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.

*|*   *|*   *|*   *|*   *|*   
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.

*|*   *|*   *|*   *|*   *|*   

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.

*|*   *|*   *|*   *|*   *|*   

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.

*|*   *|*   *|*   *|*   *|*

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.

*|*   *|*   *|*   *|*   *|*

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

Say what?

Avast ye, mateys, and hoist yer scurvy selves to a benign bit o' bloggery.

'Tis International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Arrrrrrrrrrrr.

(Thanks to pirate bits like that, th' tongue can be shared across th' Seven Seas...what ye lads and lassies yell te be "intarnashn'l.")

Shiver me timbers, 'tis Anne Bonny!

P-}

(That thar be a bucko emoticon, if yer fixin' to savvy.)


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(chooppy seas)

Also today, perhaps and perhaps not, the anniversary of the creation of the emoticon.  Wired is running a "This Day in Tech" bit about the purported perpetrator of perplexing symbolage, Scott Fahlman.  However, the story of the attempt to concoct symbolry to clarify text communications gets immediately murky, for as Wired points out, typesetters have been pressing (HA!) type-based non-verbal communication upon us for many moons before that.

Oddly, I myself had a bit of an emotical dust-up with the OAITH (Other Adult in the House), when he perceived that a virtual missive I sent came with barbed tongue, rather than gentle greeting.  Why?

:)

That's right, a smiley face.

Apparently, geeks have used this archly, to convey, well, an edgyness, rather than the placid contentment I was trying to convey.

The scallywag was ready to hop aboard the Man-O-War and make sharkbait o' me.

Fortunately, all was cleared up before he blew the messenger down.  But Blimey! who knew I had stepped into a bilge-sucking morass of hempen halter code.

So, I've been thinking on these two things today, Local Talk Like a Pirate But Watch Yer Emoticons Day.

And then of course, fixed it upon myself to link it all to perfume.

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What perfumes have the potential to flub the message between perfume-lubbers?  Or even perfume lovers, for that matter?

I for one hold Chanel No. 19 aloft.  You know, Luca Turin's wire-hanger mother?  The one folks refer to as "cold" and "distance keeping"?  I mean, okay, the galbanum is bracing, but people, there is green flower in there.  I don't wear it as a "buzz off" kind of fragrance; I wear it in the same manner I might pick a pair of Italian shoe boots for the day.  They are both beautiful, have clean lines, and support me when I need to attend to business, but don't quite cross over into bee-yotch territory.

Not to me, at least.

Here, here's another one:  Serge Lutens Musc Kublai Khan.  You know what that says to me?  It says "me and my men have just been out riding on horses and camels for a few days with no shower in sight and we might have rolled in something along the way and we're just going to plonk down next to you here and if you don't like it you better run FAST because we're already enveloping you and if you don't faint you might retch."  You know what I've heard someone else say about it?  "MMMMmmmm, cozy."

Is what we have here a failure to communicate?  In this case, I don't think so; I think here it is simply different languages.  Like, say, German and Chinese.  Phonemes and graphemes.  You say potato, I say rubber stamp.  Because I think we are not even experiencing the same thing, let alone deciding what that something means.  So let me take this moment to clarify what I am trying to find in terms of examples of perfume mis-communication:  We both agree it is a smiley face.  I mean, say, a lily of the valley.  But what does lily of the valley signify?

Speaking of lily of the valley, let's hop to that gem of a note for the moment.  Have you noticed folks waxing nostalgic about, say, Diorissimo?  It is a lovely creation.  I can acknowledge that a) it smells like lily of the valley, and b) it is pretty.  But from there, you and I might diverge.  Because, truth be told (here I go into a Very Quiet Voice, so as not to offend), it is this|close to being, well...simpering.  Blow me down if one of my fiercest friends, she who dons Mitsouko like a cutlass and Femme like a come hither va-voom dress, says it makes her feel pretty.  Me?  I feel like...oh, I don't know, Nellie Olsen, stripped of sass, left with nothing but banana curls and a very clean pinafore.

Hey, speaking of Femme...let's talk cumin for a moment.  There's a note that I frequently find myself nodding along with the crowd when we determine whether or not it is present.  But then...what does it mean, to have it there?  To me, it's generally B.O. or panties, which trust me, in my world does not mean "come hither."  It means hither was reached 3-5 hours ago.  But wait, that's not how I *receive* a message, that's how I interpret what is sent.  Hmmm.

Here.  How about Big Flower Bombs, and/or Big White Florals.  Like...let's go classic here...Fracas.  What does that say to you?  Sexy bombshell coming through?  Or Tennessee Williams character who is slightly unaware of being past prime?  Undulating vixen?  Or flat footed floozy with floy, floy?

It's a problem that has been posed before:  for whom is our message in the bottle?  Sender, or receiver?  Directly connected of course to the question "do you wear perfume for yourself, or for others"?

All I know is, there are times when folks have described what message a particular scent conveys, and my head tilts to the side.  ("Are you talkin' to ME?")  But I know that unless they ARE talking to me, there's room for different translations.

However, if we are trying to talk to each other, it would probably be best if we made sure our lingua franca was all simpatico.

:)

image of Anne Bonny taken from Hanging Cup Pictures,

also found at the delightful Geography All The Way

engraving apparently by the peripatetic "anonymous"

oil painting of a message in a bottle by  Nancy Poucher at Daily Painting

Independence Day

One of my favorite ways to reflect upon the day a group of colonists declared their independence from a monarch who "‎has has sent swarms of officers, to harass our people and eat out our substance..." is by reading the letters between John and Abigail Adams.




I say that as if I spend a lot of time reading these letters, and, for that matter, reflecting upon our independence.  


I don't.  But I should.

Happy Independence Day, America.  Your myths and your truths, both the difficult and the wonderful, worthy of contemplation.






Philadelphia July 24th, 1775

My dear,

It is now almost three Months since I left you, in every Part of which my Anxiety about you and the Children, as well as my our Country, has been extreme.

