Once again, a turn of the earth

Another equinox come and gone.


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

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

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

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

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

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

Both smell good.

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

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

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

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

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

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


Photo credit: author's own.

Fata Morgana, Trompe l'oeil, and other visions

Would you dine in the dark?  Complete and utter darkness?

You can.  I could have.  Dans le Noir, a restaurant you may already heard of, seats and presents food to you in total darkness.  In London (previous link) or in Paris (LA Times article here).  Cell phones confiscated, no luminous watches, etc etc.

Are you game?

I find myself saying "no way."  The sensualist in me is completely trumped by the Security Monster.  The same SM that says "no way" to things like skydiving, or bungee jumping over the Snake River, or attempting to reason with an angry teenager.  It's not that I am risk adverse; I cross busy streets on foot all the time, and this even though I was once hit by a car as a pedestrian.  I have participated in a water rescue.    Etcetera, etcetera.  It's just...and this is very important...I simply don't see why I should actively and knowingly significantly increase the odds of risk to my life with no meaningful reason.

The ability to say "I did it" does not qualify.  And I don't personally feel any rush of "feeling alive" by bringing the very issue of being alive into question.  Near death experiences?  I've had a couple.  No desire to go there by choice.

Hold, you say.  We're talking food here.

Precisely, I respond.  Ingestion.  You know, like the word on certain poisonous material containers:  "Do not ingest"?  Like in, say...botulism?  Whoops...people do inject that these days.  Let me stick with ingest...as in...food poisoning???

Am I being too cautious?  Perhaps worried to the point of pathology?  Maybe.  But I know this:  one of the things my senses do for me is tell me when there is danger.  And while YES my olfactive powers are quite important when identifying food danger -- reinforced every time I do a refrigerator clean out, or use the classic line "smell this milk..." -- I still rely on, and apparently give great weight to, my powers of sight.

It's not just the issue of seeing whether or not the food is blue.  There's the issue of being able to see the server.  Of how clean the room is.  Of whether my table mates are trying not to snicker.

Funny thing...I've had nearly orgasmic experiences with food.  When that happens, the functionality of my eyes approaches something like 0%.  But that is voluntary.

Control issues?  Maybe.  But I don't think so.

➴➘
I was sitting on the lakefront with a good friend recently.  The friend is recovering from surgery for a detached retina.  The weather that week had been very hot, and very humid, with the high moisture content making for unusual sunny day "fog" swirling at the water's edge.  There we were, with the heat and concrete behind us, and what should have been a cool breeze in front of us.  Instead, it was hot.  And wet.  We walked and talked.  A cool breeze snaked onto the shore, then went away.

We sat down.  I waited to catch the cool breeze again.  I did...but then something even more impressive: a fata morgana.  One, then another.

The first illusion was the consequence of the air being dense enough to collect a shadow of a building from the sun setting behind us.  The second was classic, cause by a boat emerging from the thick haze.  I first saw it as a Viking longboat; my friend saw something else.  We both caught a second something, and then it took firm shape as the modern vessel it truly was.

It was quite the sight.  And richer for having been shared, both in the vein of human friendship, and in the way that it helps to have a fellow witness to an odd experience, so that you know later you weren't simply crazy.


➫➫
When you look at the juice of a perfume and it is pink, or blue, you know that chances are it was aided and abetted in its color appearance.  When you look at it and see dark amber, the harder core among us are going to start wondering about issues of "turning."

Perfume is frequently colored to make it "palatable," or "attractive."  (Sometimes I wonder about gender coding, but am not yet ready to get into that.)  I have no idea what color some of these products would be if they weren't altered; given their opacity, there is probably no dramatic transition from pre-coloring to post-coloring.

I'd sit in a dark room and spray perfume and smell it.  Sure, my eyes could give me warnings that a given juice might have spoiled, might have mysterious "bits" floating about in it, could be the color and/or viscosity of anti-freeze.  But I remain open to the idea of smelling it "blind"... I think because in the end, I accept that I am smelling without really using my eyes whenever I smell a perfume.

That is one of the joys of it, of course; it forces primacy onto a sense that generally either takes a back seat to other senses, or is inextricably linked with another sense (taste).

