes to our geographic emotional connections, both elements are at play.

When I was making and teaching film, I discussed the idea of geography as part of a character, landscape as both mood and content cue, and indeed, geography as character itself.  Many writers and directors feel the land both defines us, and determines what choices we have for literal and figurative movement.  And land may indeed call to us.

Interesting, but where does the perfume come in to this?

Not as scent memory.   Rather, as metaphor for our olfactory journey.  The journey that is our exploration of perfume, our path through notes, combinations, and preferences.  Consider for a moment the blog writer or poster who discusses their path through perfume:  "When I started, I was into x kind of scents, but now find I am into strong x scents."  Add in a common aversion:  "that is a Grandma perfume," or "I kind of like it, but my mother wore it, so no way for me."  What prompts this movement along a scent path?  Is it entirely an evolving olfactory sophistication?  Or might some portion of the process be defined as a reaction...a movement away from the familiar, the territory of the known, of homeland, and toward exploring new lands?  Perhaps even a form of rebellion against the past, a strong statement of independence...a barbaric yawp of youth?

Will we go home again?  Can we?  Should we?  Must we?

I wonder if eventually, the curve of scent appreciation might lead some folks back home again.  In the same way that many adults who spent the first portion of their independent years forging their identities as far from their stomping grounds as possible, then find themselves back--whether for the emotional connection, or because it is the only place they can imagine their own children spending a youth, or because after exploring all the other places in the world, they find it is the one that suits them best after all.  

Some folks will never come back; the mountains were never right, and a life on or near the sea is what suits them best.

But might not some, who so strongly say "I'll never do that/go back," find that doing that/going back is exactly what they DO do?

I am spending the day in the geography of my youth.  I will not wear the scents of my grandmothers; I am still busy forging and proclaiming my own perfume identity.  But I am feeling quite connected to place.  Perhaps someday I will feel equally connected to a perfume.

I wonder... For those of us with more than a few bottles lying around, does desire to collect scent reflect a desire to chart a journey, record a path?  Is it more than simply wanting to own, but perhaps a need to keep sensory contact with memory?  Might the path of their olfactory exploration, and their choices along the way, somehow mirror their relation to their life path?  

Such were my thoughts in the dark on the two-lane.  Now, the sun is up, and it's time for me to join my family.  Elements of today will be familiar; others will be new.  One day, in a string of others before and more to come.  I plan on it all adding up to a pleasant whole.  

Have a fantastic day.   I'm off to make pumpkin pie.