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...

Why is the moon, symbol of femininity, also a symbol of inconstancy? I understand that both are subject to cyclic change, but why is that often seen as a negative thing in Western culture? Where is the notion of positive power, of wonder at the connectedness of humans and the sky and other parts of nature? This is something that bothers me off and on, and this allegorical image of Inconstancy brings many of these irritations bubbling up to the surface… There’s that damn crustacean again—I mentioned it once before in one of my lunatic posts --that horrific symbol of meaningless cycles of nature, that, according to traditional thought that I find quite compelling, has nothing to do with a good god.The depths-crawling lobster represents the nightmare of the unknown, of the subconscious, and also of the deep unexplored ocean; the things we know exist and don’t want to understand—all brought up by the moon’s powerful force.   Abraham Janssens “Inkonstanz, Allegorie der Unbeständ...

From a private correspondence between me, LBV, and my perfume friend Tamara. In this installment, Tamara struggles with her expectations and certain realities while searching for true love. I bet you all can relate. I certainly can. “I'm about to go to the dreaded mall this morning to go see if I like Laura Mercier's Minuit Enchanté cause from what I've read about it, it seems like it's right up my smelly alley ….” a few hours later: “But you know what I did? I went to try the L.M. Minuit Enchanté and what the hell! It was a screechy mish mash of notes; it was (and still is) painful cause I'm trying to give it the full on it deserves (poor  nasty thing) but bleeech ! I am so glad I didn't have to pay for that sample. But I do have it  now if you’re interested, ha! Sooo I take it back what I said before...no I don't . I'll ADD to what I was saying before. I don't just love decadence, I also love earthy and green. Whoooweee girl, I c...

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am suffering from a glut of ‘ista’ suffixes. First, there was barista—annoyingly euro showoff, but ok…. Then there was the rise of the ‘fashionista’. Ok, what des that mean? Someone who likes fashion. Um hmmmm, like someone who is ‘fashionable’ or ‘fashion-conscious’ or trendy? DO we really need to call them ‘fashionistas’ if we have all those other ways of putting it? Something about the tone of that word just strikes me as wrong. Too Sex and the City , or something. Then of course, there we are, the ‘perfumistas,’ and maybe I’m biased, but this one makes a little more sense to me since there really wasn’t any kind of name for our group of weirdoes before—smell-obsessed? Nah. interested in perfume? Eew. perfume-lovers? noooooo! etc. SO I was willing to stomach the obnoxiously ubiquitous neologism for the time being, since it worked as a descriptive noun for our folk. But then, ‘recessionista’ happened… and a whole slew of similar new splic...

Damn that Mariah Carey and her saccharine juvenilia, now complete with tooth-rot, Laurent le Guernec AND repulsive references to engagement. Behold the latest atrocity: link to NYT article on Mariah’s new perfume line Credits: Brown Sugar pic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Just another glossy irritation today. I got my copy of American Elle in the mail yesterday, and while browsing it today, I came across another one of those irritating anti-perfume mini perfume articles . You know, the kind of little blurb that starts out looking like it is pro scent, but then just panders to all the scent-haters out there. This one really rubbed me wrong.   I took a pic of the page (136) on the right, but in case   you can’t read it, it says a recent study discovered that the smell of peppermint reduces anxiety (well, that seems pretty obvious to anyone who thinks aromatherapy even kind of works) but then goes on to tell the ‘fragrance-phobic’ that they needn’t worry, since just smelling the mint for a moment had the same effect as sensing it in the air for an extended period of time. (at least I think that’s what the fairly unclear blurb is saying. It could be saying the subjects were detecting trace amounts of peppermint in the air subliminally, so ...

SO, I was bumming around in Barnes and Noble last night waiting for my husband’s history class to come back from a 4-day tour of Civil War battlefields so we could get in the car and drive back home to be together for the first time in a little under two weeks, and I came upon an article in the June issue of Allure that irritated me a little—ok, a lot! (that was way too long a sentence, I know) In this brief article, the journalist writes [and I respond in parentheses] : At what point did we start wanting our perfume to conjure a poisonously scheming man-eater or an underwear-clad model? [ um, what? Haven’t perfumes always had something to do with sex, or at least with ‘allure’?] Apparently, perfumers have been asking themselves the same questions, [have they now…?] because this summer heralds the return of the pure floral scent [has it ever been away?]. “ These florals smell like nature, like a natural flower,” explains perfumer Frédéric Malle [in the first sentence that actua...