➽➽
I did almost lose my sight once.  I've written about it before.  Almost exactly two years ago, I noticed as I created the link.  It was summertime then, as it is now, and I'm guessing there is something about this time, when summer is poised both at its height and also with the first hints of the transition to come, that both temporally and figuratively remind me of that time.

I wondered at the time if somehow I'd develop a keener sense of smell as a result.

I think I've only developed a keener appreciation.

I'll take it.

Along with an appreciation for abiding friendships, for the concrete ability to visually discriminate, and for the magical ability to be transported by a fata morgana.

Woodcut image, "Fisheye," from Samantha Shelton.
Woodcut image of God's all-seeing eye found on this Crystalinks page.
Paris trompe l'oeil architecture photograph taken from this Archelogue blog discussion.
photo of a fata morgana from the CUNY Offshore New Harbor Project blog.

Morgan Le Fay
from Project Gutenberg

Morgan Le Fay perfume
available at Luckyscent

A-musing: Iggy the Oracle

So, there's a fashion spread in the Italian Vogue.  They've finally found a trend to usurp heroin chic.  It elevates the threat of death (overdose) to a new level:  consumption by oil spill.  Think bird, Gulf, oil soaked, draped over rocks like feathery battered seaweed.  The best part is, the use of black can now be extended from rimming the eyes and the occasional bruise to the whole body...nay, the whole dang mise-en-scene.  Here, see the photos at Styleite and the links to various media stories and takes at the devil's handmaiden Google.

Oh, did I make clear that this was my opinion?  My opinion, it is, I say.  Go look at the pictures.  Share your opinion here, if you like.

While I wait to hear from you, I want you to know that in the Random Connectedness that is my life, one of my favorite websites, Letters of Note (there's been a link to them over on the left practically since I started this blog) happened to publish a rant letter from Iggy Pop himself.  Mr. Pop, as the New York Times would say, had this to offer, and I found it relevant:

I hate the inane worship of gross 'supermodels' and i positively loathe Calvin Klein ads and that whole school of photography. it is not beautiful. Our gods are assholes. 

There are continual 'shock and rage' movements in the performing/conceptual arts, but are they bringing anybody a good time? they bring filth death & loathing of self as fashion. I understand them, though. People are lost and frustrated, AND UNSKILLED. 

I offer you a direct link to that letter here, largely because if you go to the main page you have to scroll through is a slew of amusing screed from a gentleman bossman at Tiger Oil who I think I worked for once, except he was not in Texas but the midwest and the business was entirely different.  If you are ready for diversion, check out the whole site.

Anyway, so there you have it.  The Oracle had spoken.  Our gods are a**holes.

And then yesterday I opened the August 9 issue of The New Yorker.  Guess what The Oracle is up to?  Mr. Pop was apparently at the Barney's Co-Op in NYC, making an appearance in support of a line of t-shirts.  (The author of the piece gets straight to the anachronism; Iggy in ANY shirt?  In fact, he is apparently shirtless at the appearance.  But I digress.  A bit.)  We learn that Mr. Pop is equally dis-fond of underwear and socks, that he is not fond of The Shirts in the music industry, and when he is "the shirt" (minus the "r").

Following that item, comes a piece on the P&J Oyster Company in New Orleans.  A beautiful little bit of straightforward interview of a fifth-generation owner who, as he says, "needs a plan."

As you will recall, that oil spill that made for Steven Meisel's art has already somewhat blackened the state of affairs on the Gulf coast.  Mr. Sunseri, the fifth generation of P&J, is developing an exit strategy. Just in case.

*
I am going to try to learn a lot more about Hove perfumes.  If you want to come along, you can start with this article at Yesterday's Perfume.  I know there are other blogs I go to who have written about Hove; as I turn up the links, I'll add them here.  

Tsutsumi et Cigarette

No, not a fragrance.

A reflection of two areas I have come across which offer the amazingly limbic pleasures of taking apart packaging.  A third would be, of course, perfume.

tsutsumi tea whisk

Tsutsumi is the Japanese art of gift wrapping with paper, historically more recent than furoshiki, which is wrapping with cloth.  Given the centuries of culture we're talking here, both are, to use a simple word, old.

The cellophane wrapping on a package of cigarettes?  Less than a hundred years.

I'm still trying to chase down the historical evolution of perfume packaging...not bottle design, but how the bottle is presented.  Especially the introduction of cello wrap.  Cellophane, invented in 1908.  Used for wrapping the perfume box?  Not sure.

