"All night the flares go up..."

The Dragon and the Undying

All night the flares go up; the Dragon sings
And beats upon the dark with furious wings;
And, stung to rage by his own darting fires,
Reaches with grappling coils from town to town;
He lusts to break the loveliness of spires,
And hurls their martyred music toppling down.

Yet, though the slain are homeless as the breeze,
Vocal are they, like storm-bewilder’d seas.
Their faces are the fair, unshrouded night,
And planets are their eyes, their ageless dreams.
Tenderly stooping earthward from their height,
They wander in the dusk with chanting streams,
And they are dawn-lit trees, with arms up-flung,
To hail the burning heavens they left unsung.

By Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), from The old huntsman and other poems, 1918

Ruins at Reninghe (Flanders), Georges Emile Lebacq, 1917. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Mecca Balsam from La Via del Profumo

Since I first read about it at Perfume Shrine, I’ve had a feeling that the profumo.it line would be to my liking, so when Dominique Dubrana emailed me a while back asking if I would accept a sample of Mecca Balsam for review, I couldn’t say yes fast enough. I have a weakness for rich, complicated fragrances, and an olfactory pilgrimage to Mecca sounded very promising. So promising, in fact, that I let the package from Italy sit here for a couple of weeks, afraid to find out that it contained the disappointment of some dull or noxious juice.

It didn’t. From the first spritz, I knew this perfume was going to make me happy. I can’t really parse the opening notes, but I get an impression of coriander, tarragon, etc. At this stage Mecca Balsam has a fresh, almost brisk quality, but oud and incense are lurking underneath, shadows of more serious things to come.

The heart is an opulent woody/spicy mélange featuring a subtle presence of oud with hints of fenugreek and cinnamon. A touch of smoky incense wafts through it all, but it’s never overwhelming. The promotional copy makes no mention of spikenard, but I fancy it’s hiding in there somewhere. I’m reminded of two of my favorite Dawn Spencer Hurwitz creations, Khyphi and Arome d’ Egypt, though Mecca Balsam is a more harmonious marriage of notes than either of those. It also has a drier quality, with a very slight suggestion of powder, especially as the middle notes fade.

The base notes are all about the sweetness of tobacco, amber and labdanum. Profumo’s website mentions notes of Damask rose and tuberose, but they are so cozily nestled in the composition that I only find them if I go looking. Depending on my mood, this might be the point at which I’d start to fall out of love with Mecca Balsam—not because the base is unappealing, but because it’s too seductive, too nice. Most of the complexity disappears, leaving just a snuggly, syrupy warmth, a la AG Sables. There is a ghost of pungent oud but it’s not substantial enough to provide a real counterpoint. On days that I need a comfort scent I’d welcome such sweet simplicity, but the serious perfumista in me always feels a little disappointed when the drama ends this way.

For those of you concerned with bang for the buck, Mecca Balsam has very good lasting power for a natural. I get a good 6 hours of fragrance from a single spritz. Sillage is about what you'd expect from a scent of this type--plenty strong, but not a screamer.

Mecca Balsam is available at the profumo.it website, and can be ordered as part of a sampler.

"No animals were harmed..."

No animals were harmed in the making of this joyful noise:
A thick, twisted stem from the garden
is the wedding couple's ceremonial ram's horn.
Its substance will not survive one thousand years,
nor will the garden, which is today their temple,
nor will their names, nor their union now announced
with ritual blasts upon the zucchini shofar.

From "Zucchini Shofar" by Sarah Lindsay

Illustration by Martin van Maele from L'Histoire comique de Francion, 1925.

"The moon is a sow"

The moon is a sow
and grunts in my throat
Her great shining shines through me
so the mud of my hollow gleams
and breaks in silver bubbles

From "Song for Ishtar" by Denise Levertov

Animal studies from a notebook, Giovannino de' Grassi, 1390s

Oranges, roses and the haunted house

The mention of olfactory dreaming in today’s First Nerve post got me thinking about my own smelly dream life. I’ve never kept track but I believe I experience some purely imaginary odor in about one dream out of four. Oddly enough, although I can mentally conjure up the scent of favorite perfumes when I’m awake, I don’t recall ever dreaming a favorite fragrance. If I actually wear a scent to bed it may worm its way into a dream, but my sleeping self seems to have no memory of My Sin or Narcisse Blanc.

