Feminine Things.

Too Much Love Will Kill You.

2012-01-23T00:04:00.000-08:00

Is there such a thing as “too much of a good thing”?

Sure there is. I myself have eaten that last sushi roll or that last inch of sour patch rope, and thought, “I chose…poorly.” I’ve decided to stay in bed those last few minutes that move you from “barely on time” to “definitely late for work.” I’ve stayed in the shower those extra ten minutes, running the hot water just enough that you run out at the last minute and are freezing and tense instead of relaxed when you cut the water off and get out. I’ve taken on too many good opportunities at once until I didn’t have the time and energy for any of them. I’ve gone for that final third round on Space Mountain that moves your slightly tipsy disco ball delight to oh-lord-why-did-I-have-that-fourth-tequila-shot?

In short, I’ve done excess and known the regret of it. And that is what I think of, every time I see someone posting about “pairing down their collection” or “giving up all but their favorites” or “cleaning out their perfume cabinet.”

Have I got too much perfume? Have I gone too far? Do I really appreciate the perfume I have? Do I really want or need more? FN1. Would some of it be better off in someone else’s hands, someone else’s home, where it might be better appreciated? That is the sentiment that stayed my hand Saturday night when I looked at my bank account, looked at my computer, and then thought, “Okay, let’s go shopping!” As I began looking through my options – limited editions here, sales over there, decants verses bottles, samples verses either, the list of things I thought I wanted, the list of things I’ve got – I was haunted by the thought that maybe I had enough already.

Tonight in the car Rafaela, who has never been subjected to a stroll through Diana’s perfume collection, asked me how many bottles I had. I don’t know, I responded immediately. But you must have some idea, she pressed. You were just telling me that you redid your inventory spreadsheet today.

Truthfully, though, I didn’t know. I hadn’t bothered to look. Hell, I hadn’t even finished updating my excel file. I’d only made it through bottles, not decants or minis, and certainly not through samples, which remains untackled. Somewhere, somehow, I genuinely lost count of my perfume.

So tonight, I counted.

85 bottles. EIGHTY-FIVE. And this is genuine “this is not our sample size, you are buying some larger quantity of this perfume” bottles, which does not even include Demeters. Minis and decants? Another seventy-four. Samples? Back in September it was over 500, and I know that number is a measurable quantity larger now, but my recatalogue is not yet complete. This doesn’t count the two bottles or handful of samples I did finally order Saturday night, or the samples headed my way for review, or the bottle I gave away to LillieMae just because she liked it and I had more than enough. FN2.

Yet, I feel like I’ve only dipped a toe into the wide world of beautiful perfumes out there to smell. For example, I haven’t ever smelled Chanel No. 19. I think I’ve tried maybe three Le Labos, and none of them were the location restricted ones. My familiarity with Creed and Serge Lutens is (in my opinion) wafer thin. For every Caron or Goutal or Worth or Guerlain I have tried, there are four or five I haven’t. I haven’t tried nearly enough from Aftelier Perfumes or Frederic Malle or so many others I can’t think of right now.

But looking at my collection, I couldn’t deny it. I have a ton of perfume, and yet, I feel I owe it to myself to keep trying all the beautiful scents out there to try. But I knew I crossed a certain perfumey line when LillieMae was loving a particular perfume and, without hesitating, I gave her the bottle. I remembered the day Angela from Now Smell This! did the same things for me, handing off a bottle of S-Perfume %100 Love without batting an eyelash. She knew I’d get more out of it, and I did. I have almost finished the bottle. So maybe this is also the beginning of a new phase, a phase where I not only continue to explore perfume, but start to focus my collection, creating something that isn’t just a bunch of random perfume, but a beautiful wardrobe and art collection, so that I better appreciate what I have and some lovely perfume gets a more appreciative home.

So welcome to our season of spring discernment at Feminine Things, both perfume related and more broadly. I feel strangely excited about it. I hope you do, too.

___________________________
FN1. Okay, I always want more. Instead it’s a question of whether I should buy more and do I already have more than I know what to do with.

FN2. Because I know you people: I bought samples from DSH Perfumes and JoAnne Bassett. I would have bought some from Ayala Moriel Natural Perfumes but the site order system wasn’t cooperating; I bought a bottle of L’Artisan Dzongkha from the sale; and slumberhouse Mur from IndieScents because I am apparently probably their biggest fan, and I bought it in anticipation of warmer days ahead.