Tactile and psychological pleasure from all?  Immeasurable.

As Tilda might say...like this:

*******
Pick up the package.  Sniff, just to see if there is product odor.  Generally, no.  Already noticing the smooth, sometimes slippery outer protective layer.  Depending on material and tightness of wrapping, perhaps an element of crinkle, both tactile and auditory.  If there is that element, an indulgence in a bit of rubbing, to feel/hear the crinkle again.  Think of skin slipping, just a little bit.  Wondering how much pressure it would take to break the seal.

If you are a careful present opener, you don't dare cross the line.  Because you are next headed to either end of the package, where the folded over ends of the outer layer meet, and are either glued or sticker sealed.  (Or both.)  A careful teasing apart of the flaps.  If all goes well, you are going to have an intact outer layer, like a complete cicada shell.

Or, if you are feeling wanton, a release of ripping and joyful noise.

Either way, you are now at the box.  And have another choice point.

*****
I must interrupt here.  Because if it is a pack of cigarettes, you have either the challenge of a foil seal or a flip top box and THEN a foil overlayer.  If it is perfume, you either have another glued box, or a flap-in flip open top, or a specially presentation box.  (Special presentations are often top-lift-off-the base types, but can have intricate fold outs, or a combination thereof, like that bottle of Niki de Saint Phalle in parfum.)

Either product, whatever way, means you are now to the heart of the matter.  And it is from here on out that you WILL be careful.  You WILL choose to preserve and protect the shell.  Because, in your heart, even if it is a simple box that you break down and put in a shoe box of other broken down boxes and don't see again because the bottle is going somewhere probably protected but definitely where storage space is at a premium and therefore the box is baggage, even if so, you have a hard time throwing away the box.  At least right away.  And maybe forever.

****
What do I know from cigarettes?  Other than that pack I shared with Ava and Maggie back in our youth, which we kept sealed in a plastic bag and hid in a niche in the alley?  And lasted for weeks, maybe months?  Because we smoked it one shared cigarette at a time, only on days when we could all get to the tree?

Well, I know that my father smoked.  Plenty.  And my reward for running to the corner store and buying him a pack (or two, but never more than two at a time) was being given permission to open it.  I loved the crinkle...the peel...the careful dissembly of the foil so that ONLY that portion of the top on one side of the label across the middle would be revealed, and you could do that cool "tap tap" and shake out one cigarette, just one, kind of like and advanced move when dealing cards.

***
In Tsutsumi, the unwrapping has a somewhat different dynamic, but is also intricate.  The folding has been deliberate, and so will be the unfolding.  There are layers within layers, and often packaging inside packaging.  The texture of the paper, the sometimes representative shapes, the origami elements...makes the unwrapping a very mindful moment.

If you aren't the type who tears off the wrapping and rips apart a box to get at the contents.

**
I have been slowly getting to the heart of my treasures from Paris.  I am being mindful of their origin, my memories of where they came from, the salespeople, the lighting in the store, the testing process (if there was one).  But I must confess, while the Paris packages are extra special, my undoing of them is not more mindful.

The mindfulness just yields a different, somewhat deeper scope of treasure.

*
I don't smoke.  Never have, except for that one shared pack in my two months of wanton youth.  Okay, and another pack equivalent of singles bummed off smokers during a certain year of semi-clubbing.  But cigarette smoke has always led to headaches and nausea and it was never really the tobacco that was ever appealing.

It was the process.

Could there be some connection between that and the fact that the only place I've ever enjoyed tobacco is in perfume?