The business I have had upon my Mind has been as great and important as can be intrusted to [One] Man, and the Difficulty and Intricacy of it is prodigious. When 50 or 60 Men have a Constitution to form for a great Empire, at the same Time that they have a Country of fifteen hundred Miles extent to fortify, Millions to arm and train, a Naval Power to begin, an extensive Commerce to regulate, numerous Tribes of Indians to negotiate with, a standing Army of Twenty seven Thousand Men to raise, pay, of victual and officer, I really shall pity those 50 or 60 Men.I must see you e'er long. -----Rice, has wrote me a very good Letter, and so has Thaxter, for which I thank them both. Love to the Children.

J.A..

P. S. I wish I had given you a compleat History from the Beginning to the End of the Journey, of the Behaviour of my Compatriots. No martial Mortal Tale could equal it. I will tell you in Future, but you must shall keep it secret. The Fidgets, the Whims, the Caprice, the Vanity, the Superstition, the Irritability of some of us, is enough to ------

Yr. J. A.

To Mrs. Abigail Adams, Braintrie, to the Care of Col. Warren, favor'd by Mr. Hichborne








photo of a letter from John to Abigail, dated Philadelphia July 24th, 1775 found at Revolutionary War and Beyond website


photo of a cherry branch, author's own

Leafy Perception and Sorting out Detail

When I first started this blog, I alluded to, and then briefly wrote about my experience nearly losing my eyesight.

At the time, I was aswirl with fears and recalculations of life and trying to come to terms with it all.  As for many people, sight is my dominant sense.  I am a teacher, a reader, a writer; a filmmaker; and a musician whose greatest strength might be sight reading.

And I am a gardener.  Who studied it seriously enough to make it an avocation, and who chose not to make it a vocation, but relies upon it as a form of meditation.   So it was not the generic laments of "how will I read?" or "how can I create images on film?" or "will I be valuable, can I even function happily, as a musician who cannot read music?"  Each of those had their own levels of solvability.

It was when I looked across one of my garden beds out front, thinking I would scan for weeds, and realized I could not even differentiate the leaves of the wanted plants, that I was whalloped.

One of many amazing things about the human eye (and our brain) is how we can see this, this image as recorded by a camera, but then also instantly and seemingly simultaneously scan for up close detail.  Standing from this point, I can look into and across the top of the foliage and identify where errant grasses and weeds are.  Kind of hard here, even if you click on the picture and open it up bigger.

So I have to approximate what our eyes can do.  Kind of like I needed to that day I stood a few paces away from the bed out front, and had a rapid, blistering series of realizations.

Like our amazing eye/brain communication, I was simultaneously realizing "Hey, I can't see the weeds!"  and "Hey, I can't see...much of anything.  Green.  That's it."  All the while moving in closer and closer...

The killer was I got right in on top of the leaves.  Which, in that case, were siberian iris, ornamental grasses, and regular lawn grass grown tall enough to flower and go to seed.

Not that I'd know.

I was done for.

***

I take a lot of close up and macro images.  For all kinds of reasons:  they rarely fail to interest me, it's a shortcut to helping make a picture "work," it's the only way to be sure certain details my eye-brain is registering are being communicated to the viewer.

When I lost my eyesight--when it went fuzzy, when I watched it glaze over and out--I didn't just lose a type of input.  I lost an important physical metaphor for sorting and thinking.  Learning and practicing are complex things, and putting learned practiced knowledge and ability to work creating is yet another complex something.

When it comes to camera images, you can sort manually that which your brain does intuitively.  See that picture there, with the angelica and the purple iris in the foreground and the peach and purple iris in the left background?  Pull it up large.  Let your eye scan over it.  Decide what it in sharpest focus.  In photography parlance, you are identify just what plane in the depth of field was made to be the center of attention.

In overblown fiction parlance, a character hones their eagle eyed attention on the pointy sharp edges of a loosely fronded angelica stalk, and notes the sharp contrast between edge and the surrounding air.

Either way, you just sorted detail that was already sorted. Look again; that picture was not taken by having the camera a foot away from the angelica.  The camera is at a distance, and zoomed in on the angelica stalks.  The fence in the far background is over 10 feet away from the angelica, and not a soft wash of grey, but series of sharp edged planks with clearly visible graining and splinters.  WHEN one's attention is upon it.  This angle/lens choice removes the option of paying attention to that.

So, you sorted a further level of detail from a collection of input that had already been pared.  That's a lot of thinking.  That's a lot of deciding where and when to pay attention.  

All of the levels are important.  When you stand back from the garden, there is a flow, a rhythm, both in the moment and over time.  There are colors to mix/complement/contrast, smells to consider, heights to account for both in terms of visual pleasure and plant survival.  Whose pleasure and whose survival, of course, being another set of variables.

***

So when I think about the ability to scan a planted area and pick out the wanted from the not wanted, feel the rhythm the planting establishes and determine if there are any breaks or hiccups, imagine what the textural and color palette will present in the future and if amendments should be made accordingly, I occasionally think of what I imagine a perfumer does.  How they select their elements to play together in the moment and over time, in what proportion...and how they must reach in to "pluck" that which does not belong, whether instinctively (thanks to long experience) or by careful process of elimination.  Or guesswork, which will lead to learning.  In my imagination, it is instinctive--but as a gardener I know that sometimes it is long experience which leads to the non-thinking but correct gesture.

On the other hand, as a musician, I know that the "right" gesture can be the result of training, or instinct, or a combination of both.

I also know that my ability to garden was ominously threatened by the prospect of losing my sight.  Which at the time reminded me of the dreams I would sometimes have in my youth about losing or seriously injuring a finger, as my instrument requires the use of all fingers on both hands.  

Perfumers must hate having colds, right?  Or the threat of brain trauma leading to anosmia?  Or even the temporary anosmia that can result from certain illnesses or conditions?

all photographs author's own

Sweeping generalizations

I started my day by sweeping.  Outside.  An activity which here in America was often depicted as the bailiwick of immigrant women who had trouble speaking English and a penchant for wearing housecoats all day.

There is a threat of rain, and I figured it would be a good idea to gather me maple buds while I may, before they were all washed toward the patio drain, leading to a clog and the creation of a sort of wading pool inhabited by metal furniture and a firepit.

I also enjoy being outside.  It is spring, for realz.  A chance to breathe fresh air, listen to the birds, redirect the energies I would rather be putting into the garden (it is still EARLY spring around here).  And, quite frankly, a chance to avoid sitting syndrome, a malady to which I fear I have become quite prone in this the most recent act of my life.