Editor's note: I got the loveliest follow-up email from Ayala herself, apologizing about the web difficulties and welcoming me back. Not only was it the sweetest thing, it also completely underestimated my willingness to walk through fire for perfume as good as hers. :)

I've been had and I've been held with the ghosts at bay...

2012-01-17T22:16:00.000-08:00

Dear reader,

Some weird, wild stuff has been happening here on Planet Diana lately. Sorry I've been so delinquent in updating you about it, but I'm rounding out week eight of being sick, and about to head back to the doctor for yet another round of tests and pills. I'm starting to feel like subject zero for a weird super bug, so I hope you'll forgive me for being so absentee. Also, if I become a zombie, please kill me before I can infect others. You have my permission.

Weird, Wild Thing Numero Uno

Should I buy perfume? Books?
More bookshelves for both?

A benefactor of mysterious motives has gifted some money to me. Free and clear, no strings attached dinero. This money is not enough to say, pay off my student loans or change my life or anything, but it's enough that I am no longer sweating a potential cross-country move and thinking about saving up to buy a house in the next few years instead of a decade from now. It also creates a weird opportunity most perfumistas fantasize about that never really comes true: the opportunity to buy some truly and ridiculously expensive perfume if I want, or an EPIC amount of decants, samples, smaller bottles, whathaveyou. FN1.

The mind virtually boggles at the opportunity. I mean, who among us hasn't played, "What would I buy if I could by anything?" But this is real now. (Well, it will be when the check shows up later this week.) So what do I do, my dearies? Do I buy all the things on my "to be purchased" list? Do I buy a passel of samples to try lots of stuff I've never tried? Do I hit The Perfume Court with an epic order of decants? Do I set up a twelve month perfume budget?

I'm overwhelmed, honestly. The idea makes my consumer impulse sensors go Blue Screen of Death due to major system fault error. I'm sure I will ultimately do some multi-month combo of bottles/samples/decants in combination with sales and discounts and such (again, not a fool), but I wanted to ask you all: what would you do if you were me? What are you surprised I've never reviewed? What would you absolutely recommend trying? Hit me with your best shot.

One thing is for damned sure. I am finally going to feel brave enough to walk into The Perfume House which I have never done for fear that I would completely lose my mind and buy everything I saw, financially crippling me for decades to come.

Weird, Wild Thing Numero Dos

This is how I've felt for two months...

I have been sick forever. Okay, maybe not forever, but it feels like forever. Eight full weeks is a ridiculous amount of time to be sick. At this point, I'm on the verge of giving up on Western meds. Anyone have any homeopathic/naturopathic recommendations for viral head cold followed by bacterial bronchitis followed by return of viral head cold with remnants of bronchitis threatening to become pneumonia? Seriously. Home remedies from your great aunt the voodoo queen are welcome and will be seriously considered. I'm desperate.

This, by the way, is why I've been so scarce with new reviews. I haven't been able to properly smell for any consistent period of time for almost two months. I think of it as a special kind of torture. I have been trying things intermittently, though, so expect some reviews next week based on the handful of days I have been able to smell things.

Weird, Wild Thing Numero Tres

Foggy mornings --
so inspiring!

I am currently waiting for my panel of eight readers to return their comments and edits on my book. Following one more round of edits based on their feedback which I hope to finish by end of February at the latest, it will be time to go a searching for an agent. I'm not really sure how I feel about setting myself for an intense year of rejection. It makes me feel like I should probably surround myself with a lot of nice perfume. (*Cough* Excuses! *Cough*)

Despite having written this blog for four years now, I never knew how much I would enjoy creating my own characters and worlds. I've done a lot of short fiction, but novel writing is so much better. Even if only my friends ever read my work, the joy I get out of the act of doing it is well worth the effort. People talk about feeling called to do things all the time, and I didn't really get it. I thought it meant doing something that came naturally to you, something you were good at. I didn't realize it was the act of engaging in work that inspires you, makes you happy, rewards you with a kind of inner light. Long form story telling is that thing for me. I am so grateful I didn't go my whole life without finding it.