Along with, perhaps, the shared joy of cello wrap led undressing?

~~~
Photograph of tea whisk from the Kansai Window : Essence of Japan website.


History of Golden Belt Manufacturing, responsible for packaging Bull Durham (the tobacco, not the movie), here.

Keep the wood, hold the sweet: 10 CC Uomo

Through the miracle that is decanting and sharing, I have a portion of the new 10 Corso Como Uomo.  That would be 10 Corso Como for Men, you know.  Though when you read through the release materials, there seems to be a little back and forth, dithering, playing both sides, on whether this is "for men" or "the 'next' Corso Como."

I'd call it "10 Corso Como for those of you who find the original too sweet."

Personally, I'm doing a little happy dance.  I have to be in Just The Right Mood to handle syrupy sweetness in my perfume, and I've a tendency to be willing to interpret "sweet" as "syrupy sweet."  Not immortelle maple syrup sweet (though that would be a sub-category of what I'm talking about).  No, I mean sweet that has body, like simple syrup, that stuff I'm always cooking up for the bar.  And recipes in general, of course.  That stuff that you make by boiling water and sugar.  Go heavy on the sugar, and add a touch of corn syrup for viscosity.  THAT's what can happen to the "sweet" in perfume for me.  Heck, I sometimes find that in DK Black Cashmere.  So I'm going to guess that I'm a sweetness amplifier.

No matter.  10 Corso Como Uomo can handle that.  Sort it out to the farther reaches, with YSL Nu, but not quite THAT dry.

And color me happy.

I've run it through paces twice so far.  First day was warm, summer warm with lots o' humidity.  And I must have been doing my sweet amp thing, because I found a pleasant underlying tone of sweet, like you get when you slap sandalwood and make it shimmy a bit.  (You know how sandalwood is; that gorgeous element of sweetness is there all along, and it seems like all you have to do is agitate it bit to bring it right to the fore.)  Today, it's cooler, low 70's, and rainy, and it is drier, playing all like cedarwood.  I can only find the sense of sweetness if I snarfle with my nose assertively pressed to my skin.  Which, okay, I admit I've done a few times, and just did again, because hey, that's nice, too.

That's your Uomo for you.

***
Hot tip!

In the aisles at Target, I found a shower gel in the men's aisle.  Brand name, Everyman Jack.  (Sense a knock off here?)  They had two options on the shelf:  citrus, and cedarwood.

I'm telling you, the cedarwood is more than serviceable.

And would be a logical layering option to reinforce the 10 CC Uomo.  So go buy a bottle.  $5.  Now, with the money you've saved, buy some more perfume.

See?  I provide service to readers and the general economy alike.




image from the 10 Corso Como website, which will also give you the notes in top/middle/bottom form. 

Scents of the Mediterranean

a.k.a. Freshwater conjures Saltwater 

The Mediterranean is the world's largest inland sea, at 965,000 square miles, and makes contact with three continents and, in 46,00.  The Great Lakes cover 94,000 square miles and create 10,900 miles of coastline which touches six states, two countries...but only one continent.

Today I journey to the Mediterranean at the invitation of a fellow blogger.  I told her I am not well versed in things Mediterranean.  She said that was okay.  We'll see.

Ines has asked me to write about my sense of the Mediterranean.

I grew up near freshwater lakes, inland seas between coasts, on a hand that is visible from space.  The Mediterranean was a place far, far away from me, which for a large portion of my early years was somewhat confused with things Carribean.  They did after all share a sense of water, and beaches, and sun, and of course that "-ean" ending.  (Words have always been important.)

Youthful adult word association of the Mediterranean:  boats, water, white (sand, artifacts, wash on the sides of buildings); rich people taking a vacation; Aristotle Onassis; olives; ancient history; Alexander the Great.

Older adult sense of the Mediterranean:  Elena at Perfume Shrine, Ines at All I am - a Redhead, sailing, giant yachts.

I am, in general, completely lacking sense when it comes to the Mediterranean.

What's that you say?  "Scents of the Mediterranean"?  Oh.  That's very different.

Let me try again.

****
I have never been to the Mediterranean.  I have been to plenty of Greek restaurants, not all of them diners, and have eaten plentifully of that thing called "saganaki" (very confusing, that, to a youthful diner, who so wanted to ask why Japanese food was on the menu, why it was on fire, and why it tasted so good), olives, feta, ouzo (that decidedly NOT as a youthful diner), roditis (ditto), dolma, lamb.

