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.

Caron L'Anarchiste, and other smoke

Would you like some tobacco with that?

The other day, I was driving down a city street, and saw cigarette smoke foofed out the window of the car ahead of mine. I wondered if part of the cloud would make its way to me, as it often does...and indeed it did. Good, I thought; I had a plan.

I had recently read someone musing how certain perfumes would have smelled in the era of rampant cigarette smoking, and in fact speculating that perhaps some vintage scents were designed for just such an experience. In other words, they were constructed with the assumption you would almost always experience someone's perfume through a cloud of smoke. And there was I, ambling through city traffic, with a fairly fresh shot of Chergui on the back of my hand. I was ready. What if.....

Zonk! There it was. A layer of cigarette smoke over the dense comfort of Chergui. And you know what? It had a certain appeal. I am not a smoker; not only am I frequently nauseated by the smell, I play a wind instrument, so there's no good end in taking up what would probably be a bad addiction on my part. But. There I was, inhaling the Chergui through the cigarette smoke, and nodding my head. I could see the appeal.

My ruminations went in the direction of incense + Chergui....

Not that day, but today, I tried Caron L'Anarchiste for the first time. Tobacco. Not the plant-y tobacco of Fleur de Narcisse, but cigarette smoke. Something bright inside, but a dense cloud of tobacco at the opening. As it settles in, the tobacco pulls back, and the something bright is denser than you originally thought, a bit sweeter, a hint of spice, as if the time spent with the tobacco allowed some sort of apple juice to be mulled into a flavored, thicker beverage. With tobacco still swirling around the edges, natch. Eventually, the tobacco gets sucked back into the mulled brew, popping its head to the surface every now and then. [time passes] Oh, this is not a good evolution. Tobacco = gone. Sharp bright apple, also spice = gone way inside. What is this outer juice that's left? Smells like... after-shave.

Nonetheless, I may have to adjust my expectations of what scents to pull out for fall. Next post, I'll continue rummaging in the men's cabinet, and pull out Caron Third Man.