_______________
FN1. I'm no idiot; I'm adding 99% of it to my current meager savings in pursuit of homeownership. But even David thinks I should buy some perfume. He actually suggested it. Because El Hubs is awesomesauce.

All the small things...

2012-01-15T14:53:00.000-08:00

It’s the little things, sometimes.

Like last night I spent about an hour hanging all my earrings (well, okay, most) on a plastic organizer I bought for $15 at the Container Store. I’d been thinking over and over about how I didn’t like the way I had them stored and how hard it was to find the ones I wanted, how I needed to get on pinterest and etsy and craft blogs and see what people with not a whole lot of space did about such things. Then I was at the container store getting boxes so I can finally ship out the last of my holiday gifts, and there it was. $15. Infinitely happier.

Or there’s this apron Lillie made me that has a Ravenclaw patch on it and tulle around the bottom. It’s so pretty and geeky and wonderful and unexpected.

I don’t think anyone has handmade sewn me something to wear since I was in elementary school, but those are the clothes I remember best, a red and green velvet dress with bells for Christmas or a polka dot dress with three sets of ruffles for the skirt like I wanted. Life is like that, though. Things seem overwhelming or crappy and then out of nowhere someone does something small, like sew you an apron or have you help them make sugar cookies, and you think not of the act itself but that this particular act was one of those hardwired into you as a small child as the sort of thing people who love one another do for each other, and you feel loved.

Or there’s the tiny snowflakes falling outside my window right now.

Though they are too few to mean a day off from work tomorrow, they still make everything seem fresher and prettier, the air smells crisper and feels nicer blowing in through the open sliver in the glass. It would be nice to see the campus covered in snow one more time before we leave, especially since we could be moving somewhere with lots of snow (where it won’t seem so magical) or somewhere that never snows (where I’ll really miss it).

There are more things, too: handwriting a letter, finishing a good book, a cat huddled against the back crook of your knees to ward away the cold, a favorite movie unexpectedly on tv, a fresh hot cup of coffee, breakfast for dinner with a friend, having people actually show up when you call an emergency urban family meeting to discuss crisis resolution (with margaritas). These little things that make up a life and are inconsequential probably mean more than the big stuff I dread every day.

I’m a worry wart by nature, a byproduct of ingrained personality and a childhood shadowed with layering abuse meted out for a failure to anticipate. Life is too much like chess to me: don’t move until you see it, whatever it is, coming several moves ahead. Spontaneous movement means losing pieces you need or care about. Acting without forethought, and heaps of it, hurts people, and I did enough of that when I was young and angry and should have known better but didn’t. I hear it all the time, like vespers sang in some inner monastery: Lead with you head, not your heart.

I used to be all emotion, no reason, my feelings tying my tongue. Now sometimes I’m too much head and not enough heart. Luckily for me, that shimmering pool of feeling is always just there beneath the thin ice surface because I feel everything all the time, and so most of the time I think I’m both. Law school gave me the ability to make the argument my heart knows but cannot speak.

Even if I don’t want to spend my life lawyering, that was probably worth the hundred grand. It was a tool I needed to be a more effective advocate for myself, to be able to say in a hot moment what I feel in a way other people can hear it. Again, a small thing, one not listed in the admissions brochure, but certainly a gift none the less, and one that makes me happier in the long run.

And it’s those small things that move my heart to music, that makes something inside me put a notch above my bed that says one day is good or bad beside the others. A small thing, like Papaya's sleeping face. Like a much needed hug. Like someone pulling a blanket over you in your sleep. These things show us the world is good, people are kind, and we are loved beyond our own awareness, sometimes without measure.

For all these things and more, I’m feeling grateful.

So let’s get back to one of those awesome small things now that I can smell again, shall we? Let’s talk about some books and music and perfume.

No Longer "Silent All These Years."

2011-12-31T21:20:00.000-08:00

The Explosion of Young Adult Fiction and Its Impact on the Future Voices of Women

My IRL friend Marni is a young adult. She is also a fan and author of YA literature. We spend a lot of time chatting about pop culture and entertainment, but particularly we talk about the current explosion of interest in YA literature and the general dismissal of it, writ large, as a substantive genre of literature. Much like romance, YA gets a bad rap for being fluff. "Those books are for children/teens," people will say with a wave of their hand, as though C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia, Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, and even -- to some extent -- Tolkien's Lord of the Rings aren't all successful and enduring series whose primary appeal is to younger readers. FN1.

