hortus conclusus

A Harvest Moon tonight, the best in 2O years, so they say, and the sky is clouded over here in Ithaca. Damn you, Lady Fortune! I return to you, a changed woman. I have a theory about academic work—that its rhythms of feast and fast, of heavy, intense work and periods of creative drought and no deadlines serve to mask a deeper, horrifying truth: that as you get caught up in the cycle of not much work, then intense work, you don’t realize the periods of rest are getting shorter, that the stakes are getting higher, and that no amount of work will ever be good enough. You don’t notice that you are working harder and harder, becoming a more intense person year by year, slowly turning into that workaholic academic you thought you’d never become. I have always resisted this fate, hoping to remain a well-rounded, grounded person who does not live for her work alone, but somehow the system has gotten to me. How else can I explain this past month of near non-stop work on my dissertation draf...

Hi all! I am working on the second installment of my medieval perfume story, trying to finish a draft of a dissertation chapter by Friday, teaching 3 hours a day, grading papers and finals for the super-intensive medical history class I have been TA-ing for the past three weeks, and frantically preparing for our upcoming anniversary voyage to Morocco and Spain (starting Saturday) so today’s post will be regrettably short. Luckily, you are all probably familiar with the lovely Eau d’Hadrien , so I needn’t go into great detail, only present my impressions of it. It really is lovely is Eau d’Hadrien ; its nose-tingling lemon zest—yes, a little like a lemon drop—reminds me of my trips to see concerts with my mother. She’d always buy me lemon drops at the orchestra hall,  although she was fundamentally opposed to ‘store-bought’ sweets. That was the only time I was allowed to ‘buy candy’, and so the flavor of those lemon drops always reminds me of our happy and frequent visits to the...

5 years ago today, I married my husband, at my family’s cabin in Red Lodge Montana. I know you may all be tired of hearing me ramble on this week about our anniversary, but the 5-year mark has me thinking a lot about that day. It was a very homemade wedding—family members, friends, and I made all the food; my mother, mother-in-law, and I sewed the wedding dress, and a large contingent of friends arrived at our cabin about a week early to help decorate the place.   I loaded up my old station wagon with flowers, and we spent the day before the wedding making bouquets and corsages, among sundry other things….I will never forget the way my car smelled as  I drove up into the mountains. In the evenings, the intrepid wedding party relaxed from their labors with a hookah and some drinks down by the creek (I therefore always associate the sweet smell of hookah tobacco with my wedding. Go figure) And of course, I was a bit preoccupied and nervous about the big ...

My beloved, who has been away on a business trip for two weeks now, sent me this in an email last night as a sweet gesture. I was charmed, of course, but now I’m musing about the way Frank can seem both interested and uninterested in what he’s singing at the same time.  Can you guys do that? I know I can be both into something and not all at the same time…..

I’ve been hanging out wi th my two cellist siblings a lot this summer and it has gotten me thinking about cellos. Well, cellos and people. Well, cellos, perfume and people. You see, to me the cello is the instrument that most resembles the human voice. In shape, it most resembles the human form. Its voice is mostly male, its form mostly female, and thus it is fundamentally androgynous, a quality which has done much to keep it in the collective unconscious of pop culture. Even the act  of playing the cello is intimate in a way unlike any other player’s relationship with his instrument. The female player titillatingly holds the cello between her thighs when she performs—my sister has trouble finding black clothing appropriate for performance for this very reason—and their union results in the birth of music itself. The male cellist, too, is locked in a creative embrace of his beloved. The color of the cello—as well as its tone—is the richest warmest honeyed amber, in one of the mos...

I really like J-lo’s Deseo . I know we are supposed to scorn celebrity fragrances until they convince us otherwise with some exceptional quality or other, but I have liked this fragrance from the get-go. You know how a pineapple’s acidity makes your tongue tingle in that weird way that only pineapples can accomplish? Well, Deseo makes that same thing happen in my mouth when  I smell it—isn’t that strange? It is pineapple on me, but not in a bonne belle type of way. It is pineapple in a difficult, acidic, slightly green, sour sort of way. I really love the composition, actually—lots of painful pineapple sitting atop a lovely chypre structure, with a little green coconut thrown in to make consumers realize (if they haven’t already, the dullards) that it is ‘tropical.’ I don’t think of this as a ‘fruity floral’ at all in fact—more of a sour chypre. And then, there’s the bottle. I LOOVVEE this bottle. At first, I thought: tacky. Then I thought: hey, it’s kinda cool how it is desi...

Last night, we had a thunderstorm here like you wouldn’t believe, and because It’s still a full moon, for all intents and purposes, I passed a very sleepless night. The sky cracked with energy and moisture as I lay awake in our hot, hot muggy room, both of us naked with the sheets thrown completely off. Finally, unable to lie alone with my thoughts any longer, I got up and went to the couch to read. I spritzed on some Dzonkha, and the dry smoke/cardamom/incense/and dirt, my cat Oliver, and I all sat down together, waiting for the storm to break….. U2’s song “Electrical Storm” kept spinning through my tired head: The sea is swells like a sore head and the night it is aching Two lovers lie with no sheets on their bed and the day it is breaking On rainy days we go swimming out on rainy days, swimming in the sound On rainy days we go swimming out You're in my mind all of the time I know that's not e...