By this immediate and limited association with things Greek, you see how I miss 20 of the 21 states the Mediterranean touches on.  Heck, I missed two of the three continents its coastline covers.  I'm sorry, Turkey Libya Spain Jordan Morocco etcetera etcetera.  Sorry, Asia and Africa.

I'm sorry, Malta.

"Mediterranean" is also a modifier I have clearly seen attached to sea salt I have consumed, lemon trees I have tried to grow, a diet that is supposed to be good for my health, and a sunny if laid back disposition. Unless, of course, one was at war.  But I'm going to leave that alone.  No, I'm not; that gives me the smell of gunpowder, and I may need to come back to that.

I had a friend whose mother was Maltese, as in the island with the groovy cross, and that was Mediterranean.

Peter Jennings seemed to mention Cyprus a lot during certain periods of his tenure.

A different friend went to Yugoslavia when it existed, and brought me a couple of pieces of the paper currency as a souvenier, which he suggested were even better suited to cover a wall than rejection slips.  We chuckled at his humor, because we were students and hadn't had enough rejection slips to understand the pain of the joking reference to a "joke."

Hmmm.  I seem to once again be meandering and demonstrating my lack of sense, this time with a strong lack of scents.  Let me try an entirely different approach.

***
Since the Mediterranean is nothing but a dreamscape, some culinary associations, and a spotty knowledge of history, I'll conjure a scent for a few associations from those areas.

ONE:  The Mediterranean Sea...a warm place of lounging on yacht deck or beach, of warm salty water, of many blues (water, sky) contrasted with white (buildings, sails, boats) and punctuated with brilliant color (flowers, umbrellas).

In this scenario, I am warm and relaxed, and able to take in intense colors without being agitated.  Sometimes there is a breeze, sometimes the air is calm.  When it is calm, I imagine it to be warmed air.  Throughout, there is salt.  There should be the smell of the sea, the smell of alewives washing up on the beach my imagination does not work properly in this direction.  Somewhere nearby are people in crisp but casual whites, the women in wide brimmed hats, unless they are in bright red bikinis, enjoying eating mollusks or octopi. They are wearing...Keds.  Not deck shoes.  Keds.  Their feet are cooler and more comfortable that way.  As part of this life, the perfume on my skin is...

...oh, dear heavens.  My brain just layered Bel Respiro with Eau de Merveilles.  I think that the Bel Respiro is the breeze, the deep blue of the ocean (I know, it's a GREEN scent, but certain blues ground me in the same way as greens in nature, especially when they are many fathoms deep)...and maybe the clean rubber of the bottom of those new Keds?  Eau de Mereveilles is, of course, the salt, the warm, and the sweet life.

TWO:  Mediterranean cuisine and the Mediterranean diet...luscious ripe fruit, seafood, fresh salads, olive oil, figs...healthy, eat it, it's better than Atkins...


Okay, I'm having trouble with this one.  After all, there are 21 government states and plenty of variety as you scoot around that coast.  Which makes me question this whole Mediterranean diet thing.  Which reminds me that I'm never sure I want food smell in my perfume, either.  Not big on the "gourmand" thing.  But it does make me wonder what perfume I would pack in a bag and take along to safely wear while exploring new cuisines.  Which is tough, because of the risk of there being a nasty battle between wrist and fork.  It would have to be something known (don't want to divert the curious brain processing away from the food), something inobtrusive (don't want something demanding attention, because I'm supposed to be learning/enjoying this Mediterranean thing).  It has been suggested that a chypre is a safe bet for a meal, but I'm thinking that a hint of citrus wouldn't be bad, especially here in this moderate to warm climate.

Ah.  I roll through things bubbly--after all, champagne goes with everything--including Calandre (cold enough to work, but that metallic part might feel like I keep biting my utensils), YSL Yvresse (Champagne) (fun, but could ultimately be too fruity and do that interfering thing), and Baghari (say, now there's an idea...that one is champagne without hinting at kir royale), I shift gears in search of something more hesperidic.  I float by Eau Imperiale (which has the advantage of also being a headache tonic, useful when travelling) and land on Eau de Hadrien.  Not bad.  Non-intrusive, pleasant, uplifting, and potentially complementary to a range of cuisines.

In the back of my mind, I re-file Eau de Patou for another situation.  I do love it, and it does have pepper, which would seem to be a potential culinary complement.  But it would distract me just a little, because it's just a little off the beaten eau path.  Nope, Hadrien it is.  Well constructed, light, got the citrus going without being all limoncello like, say, Bond Little Italy.