So I swept.  I swept, and I felt a callous building.  I swept, and I thought.  I swept, and a pile slowly gathered.  I thought about big ideas, about the second half of life.  I swept.  I thought about...nothing.  I swept, and I sniffed Ineke's Field Notes from Paris on my wrist.  I swept.  And I swept.  And I swept.

And I came up with an idea for a post.

Care to come sit?


***
Why Field Notes From Paris this morning?  Because a friend sent it to me, as an expression of something she thought I might like.  Which made me eyeball Field Notes in a different light.  "Ah, creature; someone else knows you, and based on what we've gleaned of each other's nose preferences, thinks I would, too.  Hmmm."  Now I had stereoscopic vision:  in the one frame, an assembly of my previous impressions, which were a mix of yes no intrigued ultimately not worth a full bottle.  In the other frame, a swirling of potential reasons why the matchmaking review set me up on a date with this one.

**
Shhwwwipsh.  Shhwwwipsh.  Shht sssht.  Shhwwwwwwipsh.

I swept.  I sniffed the Ineke on my wrist.  I thought about activities that don't bring us information or data to process, "simple tasks."  The kind of thing that in years past I might have done to music.  Aha!  To music!  Could I be providing my mind with background noise, a low demand but still processable track to attend to while gathering ground bits from various locations and assembling them in one area?  Was "listening to" a scent akin to listening to...a symphony?  a pop tune?  a concerto?  Perdido, as performed at the Newport Jazz Festival?  Perdido, as performed to meet the time constraints of a recording?  Was it right to limit it to one tune?  But it had to be, right, because one perfume was but one presentation, even if it had multiple acts in its development?  Is a symphony to easy, too snooty an approach to thinking of multiple acts?  Maybe a mix tape is more appropriate?

The answer, of course, was "all of the above."  Depending on the scent.

What I had on my wrist was Ineke Field Notes in Paris.

Instead of making a musical connection, my brain headed to the language of 'fume.  And not in a thoughtful way, either.  "Masculine," said the voice in my head.  Sssssht.  Sssssht.  SHHWIPSH.

Well, drat.  So much for deep insight.  But, yeah, once I process the gentle tobacco that first hits me, the whole thing seems rather...linear.  Pleasant, mind you.  But linear.  Like sitting alongside a channel to have a beverage in a tight space.  The view is pleasant enough, and you are enjoying yourself.  Your eyes feel happy.  But you are essentially drinking one thing, and you cannot adjust the parameters of your sliver of a view.  With the exception of the occasional glint of light (something does sparkle in FNFP every now and then--citrus?--and occasionally something else flits by), what you have is...that.

Shhwwwwipsssh.  Shht.  It is nice, mind you, that.  There's an advantage in calming down monkey mind.   Shhhwwipsssh.   Shhhwipppssssh.

*
Later, after I came inside, and grabbed my camera so I could grab a picture to illustrate the post, and ran for the phone which was ringing, and reintroduced a little noise to my meditation, I heard the word "masculine" cross my brain again.  And I thought "Aha!  Caron masculine...yes!  Third Man!!"  And made note of the moment so I would write about it, and ran to gather my decant bottle of 3º Homme that another friend sent me back at the start of my descent, spritzed the opposite wrist the the nominative* masculine, and came back to my computer.  With relief, I realized I am not crazy.  They are not the same, this Field Notes and this Man Who Came After One and Two, but they both smoke.  They both roll in a flower.  The both don't play out so much as sit with you, but in a playful mood.

They do kinda smell the same, in other words, and in the same way.  The Caron is sweeter.  I'd pick Ineke for warmer weather, if choosing between the two, because the Caron sweetness might be to cloying in heat and humidity.

~~
As you can see, I've gone from empty mind to busy brain all of a morning, and we're not halfway to noon yet.  But I needed that time with the broom as much as I relished the firings of the brain as it sought new ways to say "this reminds me of...".

Which, in the way of a sweeping generalization that says "these scents are masculines," is a metaphorically generalizing way of saying "Sorry I've been gone, but I needed that."

Too much input.  Too much sitput.

Not that anything is fixed.  But I think I've figured out a way to navigate the rhythms of the current set of stuff.

The nice thing about the Ineke is that it reflects that idea of stasis and change all at once.  Modestly.

Very modestly.  But there.

Ssssswwwwipppfffh.

Morphing

Frozen in the garden trug a few weeks back
When reading the runes, the "ice" symbol represents "the element to which all things must return before they can change"

I've been on a perfume purchasing hiatus for a while.  I go on them from time to time, for one reason or another or some combination thereof.  The most common themes are: 1) Health, 2) Budget, 3) Nose/Brain fatigue.  And by fatigue, I don't really mean being twisted dry from too much smelling -- though that did happen a couple of times.  I mean more that I am done with the input portion of my {now recognized as} cyclical pattern...that it is time to either ponder, or just let things lie fallow for a while.

It's a combination of thinking patterns (sometimes described as "creative," sometimes just "proceessing") and physical patterns (migraineurs know full well there are times when certain sensory inputs are a Do Not Enter zone of high danger).  To tell you the truth, I don't mind.  Many passions and interests in my life have involved nearly manic hunting/gathering periods, followed by intense exploration, followed by thinkings, followed by time off.  (Or an overlapping progressing more or less following that pattern.)  Filmmaking, for example, is structured that way: pre-production is the hunting and gathering, production is a crazy intense exploration/application time, editing is thinking/application, and then you are done.  So done.  So quiet, after all of those people and all of that noise and all of that thinking.  Teaching, too, runs that way with me: creating and preparing a class is the hunting gathering, going through the semester and guiding/leading is the exploration (because any good teacher knows you aren't simply delivering information, you are ready to process and learn based on feedback from students, whether the learning is about the subject or your own teaching methods), and then the evaluation of the "products" the students come up with at the end of the class.

Not to flog a prone horse, but I could build similar cases for gardening and the never ending process of child rearing.  And those are all longitudinal...gardening, filmmaking, teaching, child rearing, they've all played and replayed the cycle over time.  There are other things, like my passion for cooking, that had one major cycle and has been on a slow simmer with occasional flare ups ever since, or my interest in antiques, or or or...a whole slew of stuff that involved One Big Dance and has since simply been folded into the repertoire, revisited from time to time.

