I'm wearing a weird perfume today. Which isn't all that unusual really, I often am wearing a weird perfume. Pascal Morabito Or Black
It's got a kind of blast of dry tangy wind in ocean grass thing going on to start - with pepper. It made me sneeze in the beginning. Partly the pepper in the mix, but a little of the sinus stripping burn of the soap aisle.
Oddly, I am enjoying it. I want to know what happens next.
(Odd because my feelings for the soap aisle are fully developed and unfriendly. The last time I needed some household cleansers I walked down the aisle, breathing through my mouth, and realized I cannot buy cleaners at the grocery store anymore. An entire aisle of stuff and it is dead to me. Except for the borax/baking soda. Very occasionally I use ammonia on grubby whites (outdoors). So then I went to the hippy little vitamin store and got some earth friendly scent- and dye- free powder for the laundry and an all purpose concentrate)
This Or Black is a famously quirky scent and really, I'm not getting it. People go on and on about leather and gasoline and flowers and wood and I'm getting mostly vetiver and maybe the beginnings of a warm woody something. I always wonder when this happens if I'm anosmic to something in the scent, lacking in imagination or if I just come at perception sideways.
(A recent discussion about the movie Secretary would suggest sideways, but I cannot rule out the other two.)
Just vetiver and soap. And a headache. Must go wash my hands.
Better. It's the soap that gets me, though I am informed that it's really the synthetic musks that go in many if not most commercial soaps and detergents that give that give the scent I call soapy. I've been sensitive to such things since I was a little girl - contact allergies mostly. I've never liked that 'soapy' smell and everything from Safeguard to Dove has left me faintly itchy. I did have a brief love affair with the Irish Spring guy when I was 8, that ended tragically when a bar of Irish Spring was left in a tin in the bathroom and opened in an eye-searing cloud of acridity that first taught me to start avoiding certain things. My mom thought I was some kind of snob, always looking for ever more esoteric cleansers and emollients, but nothing felt right, you know? Until I found my beloved cinnamon oatmeal Got Soap, which I buy 10 bars at a time and am considering stockpiling the way my grandmother hoarded TP during World War II.
The perfume thing has been interesting. I started off with the Black Phoenix samples back in May and had a world of fun learning to smell. You would think I already knew how to smell, but nope. Had to learn to pay attention, to understand how perception can be influenced by everything, to practice connecting scent to memory and vocabulary.
I was a bit scared of the BPAL forums - those are some enthusiasts and I'm forum phobic anyway - but enjoy the hell out of their website. Unfortunately, other than one or two favorites, they all rapidly began to smell alike to me - like olfactory blunt instruments, all from the same mold.
But googling for more information led me to scent samples from the whole vast world of niche and mainstream perfumery and this is where I have wallowed happily for many months.
I know a lot of people have a problem with perfume - I wonder where I know this from? Is it like the anger of Hillary supporters who might vote for McCain, that is to say, largely a media fabrication? A remnant from the Giorgio saturated 80s? No one's ever said anything to me, but it is a theme that surfaces in perfumista talk. And there are places that ban fragrance.
What I wish is that commercial fragrance would be limited - as I think sensitivity to perfumes of all kinds is exacerbated by constant low grade exposure to extreme smelling things. Disinfectant sprays, shower cleansers, the entire Airfreshener/Fabreeze industry (the smell of fabreeze makes me actively queasy), Scrubbing Bubbles, Cascade, Pledge, etc. etc. Even deodorant. I'd rather be able to chose a candle or perfume that pleases me - things that are genuinely far less common that the million and one vile plastic aromas of modern life - than have that merry band of manufactured soapy cleanliness molecules continue to overwhelm my daily sensory experience. I read something about plans to scent casinos recently. Not that I like casinos to begin with, but that will certainly keep me all the way away. What are the chances of a subtle choice being made there? New Improved Lavender Scented Waste All Your Cash.
I use unscented things as much as possible, or ones scented quietly and organically that disperse rapidly. I like the un-scent of actual clean far more than the 'clean' scent of ad-driven American aspirational life. I can't figure out what on earth is wrong with smelling human: I was scarred by the FDS commercials of my youth, where one was encouraged to scent one's private parts with artificial strawberry instead allowing the horror of your natural female aroma to be potentially perceived by you or any one else. Personally, I think the fake strawberry punzie spray is far more terrifying (they don't appear to make strawberry (anymore?) - only Extra Strength (extra strength what, I wonder), Baby Powder, Shower Fresh, White Blossom, Sheer Fresh, Delicate Breeze and New! Ocean Breeze) than the funkiest I have ever smelled.
What it is with the ocean scents? What is it with the horror of smelling a bit like the animals we are? There's a big difference between the smell of a day's energy output and a real aversion to bathing, but we act like the merest whiff of anything to do with the body is the rankest decay and moral turpitude. I think we're so busy masking that we're interfering with our ability to experience real olfactory pleasure. Control, control, control.
To me, perfume is art and sensory experience. Like a gorgeous single malt or Starry Night - you taste it, you feel it, you inhabit emotions by wearing it, you feel a place or time in past or future. Sometimes you have to sit still and let it all in in silence. It makes me feel more alive, less bound. And thinking about the experience - what I love or hate, and why, how it connects to my perceptions of myself and others - has been an intellectual and emotional adventure.
I seem to have wandered off a bit.
Or Black....that was a no then. Make a note.
Oh, and yes, I did my push-ups Wednesday. 12, 12, 10, 10 and 22. I've got a stitch in my back.