  Down with them! Down! I really dislike the Vera Wang Princess ads. The girls portrayed in them remind me of the kind of overprivileged young women who populate the undergraduate population of my university. I always groan when I see this kind of girl in my classes on the first days of the semester; you can spot them from a mile away—always attached to their blackberrys, hoisting a huge be-logoed Prada bag on their anorexic shoulders, wearing a hideous and rather skanky outfit that you can tell is designer right away. This is the kind of girl who shows up in my office crying if she gets less than an A on the paper she plagiarized from the internet, who gets drunk and pukes at frat parties, who never worries about the future because she knows she can always work for Daddy’s firm. She never studies anything because it interests her;  she only studies subjects she needs to know to make lots of money. And worst of all, she speaks in a simpering baby whine that makes my e...

Ok, this one is a scrubber, but I am going to bear the disaster on my wrists to get it down on paper, er, in my file. This is a plastic yogurt container filled with baby perfume and bubblegum, maybe some tea, and some accord of faux fruits, all heated up into a microwave until it explodes into a carcinogenic superfund site. There's no secret here--just candy-forward atrocity. Whatever synthetic wood base that is that's lurking at the bottom doesn't do enough work to save it. No intriguing angels or demons here either, unless we count the noonday demon, who is certainly going to creep up on me if I contemplate this any longer. It makes me melancholy to think of all the gorgeous creations that could have come into creation in place of this run-of-the-mill girly thing. If this is 'the secret', kill me now.

I ordered a sample of one of Guerlain's new Voyages Olfactifs, Tokyo, and I must say I am a little disappointed with the resulting green fragrance. It seems awfully one-dimensional for this house, and lacks much excitement. It seems pretty linear, and, dare I say it, rather generic. Tea notes plus cedar plus violet plus orange blossom= meh for me. If this were in the more reasonable price range, I might appreciate it more. Like, Vera Wang should be producing this for the boring mass market. Not Guerlain. This is simply not up to snuff, and I find it tragic that the great perfume house known for baroque elegance is trying to enter the uninspiring modern perfume market in such a way. This is sellout thinking, and I don't like to see it in Guerlain. People should come to this house once their noses have been educated and they are ready for a real fragrance--or they should use Guerlain to educate themselves. Guerlain should not come to them. Grr! Plus, why those trashy bottles? Oh ...

While I am on the subject of sweat, I have to rant a little. Why is it so hard to find a nice-smelling drugstore deodorant for women? I mean, at least the men have their classics-- Brut, Old Spice, Jovan Musk , you know the drill--we will ignore all the sporty newfangled abominations. Women have what? Secret? Carribean Cool? Bah humbug. All of them smell sickly sweet and carcinogenic to my nose. The natural ones, alas, do not work. For many years I relied on Dove Fresh , which had an understated but natural-smelling jasmine perfume, but on my last trip to the drugstore, to my dismay, I discovered that they have reformulated that as well and it has become way too sweet smelling now. What to do?

Well, maybe it's me, and maybe it's jasmine, but all the supposedly successful white flower bomb, jasmine perfumes don't seem to do it for me. I have been wearing Cashmere Mist today, and in spite of the woody notes, the scent is simply to one-dimensional, too sickly sweet, to make me want to invest in a bottle, especially when I feel Avon can do as good of a job with a perfume this uninspiring for an eighth of the price. The musky bit of it is ok, and the hint of woods is intriguing, but in the end it just comes off as a generic perfume with nothing in particular to recommend it. Nothing interesting happens in its lifespan; you put it on, and wear it until it wears off. I can see how this could be a comfort scent for some, perhaps the same crowd of people who are overly influenced by ad copy and think 'cashmere= comfy & luxurious, so this perfume must be both those things too." But I am pretty sure, as I sit here and sniff myself, that 'comforta...

I thought that Tim Burton's Alice was a horrible, pointless waste of great talent and an even greater story. What an unfortunate, yet totally unsurprising, disappointment! it's so sad, though. My two favorite actors--Alan Rickman and Stephen Fry--given bit parts with absolutely nowhere to go with them. I have never seen a more bland Cheshire cat, and the caterpillar lacked all the requisite weirdness. I blame it on the screenplay, but I am still not happy about it. And don't even get me started on Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter. Puke. You can see I'm still mad about it two days later