I'll figure out how to categorize my music playing over this paradigm later.

So while the third thing I listed, budget, is an external reality that affects purchased acquisitions, it is really just that:  An external factor.  Sure, if I had a more generous budget...which means at times simply having a budget for it...I'd probably acquire more perfume things.  More splits, more venerated discontinueds, more wacky explorations into the unknown.  But the fact of the matter is, I'd build a back catalogue.  I already have one of a sort; it's not nearly as extensive as what some of us perfume people have amassed, but I'd be deceitful if I didn't acknowledge that the typical consumer would check out what I could sniff at any given moment and cock their head sideways and adopt one or more looks from a list that includes incredulous, suspicious, pitying, evaluative, and pondering intervention.

Who knew there would be a day when I use my piles of books as a shield, a diversion, a way to deflect possible condemnation?  As if there are more respectable things to hunt and gather...which to be honest, I think there are, in a public perception sense...I mean, folks reveal their libraries, their recorded music collection, their Lladro figurines, their orchids.  Funny, isn't it, that in some households, Beanie Babies went on proud display, but meanwhile you'd have to dig around to find my Intoxification, my back up bottle of Black Cashmere, my boxes of splits and decants?

But I digress.  Somewhat.

And somehow, I wanted to get to Parfumerie Generale Aomassai.

Right!  So, I've been on a triple threat smelling/purchasing/thinking hiatus.  Mmmmm...let me clarify the thinking part.  I've not been thinking about perfume on the "smells like" level for a few weeks.  Not directly, not metaphorically.  I've been thinking about perfume occasionally, and wearing it occasionally, but not actively, if that makes sense.  Not with the heightened consciousness of taking in something new, not with the extra awareness I often like to apply to an "old friend" to see if things are the same or changed in our relationship.  So I've been low on perfume reviews.  (What?  What's that chuckling??  Oh, right; I'm never much one for a straight up review.  But they did used to happen more regularly.)

A couple of days ago, I got my first "new" scents in over two months.  (What?  What's that chuckling? A non-perfume person happens to be reading, and that strikes them as a somewhat silly sentence?  Yes, I understand.  But this is the world of perfume.  Try to imagine yourself without a new book, a new movie, or heck, a new foodstuff, or a fresh skein of yarn, to explore for nearly a whole meteorological season.  It's kind of like that.  Non-tragic, but notable.)  Splits of Parfumerie Generale Aomassai, Eau d'Italie Baume de Doge, and Caron Coup de Fouet.

I can nutshell the second and third for the moment:  Coup de Fouet, the edc version of Poivre, is just how I like a carnation delivered:  spicy, with depth...in this case the depth is provided by a woody creamy base, but being an edc, not a dense chewy one.  Early in the wearing it reminds me a bit of an old chewing gum--Beeman's? the clove gum? something on my grandfather's desk.  Anyway, a nice way to blend light delivery with serious notes.

Flowers from Sicily, found on James Hull's Italy Photo Blog

Baume de Doge also takes me to something food-related, but in this case, a fine execution of what on the surface would be a simple cake.  I have to go for cake and not cookie because it is not dense like shortbread...it's lighter, airer, like something that would have "crumb"...but still has enough density that I don't want to go to cocktails.  Though come to think of it, I'd like a cocktail version of this on a warm spring day.  BUT (getting back on track), the cake I'm thinking of is a vanilla with orange zest and a shot of Fiori di Sicilia.  The sprayer is broken on my decant, and I need to fix that in order to see if I get more development like Kevin at NST does.  I'll come back.

But the whomper here, the magic morpher that entered my life just as I was thinking "hey, I haven't met a good morpher in a while"--which I happened to think while wearing my beloved Chamade during the period of not thinking, one of the uber-morphers in my playbook--the crazy morphing something from Parfumerie General, Aomassai.  


Unlike Chamade, which is pretty and then stunningly beautiful, Aomassai is intriguing but difficult, then nearly ugly, then a small fugue of those two plus a third, kindly smell personality.  The burnt caramel opening is one of those things that triggers the "check the oven!" danger reflex, but also pulls me in to sniff it again.  And again.  Is it burnt badly or not?  Then some chocolate thing, not sweet, starts weaving through. Then sweet somewhat threatens, then the not sweet chocolate tones it down, then you worry about calling the fire department again.

And that's just the first round.

Then you get placed in some sort of grass hut, it's kind of damp, and you're pretty sure it's started to molder.  It's interesting, but like the first round, you don't know that you really want to be here.  In fact, you start realizing that for all the challenges of the first round, this second act could possibly suffocate you if this is going to be where you are left.  Because you might dare visit that grass hut, you might wear that wet basket on your head, but you would never plan on carrying through the rest of the day that way.

For me, thankfully, then comes a breath of air.  Of course, whatever was cooking in the oven comes wafting back through (it was at this point I realized I maybe had smelled burnt hazelnuts earlier on, which is a horrible smell, btw, but never came fully through), but at this point, it's more than okay.  And, if you are patient and wait for it, you'll live through a fugue of where you've been and what is coming and then finally settle in a zone that is comfort scent.  Yes, intelligent, intriguing comfort scent, perhaps held cozy all the more so for the earlier tussling.  Now the caramel is just toasted, but has depth from the spices, the cocoa, the wood...and the tussling.

So there you have it.  I've been on a perfume hiatus, and actually still kind of feel like I'm yawning and stretching and getting ready for whatever is coming next.  But then I blindsided you (and myself) with a trio of new smells.

You go deep, you come out.  Cycles.



first photo is author's own
fiori di sicilia from the King Arthur online catalog


Check out Wikipedia's disambiguation page on Morphology -- linguistics, astronomy, math, rivers, more.  It's a fun launching pad for hunting and gathering.   Food for thought in terms of how things change.  And a bit of a chuckle...would that I could disambiguate myself...  

Offskin, aka The Space Between Us

One of the worst professors I ever had said two of the most memorable lines from my undergraduate life.


