salt spray and roses

To wash that terrible Givenchy (Ange ou Demon le Secret) from my nose, I scrubbed myself down, had some coffee, took a deep breath, then applied one of my favorite roses, the lovely, understated Les Parfums de Rosine Ecume de rose, a salty, fresh rose with a certain herbaceous quality to it. Something about the way this interacts with my skin creates that tangy salty smell--or is it a feeling-- that you get when you smell the skin of somebody who has been exercising outside in the cold. it is briny, a bit metallic, tickles the nose ever so slightly, and is very real, and it makes all sorts of memories come flooding in. The vetiver (one of my favorite notes) at the base gives this a woody, rooty, musky slant, and really does summon images of a rose bush growing on some rock overlooking some wild oceanscape. Really quite lovely.

In some ways this reminds me of a beautiful day I spent with my sister last year. She lives near Seattle, and the day before I had to leave we went to a public rose garden that is situated right on the Pacific ocean and smelled rose after rose, all sorts of varieties, then went on a walk through some beautiful old growth deciduous forest, all the while admiring the blue blue sea, and the even bluer sky, and smelling the brine breeze in on the wind. I remember wishing I could stay in that place forever, with one of my very favorite people, and that memory has somehow become entwined with this perfume. Bittersweet, and gorgeous.