There are a lot of things I find remarkable about the virtual explosion of the YA market in the wake of Harry Potter and Twilight. One is simply how many books there are for young adults, so many more than there were when I was that age. After reading all the original Nancy Drews, Babysitter's Clubs, and Sweet Valley Highs by age nine, I moved right into adult fiction, toting copies of Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove and John Jake's North and South into my sixth grade reading class. There simply weren't a lot of young adult books available, and though I read my share of Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine, they didn't hold a lot of appeal for me.

The thing I find the most thrilling, though, about the recent uptick in YA novel publishing, is the explosion of role models, characters, and voices for young women. Though I've been thinking this for about a year, I was watching this video this inspired by Josephine Angelini's Starcrossed series, and it really finally hit me. FN2. I was watching an all-female rock band named DemiGoddess in a video they made and shared with the world. In it, they sing a song they wrote about a female protagonist superhuman that reclaims an infamous female character of Greek literature in a series written by a woman. It was like a tiny explosion of women reclaiming and rebuilding stories of the past for women, inspiring other women to create further works capturing women's voices as the primary storyteller of a world where women can both fall in love and save themselves.

When I was fifteen, there weren't shelves and shelves of books like this. I survived for a long time on the works of female musicians, '80s pop stars and rockers and '90s riot grrls like Madonna, Joan Jett, Johnette Napolitano, Chrissie Hynde, Kathleen Hanna, Kim Deal, Tanya Donelly, Ani DiFranco, Liz Phair, and Tori Amos. They were my voice; I couldn't find a corollary in books, television, or film. FN3.

I had to search for female protagonists in literature to identify with, to be inspired by. While I eventually discovered the works of Dorothy Allison, Virginia Wolf, Connie Willis, Alice Walker, Annie Dillard, bell hooks, and Toni Morrison (all of whom I still recommend), those writers didn't reach me until I was in my early-mid twenties. It took a long time for me to find my voice, to tell my story, to know it was important and valuable.

When I go to book stores now, I run into tons of twelve and thirteen-year-olds hauling stacks of books written by women about female protagonists to the cash register. When I go to the library, they haunt the same bookshelves. These girls are growing up with a vision of the world that tells them their stories matter. They are superheroes. They are smart, strong, magickal, powerful, capable. Their voices are worth hearing, and as a consequence, they will themselves demand to be heard.

In ten or fifteen years, these girls will graduate from college and enter the workforce. They will have careers and incomes and purchasing power. And their experiences with these books will tell them that their stories deserve time and exploration. Their adventures are every bit as important as their male counterparts. Their lives are valuable. Their knowledge is powerful.

And they will have learned it from writers like Josephine and Marni, like Beth Revis and Lauren Kate, like Jennifer Lynn Barnes and Leigh Fallon, like Suzanne Collins and Sophie Jordan and Sara Zarr, Melissa Marr, Jeri Smith-Ready, Margaret Stohl, Kami Garcia, Maggie Stiefvater, Stacey Jay, Victoria Schwab, Carrie Ryan, Sarah Rees Brennan, Kelley Armstrong, Alyson Noel, Melissa de la Cruz, Richelle Mead, P.C. Cast, Laini Taylor, and probably tons of others I am forgetting. FN4. And yes, even Stephenie Meyers and J.K. Rowling, who helped expand and relaunch earnest interest in the genre, even if one wrote a less than perfect female protagonist and the other wrote primarily about a boy, because there are strong female characters in those stories, too. FN5. And those stories are quickly being turned into movies and television series, which will inspire more and more stories, echoing forever forward.

These young female readers, as grown women, will be creating and managing and participating in media and the marketplace of ideas, and they will expect, as a matter of course, that their ideas, stories, desires, and experiences be treated with dignity and respect and given equal opportunity to flourish. This was the thought that gave me hope when I saw the heartbreaking documentary Miss Representation, a film about the continuing shortage of women in positions of power, the biased view we see of women in media, and the disproportionate lack of coverage for women's stories and issues. FN6. These young women are hearing a different message every time they pick up one of these books.