The first was part and parcel of satire:  {cue gravelly voiced, tired, tousled, deigning, gray haired presence at front of room, with what might appear to be the somewhat older denizens of Fast Times at Ridgemont High filling seats in a classroom furnished more like a high school than a college} "The mind, class, is like a sieve..."  {Various reactions make clear that this is a refrain as familiar, and perhaps as frequently punctuated, as "...take one down and pass it around..."}


But the other, the one that I have revisited many times: "It was not the icon itself, but the space between the icon and the viewer, that was worshipped."


Score one for Byzantine history, the Orthodox church, and the professor.  This one has not fallen through the sieve, and will not, ever.

•••••
Recently, I have worn two scents that have struck me as beautiful, but never when snarfed/huffed.  Only when experienced as that which floats above the skin.  It wouldn't be fair to say their "sillage," for in my mind the idea of "sillage" is a nearly visible vapor trail that is left in a wearer's wake.  No, this was the air above my wrist, discovered as I leaned over to pick up a paper, or reached up to open a cupboard.  If I tried to put nose to skin to discover the source, I got something different.  It was only as I pulled back that I got a hint of how to find the source.

It was a space above my skin, waiting to be discovered.  It would not be left behind as or after I left the room, but hovered there, somewhere above me, but not exactly part of me.  It took a combination of perfume on skin, plus a "viewer" searching the area above, to discover it.

•••••

"Many people make the mistake of thinking that these images were created as idol worship.  That is wrong.  They were an image of an idol, or perhaps more accurately, a concept, something to be reminded of.  The purpose of the image, which you will notice is rather two-dimensional, was to allow for an interaction between the viewer and the representation.  The act of reflecting, of contemplation, caused the space in between to be sacred.  That space was only "alive" or sacred during the act of contemplation.  


Thus, it was not idol worship, but idol contemplation, if you will; but do not confuse reverence for object deification.  Or, indeed, deification of a person.  It was as if the idol allowed for, in combination with a reverential viewer, a sacred space.  It was the space that mattered, and it only mattered during the act."

•••••
Vintage Houbigant Aperçu and Nina Ricci Filles de Eve are two examples of perfumes that I find are better experienced off skin than on it.  Filles de Eve in particular; when I go in for the close up, it falls apart.  It's all old lady perfume, and not particularly complex.  I persisted in trying it, because I had smelled it on a friend in perfume, and remembered it as beautiful.

The trick of memory was to adjust the preposition.  I hadn't smelled it on a friend; I had smelled it off a friend.

Sure enough, I've caught the cloud a couple of times now.  Much better.  I am still sussing Filles de Eve out, and not sure if I love it, or I am just having fun visiting.  In fact, I may decide I have fun visiting, but don't like it at all.  Aperçu is actually more likely to be my bag, though I am still not sure why.  For one thing, it has more layers to it, at least as it plays out in my nose.  The thing is, taking time to think about exactly what is playing out in my nose is distracting me from that space, that beautiful space just off of my skin.

•••••
I'll be spending time in the future sorting out whether or not I find this phenomenon more prevalent in older style perfumes than newer ones.  As it happens, I am wearing Andy Tauer's Reverie au Jardin as I write this, and this is one that I love discovering offskin.  But, and perhaps and important "but" to consider as I try to sort this out, Reverie au Jardin is pretty faithful in the huff.  What you catch in the cloud is what you find on your skin.  Not that I'm complaining.  Just saying.

Today, I am all about offskin.  This space between us.  Present, perhaps, only when someone stops to contemplate it.

image of Saint Stephen icon from greek-icons.org

Vol de Nuit Isn't

Subtitled:  A Failed Narrative but a Great Perfume  (A Review)

Prequel

No matter how you approach perfume, completely naive, or studiously researched, it would be hard to come upon Vol de Nuit and not immediately conjure a back story.  Even if you don't speak French.  Because--and, fine, I will speak for the American audience here, hoping one of you Brits speaks up regarding your school experience--most American school children are exposed to "The Little Prince."  Lay Payteet Prahnce, perhaps your teacher added.  Or, perhaps, if you moved fairly frequently, you were exposed to other helpful pronunciations of the "original" title; Luh Pehteet Prince being among my favorite clarifications.  Mind you, I didn't know a speck of French as a child, but even I was able to ken onto the fact that Peter Sellers could have done better at awful.  I could READ, for heavens sake, I just wasn't French-knowledgeable.

The petit point?  Said teachers would generally then offer up, another title by the same author, should we wish to consider reading further:  Vol de Nuit.  Night Flight.  Which sounded romantic, but made me wonder if it was a sequel or prequel that would help me figure out the plight of the lonely guy and his flower, kind of like one wonders what became of Scarlett after Rhett left not giving a damn.  (After I started writing this, it occurred to me that there is now a generation of students who might get a malevolent association with the sounds of Vol de Nuit, being similar to Vol de mort and all.  Which might serve them better when thinking about the perfume.  But that is another story.)

In addition to the teacher voices in your head, there is the "official story," and if you at all poke your nose into Guerlain's business, you are pointed toward Antoine de Saint-Expury and how the fragrance was created in his honor / drama of aviation / a pilot / blah blah blah.

So, in my head, I have:  Vol de Nuit = Night Flight.  Vol de Nuit = perfume.  Vol de Nuit ≈ smells like a night flight.  Vol de Nuit ± solves/addresses the problems of the little prince.  Vol de Nuit ≅ will transport me so I don't worry about existential conundrums.

(For further cognitive miasma, see Kevin's lovely review of Vol de Nuit as a night flight, wherein he constructs his own narrative.  Or Helg's review, where she acknowledges the narrative and locates where she finds Vol de Nuit among a pantheon of galbanum scents.)

There it is.  Identified, labelled, sorted, catalogued, told.  If you are me, you try Vol de Nuit many times, starting with early in your fall down the rabbit hole.  It strikes you as difficult, as bitter, as old, as a potential scrubber, as interesting but probably not you, worth coming back to for academic purposes but not for pleasure.  It's no night flight.  But you go back, repeatedly, looking for nocturnal, or at least crepuscular, lift off.

And then, thank goodness, you have the good fortune to one day out of the blue decide to spray in the bright light of mid morning, and spray generously, and just let things be, immediately forgetting what you have done.  So that this waft springs up from your wrist, and you say "wow," and you spend hours upon hours with it.

And find you are happy.  And decide to relocate yourself vis-à-vis Vol de Nuit.


