Mica dust / L'Ombre Fauve

One thing that never ceases to fascinate me is sparklies upon the water.  In the summer, sunlight glints on the water, making sparklies that hover just above the water's surface, sometimes seeming to lie on it, but not a part of it.

In the winter, snow, frozen water, offers its own special sparklies.  Bits that remind me of mica chips I used to love to find in rocks.  Tangible, now lying on but also embedded in the surface.  Unlike the glints on the lake, these you know you can touch.  They add a beautiful texture to the surface of the snow.

If you click on the picture, it will enlarge.  And you can see some sparklies.  Sorry I can't offer you a handful to actually touch.

***
I reached for L'Ombre Fauve this morning with eagerness and trepidation.  I love this fragrance, this rough on the surface deep pile beauty.  It's a scratchy dark amber that ends up all animal cozy.  The scratchiness is in the same way I've talked about before in Chamade, and the same way there's a rough powder in Habit Rouge.  I think I've said here a variation on the idea that it's like wrapping in an animal skin inside a wool blanket and laying down in a gentleman farmer's barn?

I've been so busy with other scents this fall/winter--testing or lolling about in a given for a while--that I missed wearing this during my traditional L'Ombre Fauve happy time, cool and cold fall into early winter, when the air is snappy but the sun still has a shot at warming you up.  Once the holidays came, then my foray into counter-season scents in January, I had lost my window of opportunity.  It was either wear it now, and take my chances, or wait until fall equinox 2011.

Why be afraid?  Because I was pretty sure the deep, deep cold (still single digits here, Farenheit, and covered in this just blizzarded two feet of snow) would render L'Ombre Fauve cruel.  That the depth would disappear (no sun to warm it up), and the sharp edges would have time to actually cut.

On the opening, I was afraid I was right.

But given a little time, it is behaving like the big cat I hoped it would.  Threat of danger, but ends up purring under my layers.  I'm glad I dared.

photo author's own

Snow falls, precipitates flurry

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.  Oscar Wilde

White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black.  God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.  Gilbert K. Chesterton

ELOQUENCE, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be.  It includes the gift of making any color appear white.  Ambrose Bierce

Color, especially white, is rumbling rather persistently through my mind the last few days.  It has come up in in so many contexts over the years...color theory...philosophy...film versus video...fabric...language...fragrance...I think about that paths white has used to enter my conscious...

...how I like white, because it allows you to easily contemplate contour and shadow...

...the color of the good guy's ten gallon hat...GALLON water has no color...WATER makes the snow...WATER AND TEN frozen water falling now is ten times the volume it would be if it were rain...RAIN on my parade, would be embarassing if I were wearing white...WHITE is not the color of my true love's hair, but is the color I should wear if we get married.  Well, that if, plus one more "if"...

...not to mention all the white that is falling across the U.S. these past few days.  49 of 'em with snow on the ground.  Right now, thoughts are accumulating in my head as if I were in the path of lake effect snow.

Is white the absence of color, or the presence of all colors?  Depends if you are adding or subtracting.  A confluence of different approaches to one result ("white") that at the moment is making me think how both "luxury" and "art" are applied to perfume.

It's all questions today, folks.

Though I think my additive white perfume would be Douce Amere, while the subtractive would be L'Eau d'Hiver.

Does color steer our thinking?  Or does it augment it?

More ellipses....

Images:
snowscape, icicle lights, china mold, all author's own
"Snow Clouds off Lake Michigan" NASA Earth Observatory

~Lovely blog on things grammatical, including ellipses (providing clear evidence I can identify wise advice without using them in the least)
~Olfacta mentions color in the form of carpet dye (though I believe the careful reader will note an allusion); note also photo helping illustrate the snow situation, even there in the Deep South
~A while back I pondered perfume from the angle of color vs black & white; interesting to note that January seems to elicit these musings

Water, water, not everywhere, and so many drops to drink

Greater Phoenix.  The Valley of the Sun.  Where saguaros grow as roadside trees, where centers of harmonic convergence are never far.

Where from the dust rose farms.  And golf courses.

Where the water comes from snow.

A person who thinks about water in the slightest has to think about it here.  When previous inhabitants give up trying live here after 1,000 years of working their own canal system to make the land arable, the place clearly has challenges.

When you stand high up on a mountain and look at the sprawl of subdivision after subdivision, most of them consisting of building construction that rather looks like the big boxes of any other U.S. urban sprawl, except with stucco siding and tiled roofs, one has to wonder just how this group of settlers is impacting their environment, and from whom they are taking the resources to make it happen.