When I was fourteen, Tori Amos had her first hit with "Silent All These Years." Twenty years later I still remember the desperate urgency that made me cling to that song, lying in my bed and listening to its words over and over again:

I got something to say, you know, but nothing comes.

Yes, I know what you think of me. You never shut-up.

Yeah, I can hear that.

But what if I'm a mermaid in these jeans of his with her name still on it?

Hey, but I don't care 'cause sometimes, I said sometimes,

I hear my voice and it's been here --

silent all these years...

My scream got lost in a paper cup.

I think there's a heaven where some screams have gone...

Years go by.

Will I still be waiting for somebody else to understand?

Years go by.

If I'm stripped of my beautyand the orange clouds raining in hand?

Years go by.

Will I choke on my tears till finally there is nothing left?

One more casualty.

You know, it isn't easy, easy, easy.

But what if I'm a mermaid in these jeans of his with her name still on it?

Hey, but I don't care 'cause sometimes, I said sometimes,

I hear my voice...

I hear my voice.

And it's been here: silent all these years.

I've been here, silent all these years.

If I were to hope for one thing for the daughters of the world present and future, it would be that they wouldn't spend so many years in silence, reaching for their own voice, wondering if its been stolen away to some heaven that holds the silenced screams of generations of women past. My brother recently told me my sixteen-year-old niece is hard at work on her first novel. She is sixteen, but she already knows her voice matters. I see the same thing over and over when I go to book readings - crowds of women and girls, all clamoring for more stories about themselves and the people they hope to be.

When I look at the stories crowding Young Adult fiction shelves today, with all their flaws and foibles, I still see something revolutionary: an overwhelming sense that women have stories of heroism and adventure to tell and to hear. These writers may be sparking the most important feminist change in media today, one that will continue to bear fruit long after these books leave the New Release shelves.

So I'll let the haters who dismiss the growth in YA fiction as a trend hate all they want; I'm a historian, and I think history will bear me out. Right now YA fiction is sparking a subtle feminist revolution that we will feel the tremors of for decades to come. These writers are creating a more equal world by virtue of their contributions, by responding to a need young women didn't even know they had because they lacked the language to express it.

Viva la revolution, my young readers! Your story gives me hope, and it is the story I hope to hear next.
________________________________
FN1. I find it irksome that someone would dismiss the Harry Potter books because the protagonist is a child and teen; the series will likely last a millenia over. Over 450 million individual books have been sold, more than any other series of books. If generations hence there are archaeologists trying to determine what people were reading and thinking during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, you'd be foolish not to realize the trial and tribulations of a small bespeckled wizard would be high on the list. You can knock plebeian literature all you want, but I always think it is worth remember that Shakespeare was written for the masses, as was Jane Eyre. Sometimes what makes literature great is not its rich lyrical writing or thick subtext, but that it moves people of all kinds the world over. The Boy who Lived will, indeed, live -- long after the critiques who have dismissed him have been returned to dust.

FN2. You can see the video that inspired this post below.

FN3. Okay, maybe BTVS. And also possibly Felicity, a little. But both those shows were created by men.

FN4. This isn't to say there haven't been authors doing this for years (two that immediately spring to mind are Tamora Pierce and Ursula La Guin, who deserve their share of high praise and glory) but more that the sheer volume now sends an overwhelming message that women's stories are valuable, in the same way that having to hunt for a female author and/or protagonist in the past sent the message they were not.

FN5. I remain decidedly Teams Hermione, Alice, and Bella Should Go To College.

FN6. Trailer available below. I highly recommend seeing it if you can.

2012 New Years Thoughts

2011-12-31T10:38:00.000-08:00

Normally at the end of the year, I do a lot of navel-gazing internal self-reflection. This year, I'm going to take some advice from my favorite fictional deejay, Debi Newbury: "Hey, I know everybody's coming back to take stock of their lives. You know what I say? Leave your livestock alone."

So instead, I'm going to tell you about all the things I'm already looking forward to enjoying in the new year.

New Perfumes
Though I admit that my last perfume purchase of 2011 will be from the L'Artisan sale, this year I discovered a lot of new perfumers and I am looking forward to trying more offerings from them this next coming year. Crowding the front of my collection these days are scents from slumberhouse, DSH Perfumes, and Olympic Orchids, all of which I hope to explore more deeply as they create new glories in 2012. I'm also hoping to delve more deeply into offerings from Serge Lutens, The Difference Company, Le Labo, Mandy Aftel's Aftelier Perfumes, and JoAnne Bassett Perfumes. Plus, all the things I don't even know I'm missing!