The Review Part

What Vol de Nuit isn't:  blackblue and murky hard to see with the only clearness being the stars above you and the whole experience gravity defiant, transporting you through the air.  Vol de Nuit is not a night flight.

What Vol de Nuit is:  greenherbybitter powder mashed in such a way that earthy bits (perhaps the daffodil, certainly the oakmoss) ground you and yet eartly lifts (sparkly citrus bits or invigorating herbal sniffs with florals interwoven just enough to keep it from being a total Druid potion) keeping things from being all around your ankles.  Vol de Nuit is a tree growing in the forest, knowing which way to reach for sunlight, aware of all it touches from root to leaf.

Vol de Nuit is more "Tree of Life" than "Flight of Night."

In less fanciful terms, it is a green plant-focused woody with plenty of powder.  The notes mention flowers, but I don't get much (read "any?") of that.

In mathematical expressions, Vol de Nuit ≠ transportation, literal or existential.  However, Vol de Nuit = an interesting perfume that I will sometimes want to wear.

Coda


My long day into night with Vol de Nuit was interesting.  Repeated pleasure from huffing, frequent wrist to nose and/or putting nose to the waft like a dog might kind of day.  It was a totally different experience of exactly the same thing...unlike those times when you have an "a-ha!" of something different, some new note or aspect striking you, this was one of those times when you know full well you are experiencing the very same input you did last time, but it's coming in differently.  Like...the first time you think in a different language.  Or when you see the vase and not the human faces in that picture.  Or when you have been spending your time playing jazz copying other solos and/or carefully constructing a line based on the key and the tempo and the meter but then WHOOPS! you are just playing the thought without worrying about the parts behind the expression.

Or like when you shift your angle slightly, and instead of seeing the reflections in the plate glass window, you see the display inside.

It's always been the same information available to you.  Were the earlier reads "correct" also?  Were they your own?

Here's what I know:  I've been spending years assiduously checking out fragrances whose notes or explanatory copy mention "forest" or "green woods" or "druidic potion."  (Okay, haven't come across that last one, really.)  Little did I know that adding a healthy dose of powder, and accepting the sentence constructions of a writer from the PREVIOUS turn of the century, rather than the one I lived through, would best express the thought.  Herbalgreenbitterwoodyhintsofsmoothdefinitelypowderystuff that smacks of/with my beloved galbanum but doesn't bite hard, I'll be back.


What I was sniffing:

Vol de Nuit, parfum concentration.  That iconic Guerlain purse sprayer holds a refill of VdN parfum.  I sprayed the day of the revelation.  I've dabbed for my return while writing.  The sample vial is for size reference; early in my perfume explorations, I was surprised by how small those expensive extraits were.  Chalk it up to a supersize culture plus an edt life?  Plus, I suspect, there is something about how large things loom in our imagination.  Those Lutens bell jars are not cookie jar size, for example.  You could hold one between your thumb and finger, thumb under the bottom, finger on the top.  Not that you'd want to.  Just saying.  So, there's my Vol de Nuit, purchased as a gently used item, quadrilobe stopper already undone.  Purse sprayer new old stock.  Have since smelled samples from other vintage and new bottles, am satisfied the partial bottle was not altered.  (I may not be so good at identifying notes, but I can do pretty well at recognizing watered down side by sides, thank you {cough cough} Chanel Coco NOT.)


Um, that'd be your disclosure statement for the day.


The image is the author's own.  As usual, play fair if you wish to use it.

Bitters

Never succumb to the taste of bitterness.  (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Yesterday, I had a brief Twitter exchange with the person who tweeted this Salon.com article.  It is a "follow me" kind of piece, in which the intrepid journalist plays with a bitter blocker.  A bitter blocker is just what it says: a kind of immunity granting substance which, when employed, alters your tongue/brain communication so that you will not perceive most of the 50 or so types of bitter.  Burnt toast becomes just toast.  Beer shifts to umami.  Stuff like that.  (Apparently, orange bitters...not the kind in a bottle on the bar, but the kind inside an orange peel...are not covered in this particular chemical insurance plan.)  When I philosophically Tweeted "but do we WANT to mask that which is bitter," I got a very literal response about a particular application of bitter blocking: the salt on the rim of a Greyhound cocktail, and the high volume of salt in commercially prepared broth.  Fair and true.

Still, I pondered.

Embedded in that article is a link to another article, one about scent memories and attachments.  It includes that phenomenon we have discussed before, the fact that we need to familiarize ourselves with foreign tastes, exposing ourselves to them a number of times before we can even begin to formalize our impressions of them, let alone sort them into an "opinion."  (Which would then seem to raise the spectre of the "first I liked/did not like you" chart, but further sorting is not part of their discussion.)

The fluctuation of memory.

Reading backwards.

The influence of the food we eat as children upon our preferences as adults.

Whether we should mask that which is bitter.

On a holiday the United States sets aside in honor of the memory and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., it seems to me there's lots of food for thought right there.

Sorting Out the Meat in my Lily

I had heard the talk for years.  "That lush tropical flower smells like meat [often ham, or rotten]."  I always thought of it as a concept, as gestalt of smell that when looked at from one angle, was reminiscent of meat, or meatish.  Perhaps meat-y, or meatish and meaty.

Not...meat.

Then this opened among the supermarket bouquet sitting on the kitchen counter.  Oink, oink, people.  Not as an idea, or an association, or something seen on the other side of a transparency.

I could have sworn the langorous sow on the flyer for my preferred porcine purveyor was looking longingly toward the counter.

Or was that fright on her face?

***
Over the weekend, Victoria at Bois de Jasmin asked about changes in perfume taste.  I was so already there.  You see, on Friday, I had an arranged date with Musc Ravageur, goosed on by a friend who thought it was a crime against perfamity that I had given my sample away to another perfume person.  The decant arrived unannounced earlier in the week, with a lovely note, saying "For Pete's sake, you need some Musc Ravageur."  How to tell her that thing had been a beast on me and in my nose whenever I smelled it on someone else?  And by beast, I mean half-skank animal.  Not in a good way.  Just...beast.