THREE:  History.  Hmmm, now my idyll is subject to unrest.  There is, after all, a couple of millenia of conflict to be found on the shores of the Mediterranean, no matter which continent, no matter which century.  A contrast that is poignant at its mildest, and bloodily brutal at its worst.  Conflicts over land, over ideas, over religion...the usual things that drive some humans to decide individual lives are less valuable than a lifestyle.  Stereotypes of molasses time village life thrown against stereotypes of the agonies of war.  Never losing sight of the underlying beauty of the geography as well as of life itself.


What to do with this one?  Can I come up with a scent that is beautiful, but contains difficulty?  Oh, yes. Some which are always like that, some which behave that way under certain weather conditions.  Since we are going Mediterranean here, and I have never actually been, predicting a perfume's climate/weather-based performance is going to be a bit of conjecture.  Maybe I should focus on how I know it acts in terms of day versus night, since it just now occurs to me that all of my Mediterranean visions have been doused with sunlight.  Which, come to think of it, needs an adjustment, since there should be a healthy dollop of nighttime and constellations guiding sea travelers from Jason and his Argonauts to whatever teenager has decided to sail the oceans alone this month.

Which means my musings start with Vol de Nuit, a scent which is always the first stone in the path when nighttime travel is involved.  But it is too dark and powdery for our current turf, so I move on, thinking it needs to be cleaner without being marine.  Something featuring iris, perhaps?  Which can present as rich or sharp, depending?  Yes, that rings of deep water; keep it.  Add...a hint of flowers from land, to add beauty, with a light touch of musk, to bring in heartbeats.  (Therefore not white musk.  Goes without saying, but still.)  More of that salt, which can be both ocean and sweat.  Something...metallic? burning? gunpowder? to suggest a conflict, at least part of the way.  Hemp from rope, wood from oars...yes, it's good that all of this is coming in, because now it's going to be packed, which can mean noise, which is the intensity of human experience focused down into this one area we can trace back so thoroughly.

But what have I conjured?  At first I have to think in layers:  Heure Exquise (iris gobsmacked with galbanum with a haunting flower somewhere underneath...there's difficulty and cool and with a reminder of beauty) plus ruh-roh I got stuck here; couldn't reuse the Calandre, couldn't take the plunge and go Secretions Magnifique, which somebody recently commented on Perfume Posse smelled like "a crime scene," which in some ways is of course perfect.  WAIT! I've got it the original Zen, in the black bottle, which is a deadly beauty with it's insistently cold metal note in there...and now we're too cold, so I piggyback on the cold rose in Zen and add a dollop of Feminite du Bois on top, which not only warms up the rose, but by gum gives you the wood of the boats and shore and also spices and honey and beeswax and so many of the riches from the land that can be enjoyed when there is no fighting going on.

But do I really want to layer Heure Exquise and Zen and Feminite du Bois???  How about I just wear...Iris Poudre on my sweaty bloodied skin?  Ouch, no, I'm not supposed to be literally feeling the pain, just reflecting upon it.

Which, like my foot dangling over the edge of the boat on the sea on a sunny day, I'm going to do.  Reflect upon it, that is.  I'll get back to you if there's an answer.

**
Meanwhile, I've also clearly got to get up to to speed on things Mediterranean.  I suspect others will be mentioning figs and bees and honey and grapes in various states and breezes swooping down steep slopes.  I want to know about these things, too.

I want to know what perfumes I know in my home context smell like in the Mediterranean.

I want to know if I shout "Opa!," will I get kicked out of Greece?

And I'd like to walk up to a table in a cafe in Croatia, and sit down to an apertif, some nibbles, and a conversation with the redhead who started this whole thing.

*
Time for some virtual travels.  I am but one of a group of bloggers exploring scent and the Mediterranean; check out the others via these links:

Bonkers About Perfume | I Smell Therefore I Am | OlfactaRama | Suzy's Eiderdown Press Journal | The Non-Blonde | Waft By Carol | Hortus Conclusus | A Rose Beyond the Thames | Ayala's Smelly Blog | Katie Puckrick Smells | Perfume in Progress | Roxana Illuminated Journal | Scent Hive |  Under the Cupola | 

and

Perfume Shrine | All I Am - A Redhead

satellite image of the Mediterranean from euromesco.net; simplified geo-political map from your child learns; the mediterranean diet pyramid from today short trends; maltese cross from educational technology clearinghouse.