Where the bee sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. SO says the freed Ariel, and so do I wish I could do. Alas, I am but a human and must content myself with sucking nectar from a different kind of vessel. And I found some interesting new nectar in an unexpected place this morning. A few weeks ago, Jessica said: “Ever since I started reading your blog I have been searching for scents that I like and find wearable (which, admittedly, are rather few). One of my absolute favorite smells and flavors is citrus (particularly orange blossom, can you recommend a good--and perhaps more widely available--soliflore? Serge Lutens is kind of inaccessible from my current location). I have always loved the marriage of citrus and "darker" elements wh...

Sometimes the world is too much with us. Like when our oceans are pouring black blood , and uncomprehending animals are caught in a dark tide that ends their world, not with a bang but a whimper. we feel we can do nothing but suffer with them, as the gorge rises in our throats like that black bile coming from the hellish belly of the earth. NO human effort seems worthwhile in such an atmosphere of despair. Certainly no aesthetic enjoyment should be contemplated. Who are we to laugh, to smile, to think even, when we have perpetrated such horrors? But yet, there is still love, and maybe there is hope, though I doubt it very much….. On days like these, when the wind blows and the rain falls, as if sympathetic to our bootless despair, there is nothing to do but cry for a lost world. But yet , there is still George Harrison, singing his heartbreakingly lovely “I Live For you,” the most melancholy yet gorgeous love song of all time. But yet , there is the enormously...

Time for my monthly musing on the full moon—I can’t help it, I’m made different by its light shining in my window, inescapable, in ways comforting and maternal, yet also strange, disturbing. All my senses come alive; I am my self, amplified, for better or worse. Over these six years of marriage I have infected my husband, who now suffers the same sea change as I every time that celestial body climbs up in the heaven, redundant, resounding. We huddle together in our bed, listening to each other’s breathing, wondering when, if, how, we will ever achieve sleep. We hearken to the wild night noises outside our windows, the sounds of creatures somehow bigger, invasive. as if they roam the corners of our silver room, lurking and hunting, shrieking and munching.     I smell my skin, scented with the unnatural, or perhaps supe r-natural, human amplifications of flowers, roots, woods, and unnamable sensations with only a pale chemical for a name, the product of alche...

I overpurchased, I think! At left, see the boxes of perfume straight out of the box with foam peanut residue still clinging to them. “But there was a sale ”, I say in my defense---“20 percent off at Parfum1.com—with a free gift!” I know it’s no excuse for buying 9 bottles, but, oh well, I did it. And it DID only cost 110 bucks—not so heinous, right? right? right?, she asks herself in the echo chamber of her own resounding guilt…. Ah well, what’s done is done, I guess, and now I get to enjoy the spoils. It is not as cool as Carol at WAFT’s serendipitous find , but still a pleasant group of frags for enjoyment and leisurely review. I am looking forward to comparing my new balmain vent vert in the early 90s formulation against my vintage parfum….I’ll let you know how that goes in a few days.   I have to show you the size of the box this all came in. I mean, you know you have a problem when your fragrance purchases come in a box of this size, that weighs (gulp…)   seve...

We live in an age of superspecialization; it’s been said many times and I’m gonna say it again.  My favorite example of this phenomenon is Pandora , the online radio station, which allows one to suggest one’s favorite song, then produces the songs and albums its special generator thinks you might like. If you don’t like the suggestions, give it a thumbs down—it’ll recalibrate and try to find the exact right thing for your tastes and expectations. So far so good, right? You get exactly what you want for your mood, and discover new artists in the process, right? The problem, in my eyes, lies in the fact that a person could listen to nothing but artists who all have something in common with David Bowie , for example, and never come into contact with any other genres or music al ideas, for the rest of her life. New music is always coming out, and she can just specialize in that niche. The same trend holds true for perfume. New fragrances are always being launched, in every...

Tonight we are going to take a gorgeous trip through the land of vanilla. First stop: Guerlain’s Shalima r , the qu een of Orientals, the vanillic fantasy goddess. Second stop: vanilla pudding, warm. Third stop: your most comfortable, yet beautiful clothes. Fourth stop: a down comforter, and someone to cuddle with. Maybe you put on a favorite movie, maybe you just enjoy one another’s company, maybe you play a lush, gorgeous album—I suggest Caribou’s Andorra or Iron and Wine’s The Shepherd’s Dog --  and listen to it together. But as you are eating the pudding, think about the sweetness of the sugar, and the way it interacts with the cream, and the smoky softness of the vanilla. Smell the Shalimar and keep the scent in your nose and mind as you sample the pudding. Note how well the two play together.Hug the blanket closer around you and feel the fabric and the plushness caress your skin. hug your partner. Think about whether you these experiences are in accord with the vanilla puddi...