I waited until the next day.  Then, out of a sense of duty and perhaps morbid curiosity, I sprayed.  There was the animal...but also something warm and spicy.  And the drydown?  Be still my heart.  Which is to say, my heart slowed down.  In a purr of comfort.  Sure, the animal was still there, but now it was in a pen with things spicy (cinnamon?) and things warm (musk, the non-dirty veer).  Other things bouncing around, but unidentified.  Maybe even vanilla?  In a way, it did not matter, because it wasn't all about the beast.

The animalic perfume Grinch's heart grew two sizes that day.

Meanwhile, a stargazer lily became Roast Beast.

**
So, with not one, but two exemplary anecdotes about changes in smell, I started to formulate this post.  Not the first time I'd dealt with situations in which I'd changed my mind about a perfume, but the first time I had crossed the zone into enjoying bedding down with a beast.  It was time, I thought, to bring out Psych 101:  the "I Like You THIS MUCH" chart. A little foursquare that has been in my head since I first laid eyes on my "good heavens, are they all going to cost this much???" textbook by Philip K. Zimbardo.  Anyway, the idea I could never get out of my head never forgot was something like this:

• When you meet someone, you make an initial decision about whether you like them or dislike them.  You get to know them.  You come to a conclusion, a sort of game show Final Answer about how you feel about them.  The interesting observation made by the study?  Of those people the subjects ended up liking, or deeming "friends," they felt the most strongly about those whom they had initially disliked.

I have passed a lot of life through the foursquare illustration I can still see in my mind's eye (left page, toward the bottom), checking off examples that fit nicely into the chart.  Perfumes are the latest something.  I'm still thinking about it...

...but this thing with Musc Ravageur is going to be interesting.  Because suddenly, after years of avoiding it, I want more.  I had to work HARD to find a way to like this one.  In fact, it was probably a little birdie in my ear, a friend who I trusted who said "really, I find value in this person perfume," that encouraged me to give it another try. But I did.  And would not predicted the thought I heard pass my brain.

"Nom."

Are we fickle?  Do our noses/tastes/sensibilities learn, and therefore adapt, and therefore change their minds?  Or do we need to consider another principle in the equation, one I learned in cognitive psych --humans have very powerful mechanisms to justify their choices and/or actions in the face of dissonance.

Meanwhile, the Roast Beast was wafting.  Trying to trap me inside, I think.  Swoop my right past those powdery anthers into the heart of the beast.  Meanwhile, yet another voice joined the chorus: "do you ever change your mind about perfume?"

A ha ha ha ha ha.....

*
Sure, I do.  Witness Chanel No. 19, which was a welt-raising slap of galbanum the first time I tried it.  But I really hate when people call things that seem "cold" "heartless," which was what I kept reading from others.  I lucked into a 1/5 full bottle of vintage edp.  "Heartless"?  Silly people.  It keeps a cool exterior for the get to know you period, because it is so heartbreakingly beautiful on the dry down.  Score another point for that "you love best that which is first difficult" idea.

Witness also Apres L'Ondee, which when I first tried it seemed like a wan flower, and not much more.  Mind you, I am a fan of quiet, in people and in perfume; this one just didn't seem to have much...depth.  Interest.  And was offering a note I wasn't particularly fond of.  WAIT!! No need to scream "heretic!" I tried some parfum.  Vintage.  And saw into its depths, and found its development, and saw just how beautiful that one main something was.  Changed my mind again.

But let us consider the other corner on the "I've gotten to know you" side of the foursquare.  Bois des Isles, I have always loved you.  Poeme, I'll never tell anyone publicly, but I'll never trade you away.  Bulgari Au The Vert?  Prada Infusion d'Iris?  Hermes Hiris?  All loves at first sight.  And I still feel it whenever I spray.

Consider also something that falls outside the chart, or better put, beyond the left edge of the chart, items whose entry point is not yet decided:  people foods perfumes I have no idea what to make of at first, so I make sure to have multiple meetings, in various contexts, until I can sort out just what IS my initial feeling.  Generally, with these, there is something new enough, or jarring enough, or puzzling enough, that I just can't get my balance at first.  Eventually, usually, I'll get my land legs, then be able to move forward through the experience.  Right now I'm getting to know a vintage Houbigant, Apercu, and there was an amount of learning a foreign language involved.  I'm liking it.  But I wouldn't call it a dislike turned into a like; more a "what kind of creature what planet are you from what language can we communicate with" into a "aha let's talk and see if we can be friends or simply coexist in this universe."

So, let's see, on the positive integration side, there's "I have always loved you" and "I learned to love you," plus the nether zone known as To Be Determined.  On the negative outcome side, as yet unconsidered, is "I loved you at first but now I don't" and "I have always disliked you."

Yeah, I've got ones for those categories, too.

Oh, and there's the far right, the side beyond conclusions.  The part I call "changed my mind," even after making conclusions.  Yes, Victoria, there is a changed my mind clause.

Meanwhile, the Roast Beast continues to blast its meaty call.  Another bud is threatening to open.  There is something obscene about this flower, about this ostentatious display in the kitchen.  Not the ridiculous juxtaposition of ordinary brown freckles against exotic deep pink petals--which is pretty showy--but this horrible intense food smell coming from not fauna but flora.  Double ridiculous is that it seems wrong in the kitchen, but equally wrong in the living room.  Or the bedroom.  Or the bathroom.  Whether I should separate it from the more decorous flowers in the bunch.  I can't figure out what to do with it.

(Maybe it belongs in a vase next to my Love Speaks Primeval.  A visual and olfactory pairing of voluptuous ham and seductive foie gras.)

When it comes to what I now get out of that flower, we've got a strong case of "Take Me to Your Leader."  As in, the alien has landed, right there on my kitchen counter, next to the sink.

While our drama unfolds, the lunchmeat languishes in the refrigerator.

And musk, civet, and castoreum whisper from the drawer and closet upstairs.

mug shot of the carnal perpetrator in floral clothing is author's own

Made by God and Man

Godowsky and Mannes, that is.  A couple of musicians.  Who also happened to invent Kodachrome.

Which renders its last impossible color today in Kansas, at the last plant to develop those crazy saturated colors.

Sometimes I think it was the impossibility of the colors that both underscored and made palatable the shock that my grandparents' youth actually transpired in color.