topmost image courtesy Ines S./All I am - a Redhead.

Home

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

As I was walking down the rue one day...

No, no homme came up to me and asked me what the time was that was on my watch.  I did, however, reach an Accord.

Promenade left at a circle (they happen here, regularly), and after progressing past the Prada, I did a double take.  What was that?  That quiet facade, that charming door, that lettering in gold on the white paint...

"Caron."

Yes it was.  We had business nearby, and as you know I had put off serious thoughts of serious perfume investigation until next (now this) week.  But there it was, yes indeed, Caron, confirmed without a doubt when I opened the door and beheld in front of my eyes The Urns.  Themselves.

(Why doesn't Donatella Versace have a wall of these herself?  Does she?)

It's amazing how quickly embarrassment at terrible language skills will melt in the face of so much juice, so prettily displayed.  I walked up to them, and slowly walked from one to the other and back again, first taking it in, then taking note.  Sure, there was Or et Noir, in a volume that would question the very existence of my hoarded vial at home.  Yes, there was Pois de Senteur.  Parfum Sacre.  And.  And.  Tabac Blond.  And.  And.  And.

And what's this, tucked up in the left corner of the collection of urns to the right of the doorway?  L'Accord?  I rifle through my brain, and come up with nothing.  I cannot remember hearing anything, reading anything.  Curiosity wins, and it becomes the final strip sprayed.  Mmmm...oh, dear, this seems to be a dark fruity-ish floral-ish but don't call it fruity-floral something.  Texture is viscous.  It doesn't take me long to decide.  Though known loves lined up with knowing smiles, thinking they would be the ones asked to dance, it was L'Accord -- a creature unlike any of the others -- that was invited to my wrist.

A wrist I huffed and I huffed up and down the Elysses.

Oh, suprisingly happy opening.  You may well (all too well, perhaps) know that I am not bent toward fruit nor floral nor the combination thereof.  But there are certain roses...and every now and then a special blackberry...that will cause me to sniff again.  And then there was this thing on my wrist, which was warm without being sickly sweet, which threatened to be to thick for a summer day on the pavement on Paris, but which was always just...pretty bending toward beautiful.  Dense flower.  Some chocolate (which my brain keeps telling me could be patch) weaving in and out.  A trace of something medicinal.  Perhaps one could call it a dessert with hints of savory, anchored in bread.  That's it, more bread pudding than pastry.  But staying there is not fair, because it is more grown up somehow.  Yet it doesn't cheat by simply being a liqueur version of something with mass.

What was this thing?

It dried down beautifully, and was tenacious.  Became somewhat drier, in a leathery not woodsy way. And I start wondering just what flower it is I'm smelling, whether it was just suggestion that said it was a rose?  It's not now, not really...it's less sweet, and other stuff, dried greenery made liquid, is hinted at.

Oh, I think I have to do this again.

(I thought.)

And so I have.

***

L'Accord (Code 119).  I came here thinking I might let something vault the walls of resistance...Bois des Iles in extrait?  A non-export Serge?  Something from Patricia de Nicolai?  Instead, from a shop I hadn't determined as a "must visit," a fragrance that was a complete surprise.

As of two days later, so totally purchased.

**
I desperately tried to hunt down information on this perfume, in an attempt to be "thoughtful" and sensible about a purchase.  All I got was Octavian...and given how much I respect his thoughts, all he spelled was doom for my pocketbook in his brief look at L'Accord here.  I probably would have gotten it anyway, but not so freely.

Incidentally, I asked the salesperson about the "mystery of number 119."  She laughed and replied that it was a reference to the address where it was created, initially put on the perfume because the company was interested in seeing how customers would respond.


*
I hesitated to write anything about this one...yet...the voodoo, you know.  Seemed like it, and I, should be home safe and sound first.  But there was also the bad karma of holding back...so, here you go.

I am wearing it now.  Patch/choc has not made the appearance it did that day on the Champs d'Elysses, but it is cooler, and I'm not on the pavement at the moment.  The sounds of a flute rehearsing across the courtyard have stopped, and now a soprano and a tenor are running through a duet.  Somewhere, my brain is thinking this is appropriate and related.

Magic Numbers

The number I am looking forward to discussing with you is 119.