Since reading Avery’s post I’ve been trying to catalog my repertoire of dream smells, and I realize it’s quite limited. There are a few foods—chiefly coconut, chocolate and oranges—that I often eat with gusto in dreams, and those feasts always include the pleasure of scent. Rose and pine are my sleeping ‘mood’ scents. They just appear along with whatever images or action I’m dreaming, like an olfactory soundtrack. I’m usually aware of them during the dream, but sometimes I’ll only recall them being present after I wake up. Often as not, they seem to be my way of comforting myself if something disturbing or sad is going on.

The one nasty smell I inflict on myself in dreams is a distinctive dank, musty odor...sort of a cross between damp basement and rotting book. It has had a featured role in some of my worst nightmares. I went through a phase in my twenties when I had terrifying dreams about being pursued through the rambling rooms and halls of a strange house, and that smell was always present. I'd wake up sweating and shaking, the stink still strong in my mind. As I said, it’s a distinctive smell, not just a generic moldy odor. It wasn’t until I wrote a post a while back about my grandfather that I realized where I came to know it. It’s the smell of the haunted house ride he used to take me on, which I loved. Strange how the mind sifts and recycles.


A Dream of a Girl Before Sunrise, Karl Briullov, 1830-33

"There is no happiness like mine"

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

From "Eating Poetry" by Mark Strand

Paar in der Bibliothek, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1930

Just something nice

I drove to the main branch of the Nashville Public Library today to get some material I needed for an article. I slipped in, hunted down the necessary books, and scurried back out again. No time for browsing, since I was mentally on the clock and in a hurry to get back home to the computer. The library was as mobbed as I've ever seen it. The weather today was chilly and wet, so the homeless folk were there in force. They were clustered around the computer terminals or sitting at the tables reading with friends. Little groups were hanging out in the stairwells and hallways, talking quietly, intensely. (Go here to read reflections from Kevin Barbieux, Nashville's 'Homeless Guy,' on the importance of libraries to the men and women who live on the street.)

Stay-at-home mothers with kids--mostly white, prosperous, and worlds apart from the street denizens--were also heavily represented, since school was out. The kids all seemed to be having a pretty good time, as kids generally do in libraries. I love the way young children struggle with the protocol of the place, running around and squealing, then dramatically shushing each other. The mothers had that harried-but-satisfied look that parents get when they are providing their children with virtuous entertainment.

I'd guess that those two groups made up easily 80% of the patrons. Together they turned the library into the most pleasant, cordial place I've been in a while. The trouble with living out in the sticks is that you don't often get that urban experience of diverse people happily jostling each other in a shared space. Actually, you don't generally get much of that in Nashville, since it is as socially segregated as most sprawling New South cities--maybe more so. It was nice to see it and to share in it briefly before heading back to semi-rural solitude.

"Pococurante's Library", illustration for Candide, ou l'Optimisme (Paris: Sirène) 1759

Milk for Imbolc

You pump it from six goats
morning and evening
and renew your own. The baby
is harnessed to your back,
her dark head wobbling. Your life
and its order that isn’t mine.

From "Milk" by Shirley Kaufman. The complete poem is here.

Laren Woman with a Goat, Anton Mauve (1838-88)

One Sentence Perfume Review: Prelude, Balenciaga

Tough call: attractively odd, or just plain baffling?


Partial list of notes per Fragrantica: Aldehydes, Orange, Bergamot, Carnation, Cinnamon, Jasmine, Rose, Tolu Balsam, Amber, Patchouli, Civet, Vanilla

Sphinx, Franz von Stuck, 1904

I'm taking Schrödinger...

...with me into the woods at Turn Outward