New Music
You know what I'm going to be spinning into the new year? Top of the list is Florence + the Machine's new album Ceremonials. I am already in love with the first single, "Shake It Out." I predict the following will also continue in heavy rotation: Neko Case (all the albums!), The Watson Twins, Feist's album The Reminder, The Naked and the Famous' album Passive Me, Aggressive You, Mumford & Sons and The National. That will probably get me through, I don't know, January 15th? <grin> (If you think I'm obsessed with perfume, you should see my music collection.)

New Books
So many books coming out this year to look forward to! Cynthia Hand's sequel to Unearthly, Hallowed releases in January, along with Lauren Kate's Fallen in Love: A Fallen Novel in Stories. The last book of the Fallen series will also be out this year. Also, and this is the one I'm most excited for, Josephine Angelini's sequel to Starcrossed, Dreamless, which is slated for May 2012.

I recently read and loved Marni Bates newly released novel Awkward. The book is a terrific YA novel, particularly for those who are so over the supernatural/scifi/fantasy trend. (Not me, necessarily, but I know plenty of people who are.)

I just finished Leigh Fallon's terrific Carrier of the Mark and hoping for more in that series. (Update: I confirmed with the author herself via Twitter that a sequel will release in 2012!) I read Ally Condie's excellent best-seller Matched, so now I need to get my hands on a copy of the sequel, Crossed. I also want to read Beth Revis' Across the Universe (finally!) and Jennifer Lynn Barnes' Every Other Day, plus I need to finish Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone and read Stacey Jay's Juliette Immortal, which is sitting on my shelf, calling to me.

New Television
Okay, yes, it's mostly the return of shows I watch, but these are the shows I'm missing most right now. Vampire Diaries comes back next week (not soon enough!); haters can hate all they want, but I love Hart of Dixie, and will be sad when it inevitably gets canceled in May; I can never get enough Braverman drama on Parenthood; Once Upon a Time and Grimm are filling a fairy tale television hole I didn't know existed in my schedule; Two Broke Girls is my fav new sitcom of the season; How I Met Your Mother needs to show me a mother, already!; Eureka will return for its criminally short and undeserved final episodes; and I am already anticipating summer returns from Haven and Psych.

Also, super psyched for the new mini-movies in the BBC's Sherlock series. Also, Christmas Dr. Who wasn't enough for me -- the Doctor cannot return soon enough.

New Adventures
I can already tell you 2012 is going to be a year of bittersweetness. In July, David and I will finally be leaving Lewis & Clark, his employer and the home of both my degrees. We've spent a collective 22 years working, living, and learning here. That means a new house for us both and a new school for David as he enters law school.

Where? We don't know yet. If could be a lot of places: here at Lewis & Clark (which still means moving, because he's leaving his job either way), other places in Oregon, or somewhere much further. The list of possibilities includes: Washington D.C.; Madison, Wisconsin; Seattle, Washington; Palo Alto, California; and Williamsburg, Virginia. If I were a betting woman, I'd put money down on remaining in Portland, with side bets on Palo Alto or Williamsburg, with Seattle as a long shot. That means moving, potentially, to the other side of the country!

It's strange to think of moving because we are happy in Portland, but I'm excited for a new adventure. Moving would also mean a new job for me, so that is a whole other thing to worry about when/if the time comes.

Speaking of developments in my work life, did I mention here that I am now a member of the Board of Bitch Media, publishers of the wonderful Bitch Magazine and the Bitch blog? It's an amazing publication that has been helping me clarify my feminist views and strengthen what I call my "third eye" (i.e. my analytical lens) for over a decade. I'm extremely proud to be a part of its endeavors. If you've never checked out the blog, you should do it now, and if you already love Bitch, now is a great time to consider a subscription, now available in digital format for easy reading on your various and sundry electronic devices.

In other news, my second draft of my first novel is out to my readers. After one more round of edits in January, I hope to kick my search for an agent into high gear in February. I am also approximately a third of the way through this novel's sequel and should finish a very rough first draft of a novel beginning a separate trilogy sometime in January as well. It's strange to think that when I began 2011, I'd never written an entire novel. Now I cannot imagine ever stopping.