Unfortunately, I have other numbers in my head.  Like 500.  As in mg.  And a new word, "paracétamo."  Life isn't always romantic in Paris.

Not sure if this what son the elder had in mind when he wanted us to behave more "naturally."  I know it isn't what son the younger wanted--he is the one who first caught the bug.  And was pretty misérable about having done so in Paris.  (I'm pretty sure he got it from the older dude one row ahead of them on the plane, who was snorfling and coughing and honking...with honking being the only thing he bothered to capture.)

So, I spent a day reading, among other things, about LSD as psychiatric treatment in 1950's Hollywood.  Which of course resulted with the necessary reference to "Go Ask Alice" getting all tangled up in my head with my translation of dosages in French: une pill renre vous what?  Then, relying on said son to figure out dosage for his weight...made me have odd thoughts like "why can't I be sick in Barcelona?"

Je suis désolé.  Oops, no, wait, can't use that; that is what son the younger thought to say when for some reason the card reader at the Monoprix wouldn't comprehend our credit card.  What, karmic payback?  It doesn't speak my bank's language?  Ha! Universal comedy in a magnetic strip!!  Anyway, son the younger and I emptied our pockets, and managed to find the full amount in cash.  Lots of smiles and such exchanged, but when I heard him say "désolé" to the clerk, I knew it was just...comical.

Anyway, lest I leave the impression that I have been completely bumbling my way through this lovely city, I share with you once again that magic number.  119.  Which I will speak fully once I have safely returned.

Must to respect la voudou, you know.  Who do?  I do.  Even in Paris.

Maybe doing so will help with the cold.

Or perhaps the older dude from 36B is feeling a prickle of désolé, whether he knows why or not.

Pairing: Bonne chance, gentiane + Ninfeo Mio

The other day, two new things in two of my favorite categories.

One:  Gentian liqueur.
Two:  Ninfeo Mio perfume.

Within a block of each other.

Sprayed the Ninfeo Mio first, in a tiny cute shop tucked away on a street leading from the Metro stop to the D'Orsay museum.  Could have predicted enjoying Goutal's version of a "bracing" opening--refreshing, but not so much a hard slap as the quick schmack! followed by the 'not really painful but you can tell something violent led to' relief of cold water splashed on hot pavement.  The bergamot is part of that.  A lemony bergamot that is quickly pulled back by some dryness, dryness which doesn't remove the citrus, but makes it behave differently.  The kind of thing DH calls "peppery."  (Sharp generally = "peppery" in his book, especially if bergamot is involved.)  Quite pleasing, if you go in for that sort of thing.  And I do.

Later, it transitions into a smooth herby gently sweet something.  Which I want to experience again.  And plan to.  And perhaps will describe better then.  But meanwhile, I was distracted by...

...gentiane.  On a cafe menu.  I've been enjoying this business of the public aperitif; back home, I'm like some lady in her dotage, sneaking a nip of the sherry when cooking.  You see, nobody "does" aperitifs in my local circles.  I'm working on changing that...but for now, if I'm enjoying an apertif, it's generally just me and my gardening companion The 70 Pound Dog, sitting out on the patio, staring at the plants and trying to conjecture what I can cook in 30 minutes or less that will seem like it was something I gave serious consideration for part of the day.  (The old days of no time to stop to breathe seem to have their most serious vestiges in my cooking habits...)

Here, my spouse joins me, and we join others, and there's a whole shelf of things to choose from.  Not always gentiane, however, so I took my chance.  And it was bitter herbal tonically good.  Fabulous color, too...not the hyper fluorescence of absinthe, but something that the good forest might have conjured.

Those herbs?  I fancied I found them in the drydown of Ninfeo Mio.  Tucked away among a layer of gentle floral.

This is one corner of Paris I'll be able to enjoy in my grotto, whether I am alone or with company.  Give me a ring if you're in the neighborhood; I'll set you up.  A slap on the wrist and a sharp in the glass.

If you don't like 'em, you can always swap for Shalimar and a vanilla creme soda.

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.

Shop Window Earns Sad Emoticon

I did not say anything about that shop window that I pressed my nose against on Sunday.  The Guerlain?  Near the Opera?

Mind you, it was an outpost.  Not THE shop.  And I tend to forget that Guerlain also offers make-up.  Silly me.  So I'm going to forgive the fact that of the two, the left one flanking the lovely door was entirely devoted to face paint.

But to dedicate the other window entirely to the Aqua Allegoria line?  Say it ain't so, Josephine.

:(