My son is fond of pointing out that the energy impact of cooling a home in a hot climate is less than that of heating one in a cold climate.  I grant that.  But so many people.  So much sprawl.  So much traffic, with little to no public transportation.  So many homes volume but no ventilation, big panes of plate glass exposed to the elements with little to do but gain solar heat.  Not much evidence of shade as part of the structure, of thinking about making the patterns of the sun either work to your advantage, or at least do a dance with those patterns to minimize negative impact.

Unique to Phoenix?  Heck no.  But this is no temperate climate.  It has the hottest climate of any metropolitan area in the United States.

A while back, there was chatter about the impact of all the grass in Phoenix.  All these northern folk had come in and planted their new lawns with what they knew:  grass.  Which needed a LOT of water in the Valley of the Sun.  Phoenix has changed its water usage policies since then.  There is a 100 year plan, and folks apparently take care of their landscape with different habits (and regulations) than a generation ago.

But one still thinks about water.

☀ ☀ ☀

Perfume.  Available locally is a perfume called "Cactus Flower."  Based on the scent of the night blooming cereus--which is protected, and therefore cannot be harvested for purposes of enfleurage etc.--it is described in its promotional literature as a "soft floral scent."  I got some harsh raspy chemicals in there.  Since I haven't had the experience of smelling the one night out of the year event that is the blooming of the Queen of the Night, I can't really speak to how closely the overall effect of the perfume approximates that of the flower.

I declined getting some, even as a souvenir.

☀ ☀

For further information about Desert Queen perfume, see the website here.

Traveling and Scent

They pop up every now and then; follow the perfume blogs long enough, and you'll notice that most eventually get around to the question of perfume and traveling.  As in--how do you pick your scents for a trip?  Does it depend on where you are going?  What type of trip?  What phase of your perfume exploration you are in?  Do you pack any at all?

If you are flying, and are trying to do the footloose and fancy-free no checked baggage style of travel, you also have to contend with security regulations.  That habit of decanting/preparing samples comes in handy here.  If you wish to tote.

Personally, I don't usually sweat it.  Since I'm one of those types who is frequently taking either a conscious or "oops, I did it again" sabbatical from perfume, the idea of finding myself in a new location without fragrance doesn't phase me.  Of course, I have to admit that I generally have a vial of something or other in my purse or toiletries bag, and that the opportunistic stowaway is there because it's either the object of current fascination/investigation, so there's not necessarily an all out blackout in the cards.

And, I'll have to admit that if I am kind of a fan of picking up a scent to associate with a vacation/place.  So, if time and opportunity permit, I'll check out the local offerings and see if I can find something to use while on the road and then bring home.  (That's how Elizabeth W ended up in my inventory. Another story.)

But if time, or budget, or circumstance don't offer the chance to shop for perfume, I'm not devastated.  In fact, I might not be paying attention.  It's all good.

I'm on the road right now.  And I'm traveling on the half-plan.  Which means I didn't think through *exactly* what I wanted to have along based on where I knew I'd be, the weather, the company, etc.  I did decide to bring something, and looked through my samples and small decants for what I thought would be good.  Three vials, I said.  Period.  Have to be prepared to surrender/lose them; have to be happy to have them along if I for some reason feel a craving to wear.

And I can't think about this too much, because I've got to pack in a short amount of time, wrangle pet care, finish up jobs at home, etc. etc. etc.

So, only moderately under the gun, I end up with three scents for the mountainous desert southwest.  All end up being a floral, which is kind of weird, because I'm not particularly a floral person.  They do hit the following logic in my head:  one is one I've been meaning to try, one is one I recall finding the love for last spring, and one is one that sometimes struck as refreshing w/o simply being a cologne.

So far, I've only bothered with two, and both in the same day.  #3 is a fail.  Fresh Violet Moss.  Discontinued, incidentally.  Too strong on the violet--is it the dry weather?  Can't be heat, per se; it's not so terribly hot.

#2 is a winner.  On a whim I applied it not long before bed, and thought, THIS would have worked.  Hermenessence Rose Ikebana.  If I'm going out, I'll wear it.

We'll see if I get to #1.  Could be a strong association if I do try it here, since I've only sampled it once or twice.  Parfumerie Generale Psychotrope.  Not today, for sure.  Too much time outside.

The truth is, I'm only thinking about this to this degree because I've got this window to write before the day gets started.  As interesting as this perfume thing can be, it doesn't trump the attention I devote to new vistas and time with people I don't often get to see.  This is not the kind of time where I would use perfume for comfort, or armor, or setting a scene.

Nice to take a moment and reflect, though.  And wave to anyone stopping by here.