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...

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…..

It’s still really hot here, so I am making lots of cold soups. Here are some more recipes, for those who are also suffering this heat wave. Cold sweet corn soup. Slice the kernels off at least 4 ears of fresh sweet corn and blend with 1 sauteed onion and 4 sauteed whole garlic cloves, 2 tbsps. lime juice, salt and pepper to taste, and the liquid of your choice—cream, milk, evaporated milk, chicken stock, or buttermilk. Blend till relatively smooth-textured. Open a can of chipotle peppers, and drain out the juice into a bow l, reserving the peppers for another use. blend a bit of the reserved liquid with olive oil, and then drizzle this on top of each bowl of cold corn soup, adding a dollop of sour cream as well! Enjoy! Kurt’s Cold Cucumber Soup (one of my favorites ) in a blender, 2 peeled cukes, chopped a bit enough buttermilk to make it blend nicely one clove of raw garlic dill a tsp. Worcestershire sauce Salt and pepper to taste. Serve cold, wi...

SO my cat looks like I feel: pooped. It has been a great week, but very busy here! First, my best friend and his girlfriend stopped by on their cross-country roadtrip….   they were doing contact dance and gymnastics in the living room. You know, like you do (LOL). we went on a picnic together, and toured downtown Ithaca (I won a free rose here!) we walked around the lily pond in Cornell’s Plantations and listened to the frogs in the evening. Some bird dropped a feather here. After they left, my brother and his wife (the Brazilian) came over from michigan to spend the 4th here. we went on a drive to Skaneatles, a Finger Fake and town to the east of us where the water is crystal-clear and got some homemade malts and super-fresh fish  at Doug’s Fish Fry for the 4th, I threw a party down by Cayuga Lake. my thesis advisor and a bunch of grad students came. we sat on the dock, watched the sunset, and then the fi...

As I’ve been hanging out on the blogosphere, commenting on posts and suchlike, I have been harvesting the more interesting captchas—you know, those things that interrupt you when you’re posting a comment to ‘make sure you are a human being.’ I love the way so many of them seem like they could really be words, could actually mean something. SO today, for your pleasure and amusement, I have put some captchas into sentences, some of which I find rather evocative, if I do say so myself. There’s no narrative here; each sentence should be taken on its own, although it would be interesting to try to write a story in captcha someday. Enjoy: When the Whebe had been fully Ingolpen …..the Wheedl increased grossly in Wigth . She was Foning him with her Nodlex . Every hardworking housekeeper deserves an Enseter to soment the Wynkoop . Cring the Polosmith crafted a Shlozorp with the Croofnh of his Moldha . Hunting Niati and Conih was the great hero Barinson’s favorite Iggesig ...

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...

Check out this amazing series of pictures of different kinds of alcohol under the microscope. (There are lots more at the linked web site.) What blows my mind is how much the images seem to express, in an abstract   way, each drink’s ‘personality.’ Each image really captures the spirit of the thing (sorry, couldn’t resist). I wonder what a similar series of pictures of iconic perfumes would look like….. Food for thought, anyway. Credits: Images of Margarita,  vodka, and tequila under microscope found at amusingplanet.com

I’m not some huge videogame buff, much preferring to spend my leisure hours reading, hanging with friends, or even watching shows, but once in a while I do enjoy a good zone-out on our Playstation or Wii consoles. The proble m I have with videogames is that they are often too violent for my tastes, or they require some sort of intense focus, which is about the last thing I want after a long day studying. To my great delight, I have found a game—or really, two games—on the Wii console that I really enjoy playing. Called Lostwinds and Lostwinds: Winter of the Melodias , this game allows you and a companion to wander through a Zen-like natural landscape on a slow-moving quest to do something or other (the plot’s just not that important, and there’s no hurry). It’s meditative, beautiful, and best of all, it is fragrant! Well, you can’t actually smell all the flowers in bloom, but you can see them release their scent and pollen in the air—it’s the next best thing to really sme...

I love seasonal changes! In fact, I love them so much that I even teach a class about them at my university, called (admittedly a bit awkwardly) “A Midsummer Night’s Weirdness.” This class chronicles in particular the liminal moments of the seasonal year as celebrated in traditional societies, for long before Shakespeare wrote his play, strange things have been happening on the longest day of summer and the longest day of winter in Medieval European literature. Portals to other realms open up, lovers fall in and out of love, strange fairy women appear to choose a mate or a victim, and magic boats materialize at the shore, waiting to take an adventurous hero away on a voyage he’ll never forget—and from which he may never return. My class examines some of the texts which describe the otherworldly effects of these weirdest of nights, including Celtic, French, and Spanish romance, including works by Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France, Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, British ballads, ...

I have been thinking about this question a lot lately, since I find that I ‘see’ fragrance in different ways depending on what scent I’m wearing and how much I have on. For example, if you only wear a little light perfume on your pulse points, do you imagine those spots radiating with scent? Or imagine the fragrance sitting on them as a different color or as a mist? If you perfume your body more heavily, do you imagine yourself wrapped in an invisible garment, which can be glittery, fuzzy, warm, etc. depending on the perfume? And on a similar line, how do you understand/mythologize/visualize your sillage? Do you imagine the scent you leave in your wake in literal terms, like the wake left behind by a boat? Or do you think again about clothing, about having a train flowing behind you? Or do you think of it in terms of music, of leaving behind the memory of a song? Scentshelf’s wonderful post over at Notes from the Ledge has gotten me thinking about all the unusual ...

First, a reminder to enter for a chance to win my Tauer perfume giveaway here as you dear readers may know, I am an old fan of the great English domestic novel , but I have noticed a disturbing phenomenon; as I grow older, I begin identifying less with the sweet young 15 year old heroines, and more with their mothers and aunts with all their peccadilloes of character and odd obsessions. Do they ever grow tired of watching, aiding, and abetting the young females as they perform their elaborate mating dances, flirting and giggling till the wee hours of the morning at country dances while they, the older women, gossip and play cards? Do they ever tire of living vicariously through them, when their blood is pulsing just as quickly—or even more so--through their own veins? Do they  ever wish their stolid, unimaginative, dependable husbands would shape up and be more attentive? As they sit in their boudoir among their pots of cream and scent, do they fantasize about a new romanc...

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...

Before I start, a quick reminder that my book and fragrance drawing and giveaway is still in full swing. don’t forget to enter your name here if you are interested!   First, a brief reminder that my book and perfume sample giveaway draw is still open . Every year, at the medieval conference in Kalamazoo, I a ttend a very civilized dinner at the home of a professor emeritus. He and his wife have spent over 50 years perfecting this home, and I think I can say it is one of the best curated, most beautiful homes I have ever had the pleasure to see. Unfortunately, this professor’s wife died suddenly a few years back, and every year since, I have feared  that these polite, delicious dinners, filled with wonderful food and urbane conversation, will come to an end. SO this yea r, I documented my favorite parts of the house by taking snapshots. This is not in any way a fragrance post, but it certainly has a lot to do with the art of living an aesthetically full life. ...