Arrogance

The snakes have begun to hide for the winter. Vile egg-eaters. What a disgusting race they are. Still, one has to admire, in a way, that they choose to live at all, trapped in bodies that can only drag themselves through the dust. I don’t know how any of them can bear to live, the creatures that cannot fly. It must be so cruel for them to see that the Sun loves us best, having given us ownership the air and blessed us with such freedom and beauty.

Just look at Oni, the curve of her breast, the way it quivers when she sings. In flight she is exquisite. And yet, that is why the snake kills her children. The ugly being hates the beautiful one, hates its innate goodness and superiority, and seeks to destroy it. The predation of the snake is the price of our glory. He is the earthbound error without which we could not see our perfection. Poor snake.


From "Julius the Mockingbird," a children's story I never got around to finishing. I dug out the manuscript today, and this passage seemed like an echo of something.


Mockingbird photo from Wikipedia.

One Sentence Perfume Review: Tumulte, Christian Lacroix

Tonight's entrée: A Shirley Temple, accompanied by a Dreamsicle smothered in marshmallow sauce and macadamia nuts, with a muskrat and olive cookie on the side ...mmmmmm.


Notes per aromaboutique.com: Green Mandarin, Freesia, Rose water, Grasse Rose, Heliotrope, Iris Wood, Patchouli, Musk, Tonka Bean

Photo from Imagination Perfumery

Funny how none of the presidential candidates are talking about this

"The Israel-Palestine struggle is portrayed in our media and elsewhere as an endless religious rivalry, but it is no more a war between Jews and Muslims than the civil rights struggle was one between African-Americans and whites. This is a struggle for justice, one that affects us all and in which we all play a part." Anna Baltzer, a Jewish American peace activist. Read her entire essay here. You'll find more at her blog.

Speaking of old music

I just love this clip of John Lee Hooker singing "Hobo Blues."

If you like early country music...

...Tony Russell's book Country Music Originals: The Legends and the Lost is an unbelievably good encyclopedia of every old hillbilly musician you never heard of. Click here for my short review in the Scene.

Down in the dirt

We seem to be having our January thaw here today—60 degrees with rain blowing in from the southwest. As much as I like getting a break from the cold, these winter warm spells aren’t much fun because they usually bring storms, which we’re expecting tonight. A few years ago a January tornado flattened a large portion of the town where my brother lives. Nothing like that is on the horizon at the moment, but as far as Kobi is concerned, a single rumble of thunder is sufficient reason to panic. It may be a long night.

It was just drizzling pleasantly this morning during my walk. The warm, moist wind made it feel like spring, and the varmints seem to think so, too. The chipmunks were out, and they’re usually reluctant to emerge until winter’s nearly gone. Maybe they’re doing reconnaissance for the groundhogs. The skunks have been out too, which means they’ll soon be doing their boy/girl nuzzlies in my back yard. That’s always pleasant.

The ground is usually frozen in the early morning when I’m out, but of course it wasn’t today. My favorite trail is a pretty steep climb, and I was slipping a little in the muddy spots. I actually have lousy balance, and I’m sure one of these days I’m going to make a wrong step and sprain my ankle for the umpteenth time, but I still love tromping along in the mud. It’s not that I love muck so much. In fact, I take a pretty dim view of muck most of the time, as my dogs would tell you if they could talk. (“Mom is such a clean freak.”) But when I’m out in the woods alone, alive to the experience of being there, I find that the sensation of my feet sinking into the ground creates a kind of shadowed ecstasy. I don’t just feel connected to the earth—I know I am the earth, the same stuff that is squishing under my feet, full of worms and rot and the seeds of new life. There is no self or seeking in that moment, just a complete surrender to the limitations of physical existence.

It’s hard to convey the quality of this bliss to someone who’s never felt it. Western dualism is so prejudiced in favor of spirit over body that we don’t have any convenient words for it. Our language for experience of the sublime—or the divine—is all about getting away from the physical world. We talk about transcendence, elation, being lifted up, feeling boundless, knowing infinity, etc. Even “mystery,” which ought to be a great all-purpose word for such an experience, doesn’t quite work, because it leaves out the joy. Mystery isn’t happy, and the happiness is at the core of communing with the mud god.