I know that it was Kodachrome that made the Pepto-Bismol pink jello stuff featured in the Junket advertisement (full color!) in my mother's copy of Dr. Spock look so otherworldly good.  I could spend an hour imagining myself eating it...and did so, often.  What flavor COULD that pink be, after all?  Early musings, I suppose.

Not just the colors, but the blacks and the browns, which are of course a color, but...again, hyperreality.  So clearly not sepia tones.  A blackness that wasn't an absence, but something that could swallow you up.

I just found this out this morning.  Polaroid, I knew in advance.  I didn't care so much...Polaroid was my uncle's camera, for gadgeters.  With a most memorable smell when you wiped the squeegee across the prints that came out the first generation of those cameras/that film.  Polaroid was a good film to highlight the fleetingness of memory, always needing protection, always doomed to fade no matter what.

Kodachrome, though...Kodachrome made memory more than it could be.  Or so it seemed.  Now that I am older, I sometimes wonder if what Kodachrome did was capture a detail so full, I had trouble accepting how real it was.

Not realizing that even that intense amount of detail was not capable of rendering the full truth.

Life is beautiful.  Reproductions try.

They took my Kodachrome away.

It was a heckuva thing to find out on New Year's Eve eve.  But I do have some prints.  And my memories.

The Irish Times
The New York Times
a Kodachrome documentary is in the works, says the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle 
other food on Kodachrome at CHOW, "The Last Kodachrome Christmas"

Storage, or, A Trip Down Memory Lane

Am scrapping other posts in the hopper, as I was visiting the Perfume Posse this morning, where March summarized her approach to storage.

The wise thing would have been for me to read and move on.  But, as often happens, I feel compelled to open my mouth.  And, as often happens, I attempted to find the balance between responding and oversharing.

Guess which direction I failed toward?

And guess what I am going to subject you to today?  Further meandering on the topic.  I'll start with my comment:

Erm…more than one storage system. Should I really tell?

Because…there’s the first “discovery sets” I picked up from Perfumed Court. Which I keep, still in their category grouping (“roses” “101″ etc) stuck into sea salt which is in odds and ends vintage stemware. Then there are the miniatures and precious morsels, a.k.a. put in the bottle by the maker items, which stay in the velvet lined drawer in my dresser. Then there are the Precious Decants and Smalls, Influenced by the Early Years which reside in a place of honor in my, erm, lingerie drawer. (LOL…lingerie in my mind conjures images of pegnoirs and camisoles and other dainties…suffice to say they are well cushioned, but not so much by silk and lace.) A few full bottles in the front of the other two drawers.

Decants in boxes, loosely grouped by house, unless they are workhorses grouped by season, in which case they are likely to be in a bigger bottle anyway. Back up bottles (yes, I have as many as five of those) with odd vintage things (Intoxication, Hay, etc) up on the high shelf in the clothes closet.

Sigh. I almost feel like this is a confessional. I can almost hear the perfume years zing past…I remember when I first fell, I had a bottle of Norell (picked up at an estate sale as a curiosity in memory of my grandmother), a few samples plus the discovery sets, and then a full bottle of Magie Noire, my first “real” perfume since I had KL in college and Carolina Herrera from my wedding day. (I didn’t wear perfume then, but felt like I should have something for a wedding.) Husband purchased that for me the summer I fell down the rabbit hole.

Smile. As long as I’m confessing…there’s one more box. Not full. But overflowing with memories. I keep the perfume I purchased in Paris in that one, along with a vintage bottle of Apres L’Ondee that I split with friends who came to me via perfume but have become very dear to me.

Which would probably summarize the storage system overall. There is logic and method to it, but all considerations are subject to and generally molded by sentiment and history.

I didn't even bother to mention the whimsy of how certain splits end up out and on display.  They are there to remind me to play with them.  Unless, of course, they are carefully packed away, a game of hide and seek I play with myself when I squirrel away treasures to be re-found at another time.  The display:

Antique lipstick holder, a recurring item.  

Broken pottery, repurposed. 

 One of the stemwares mentioned in my comment.

Vintage manufacturers samples, about to be gifted for the new year.  Samples somehow mixed with other ephemera in an eggcup.  Samples from long ago, still in the (intact) cup where I first put them.  Because when/how they came into my life is sometimes a better way to retrieve from storage than "A-Z" or "Manufacturer" or "author."

Mind you, I admire Bonkers' perfume refrigerator.

Hmm, this one must be a misfit.  

These photos are mostly pictures from a favorite spot to write. The perfumes are not those that I generally wear, or that are "in storage."  They are..."in process."  

Kind of like me, when I am here.

I tried to speak about storage before, in this post ("Door #1: Ways of Storing").  Go there for more pictures, if you like.  There will be madness.

What I did not try to address before is what I recognized in my comment to The Posse.  Which is...I treasure memories.  And this exploration into perfume is mapped by memories as much as it is by scent families or style or even type of bottle.  Memories of where I was in the journey, to a great extent.  Memories of how a certain perfume anchors outward, certainly -- usually broader questions like does it connect to a geography/vacation/season? does it remind me of a certain friend, because they introduced me to it/helped me learn to love that scent family? does it evoke a certain period in my life?  But sometimes simpler ones, like "did I panic houseclean when this one was out and it ended up in my son's closet?"

And, it turns out I not only treasure memories, I have allowed myself to allow them to trump any Dewey Decimal style of organization that I might try.  A fair number of what I have are entered onto a spreadsheet, separated into sections labelled "Sample" "Decant/Partial Bottle" and "Full Bottle."  But not all.  A number of my "regulars" are sorted into boxes by season (warm v cold, basically), but not all.  

A number of my treasures are cloistered in the dresser.  But not all.  

treasures, yes, but whimsically collected here, largely because size allows

It occurs to me that if I end up fully charting, with this combination of words and pictures, in serial post form, I might actually accumulate a functional mind map.  A portrait of How Things Work in there, as it were.

(That laughter you here might be yours, but it most certainly the author's own.)

Anyway, I offer you sincere happy wishes for warmth and good cheer as the holidays wind up and the year winds down.  I'd like to give you a hint of what else is coming this week.

But I know enough now to know that what I would offer is the muscle of plans hung upon the skeleton of intent.  All of which would be subject to that little box of whimsy.


all photos author's own