Essence

Monday, May 27, 2013

I have been on an inquisition for a new perfume.

I am a funny creature,  for smells and what people smell like are intimately important to me.  I imprint to smell.

My own perfume choices are carefully considered. I have had phases through my life in which I use perfume to become something or someone.  I know, instantly, if a scent is not going to work for me. I lean in towards people and try to smell them without seeming creepy or cannibalistic.

One of the ways Terrance snared me was his exquisite scent the night we meet. Not overwhelming like most of the boys in 1990, smelling of Polo or Drakkar...but close, sophisticated. Something different. He smelled.....right.

This choosing is taking time. I have to sample a number of scents before I can decide. I have to consider what season I will be wearing them, and what they remind me of when they linger on my skin.

I try a new fragrance and ask Terrance to smell them. He hates this. He refuses to place his nose to my proffered forearm. Emily, however, is always willing to engage in this exercise with me. She, too, is a creature for whom smells are part of how we engage with the world. In fact she still, daily, wraps her arms around me and inhales my scent. I am mother to her. I am strength and security and unconditional love.  Whatever my faults and misgivings, I am her olfactory rock of Gibraltar.

My decants arrive and I place them in the bathroom to be sampled. I choose one each day and test it on my skin. Some fade quickly, others spark something in my memory causing me to reject them. This happens with jasmine heavy fragrances  I don't care for those, although I can't tell you exactly why. I find them cloying and overpowering.

Some require second and third wearings before I can get a sense of who these perfumes are and of what they speak. Lutens Filles des Berlin is one of these. I like it, but do I want to commit to it? Do I want this scent to wrap it's tendrils around a specific part of my being?

Some are instantly obvious. Commes des Garcons Red Carnation intertwined itself around me from the moment I opened the decant. I walked into the hallway and Emily said "THAT IS AWESOME!" She recognized it as a smell that belonged on me immediately. Peppery, with bright carnation overlayed with a musky rose and cloves...Oh, the cloves.

Others, like Creed's White Flowers or Spring Flowers are lovely but are too delicate for me. I am not delicate. I have never been, nor will ever be delicate.

With others I have high hopes that are never realized after wearing the scent for the day. Lutens  Daim Blonde, Tubereuse Criminelle, Vitriol D'Oeillet and  A La Nuit all get the "meh, not for me" and are relegated to the sample box.

Others, like Lutens Silver Iris Mist make me stop and wonder. What is this on my skin? Why do I like this despite not knowing how I feel about it?

I wanted to love Etat Libre d'Orange's Putain des Palaces. I mean the name alone made me want to love this scent. Alas. It did not wear well on me and gave me a headache. Like this, Tilda Swinton however gave me the same sense of not knowing how I felt about it. I ordered a larger sample so as to wear it in a variety of settings, getting a sense for how the scent lives on my skin.

I am like a feral child, sniffing and circling on the scents I like. Discarding some, moving others to a second wearing I keep circling back, sniffing, snuffling, inhaling all the smells.  I exhale, hard, through my nose - clearing it of memories.

In my continual becoming, I seek that which belongs to me while not yet knowing.

Happy Fluevog Day!

Tuesday, May 14, 2013


It's true.



I still have fabulous fvcking ankles.




43, bitches!!

My Closet

Saturday, May 11, 2013

It is the end of the academic semester and I have survived a full year as a Professor. I have also very recently had a birthday, turning 43 years of age.

In the final weeks of school with the stresses of teaching, getting students ready for their presentations, grading papers, seeing student teachers and meeting with their cooperative teachers some things have been placed waaaaayyyyy to the side.

One of those things? My closet.

By Friday it was so bad that I took what I needed and fled, slamming the door behind me in an effort to unsee the horror that had manifested.

I fell to sleep last night at 8:30 p.m., sleeping through until 11:00 a.m.. As Terrance asked me what my plans for today included I said:

"Clean the rabbit litter. Straighten my bathroom. Put away the massive stack of clean clothes and all the things on the floor. Maybe grade some things. But not the closet. The closet is too much for me to bear, at the moment."

As I worked through my Saturday list, the closet began to make its presence known. It was going to be impossible to put away the clothes and clean up the shoes on the floor unless I entered the closet. I had 12 pairs of shoes that needed to be put... inside the closet. There were skirts and shirts and dresses that all belonged...in the closet.

Damn it. I was going to have to address the closet.

See that pile on the floor? Um, Yeah. That is a pile of shoes.
A giant pile of shoes.
Also, some hats that have fallen, a multitude of discarded scarves and some bags that held summer clothes that I raided when we had a two warm days last week.





See the shoes? I should feel shame, but I can't. Aren't they lovely? Even all jumbled up in that hot mess?

Left side of closet is dresses. Right is skirts and blouses.
As is clear, the system has gone to hell. Shirts are mixing in with dresses, sweaters are flung all about and next years Christmas cards have been haphazardly shoved in a sweater space.


My careful attention to shoe boxes is no longer in evidence.
Things have reached crisis stage.

About an hour later, we have some movement. Most of the shoes have been returned ( lovingly) to their appropriate boxes.
I am crooning soft songs, promising to never treat them that way again.














"Shhh, shoes. Mama will never treat you like that again...until next end of semester."











Coco comes in to investigate. She approves of my progress.
I move to quickly pick up the purses she will begin to chew.




After nearly four solid hours, Order is restored.

Hats are back on the wall where they belong. Shoes have been returned ( except for the brown crocodile ones that are in the car) and all garments have been re-organized with their peers.








I step back and gaze over my kingdom. I turn to Emily and say: "Your mother has a hell of a lot of clothes. And Hats. And Purses."

Emily looks up from her Kindle, nods and returns to her reading.


 
◄Design by Pocket