I think one of the reasons I find it so hard to live an urban life is that everything in the city conspires to obstruct this particular meditative pleasure. There are too many glittering distractions, too many potential threats that need monitoring, and you can go weeks or even months without setting your foot on anything but pavement. A lot of Wiccans practice something called the Tree of Life meditation, which is a useful bit of mud magic for the nature deprived. It was incredibly helpful to me during my Chicago years. I looked around the Web for a good description of the ritual, but couldn't find one I liked. I did find a gay male Wiccan who makes erotic prints--mostly pretty marginal, but I think this one has a special charm.




Photo by Brad Haire from Georgia Faces

The Question

Tell me if this is all true, my lover?
tell me if it is true.
When the eyes of me flash their lightning on you,
dark clouds in your breast make stormy answer;
Is it then true
that the dew drops fall from the night when I am seen,
and the morning light is glad when it wraps my body?

Is it true, is it true, that your love
travelled alone through ages and worlds in search of me?
that when you found me at last, your age-long desire
found utter peace in my gentle speech and my eyes and lips and flowing hair?

Is it then true
that the mystery of the Infinite is written on this little brow of mine?
Tell me, my lover, if all this is true!

Rabindranath Tagore, 1913. Text via Poetry Foundation


The Three Ages of Man (detail), Titian, c. 1512, from Web Gallery of Art

The Madness

Arms and the Boy

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads
Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.
Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,
Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.

For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
And God will grow no talons at his heels,
Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

By Wilfred Owen (1893-1918). Text via Poetry Foundation.


Portrait of a Boy Soldier, Nashville, Tennessee, ca. 1860-65 [LC-B8184-10573 (27)] via Wikimedia Commons.

What I found during the annual January scent binge

It happens this time every year. Maybe it's post-holiday funk or maybe the world is less satisfyingly smelly in the cold weather, but whatever the reason, I get a perfume jones that will not quit. In spite of owning more perfume than I could use in three lifetimes, I start browsing the etailers for bargains and sniffing my way through the stores for just the right mindless impulse purchase. Since Christmas I've bought ... well, I'd rather not say. The perfume fiends know perfectly well what can happen when the madness strikes, and the rest of you don't really want to know.

When I take time off from buying I start burrowing through my collection of samples and decants, sniffing and dabbing like a woman in a trance. There have been times I've gone to bed smeared with a dozen or more perfumes. (Don't worry, Dave's away a lot.) Thanks to my dear, enabling friends, I have scads of things still waiting for a proper test drive. Yesterday I came across a couple of Neil Morris creations from Chaya that just beg to be blogged about, so here goes:


















The name says it all with Dark Season, a rich melange of clove, patchouli and amber that evokes the pleasure and pain of midwinter. Hints of leather, tobacco and smoke remind me of moments from my childhood--sitting around a wood stove, playing in a cold barn, trying to catch a contrary pony on a snowy day--but Dark Season is not really a rustic scent. It has a meditative, almost abstract quality. It's not so much a walk in a winter wood as the memory of such a walk, with the edge of experience smoothed and softened by distance. It's extremely well-balanced, so no single note jumps out, yet it has a very distinct personality, creates a vivid impression. It's a haunting perfume that almost makes me sad to see the days lengthening. Almost.


Intimate Lily is Dark Season's opposite number. It's a bouquet of lilies dipped in sugar, suitable to top the wedding cake of a virginal but passionate bride. The faintest possible suggestion of indoles and a musky base hint at pleasures to come, but Intimate Lily's overall presence is perfectly ladylike, utterly raunch-free. I say that with approval. It is my opinion as a certified lily fanatic that this dear flower should never, ever be radically funked up. If you want action, go to jasmine, or perhaps orange blossom if she's having a particularly frisky day, but leave the innocence of the lily intact. My favorite lilies have a touch of bitter soapiness or green purity, both of which are lacking in Intimate Lily, but the velvety sweetness fills that gap very prettily.

I don't think either of these beauties is currently in production at Neil Morris Fragrances, but they certainly deserve to be. Perhaps this post and our friend Chaya will give a little push in that direction.




Two Men Contemplating the Moon, Caspar David Friedrich, 1819-20 via Web Gallery of Art.

Nankeen Lily by Walter Hood Fitch, 1880, via Wikimedia Commons

The Happiness

Isn't this just a delightful picture? I could look at it all day.



Two African American girls playing with yarn and knitting needle at a Harlem playground, ca. 1950-1970, by Florence Ward. From the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-122105 (45)], via LC's exhibitions page.