So that's it for me, for us, for the collective Rosengardian "we" -- girlgeek, boygeek, and kittehs of various sizes, colors, and temperaments. I hope you are all looking forward to tomorrow as much as I am.

I got this great holiday card from my friend Sarah a couple of days ago that said: "For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice." It's a quote from one of my top five all time favorite poets, T.S. Eliot.

So let's all go find our new voice, shall we?

Happy New Year.

Love,
Diana

"Kick back and relax, and ponder this: Where are all the good men dead - in the heart or in the head?

Now here's a cold cup of coffee from The Clash."

It's the holiday season...

2011-12-24T23:17:00.000-08:00

Oh Readers--

Dear lord, I am so sick. I have slept the last eighteen of twenty-four hours. My sniffer is broken. My head hurts so much I can't stop involuntarily crying. I missed Solstice and Christmas Eve. I'm stopping by to say hello before I knock myself out with drugs again. I have people coming in the morning and I hope to be less zombie-like by then.

Without further ado, here is a list of Christmas-y things I enjoy:

Top Five Favorite Christmas Movies
Miracle on 34th Street - The original is my all time favorite, and continually reminds me you are never too old to believe.
Mixed Nuts - Steve Martin and a nutty crew run a suicide hotline over the holidays. Hilarious and sweet.
Muppet's Christmas Carol - The Best Christmas Carol, IMHO.
Harry Potter and the Sorcer's Stone - ABC Family runs it every winter, right about the time I reread all the books annually. Therefore, it's become a Christmas movie for me.
Die Hard - The best action movie for the holiday season, bar none.

Current Top Six Favorite Christmas Episodes/Specials.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas - A perennial fav, I cry every time the Whos sing despite their lack of things.
Charlie Brown Christmas - Another perennial favorite. I'll never be too old for this one.
A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All - It's the last song that seals the deal for me - "There Are Much Worse Things to Believe In."

"Call me silly, call me sappy;

Call me many things, the first of which is happy.

You doubt, but you're sad.

I don't, but I'm glad.

I guess we're even.

At least that's what I believe in

and there are much worse things."

Any of the Eureka Christmas episodes - They're all fantastic. I love them all.
Community, Ep. 211 "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" - Funny, poignant, adorable.
Dr. Who 2010 Christmas Special "A Christmas Carol" - An incredibly sad and touching Christmas special. I love it.

Top Three Christmas Stories/Books
The Worst Christmas Pagaent Ever
Miracle and Other Christmas Stories (1999) (yes, the entire collection)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Top Ten Christmas Songs
1. Christmas Wrapping - The Waitresses
2. The Christans and the Pagans - Dar Williams
3. Pretty Paper - Willie Nelson
4. River - Joni Mitchell
5. Carol of the Bells - Mormon Tabernacle Choir
6. We Need a Little Christmas - Angela Lansbury in the musical Mame
7. Sleigh Bells - Ray Conniff and the Conniff Singers
8. Blue Christmas - Elvis
9. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Perry Como
10. Silver Bells - As sung by my late grandmother, and only hearable inside my memories

Top Five Christmas Scents
1. Demeter Fragrance Library Frozen Pond
2. L'Artisan Tea for Two
3. CB I Hate Perfume The Fir Tree
4. Smellbent Dead of Winter
5. Serge Lutens Fille en Aiguilles

And with that, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

For the Love of Perfume: A Reflection on Favorite Perfumes

2011-12-20T19:19:00.000-08:00

Love, Infatuation, and Perfume, Part 5 - fin.

My apologizes, dear reader, for the sudden drop in posting and tweeting. I am fighting off an evil plague-like thing that has been haunting my various bodily humors for nigh on two weeks now. This dreadful crud has taken host in my head, ears, throat, nose and lungs, making it impossible to sniff for you as I wish to. The timing is terrible so close to the holidays, and it makes it hard to smell anything, but I soldier on for those of you who still have a few gifts left to purchase.

Here, for the final installment of 2011, are three last favorites of mine, scents I cannot imagine regretting ownership of that might make a good gift for someone in your life.

Olympic Orchids Carolina. One of my favorite smells in the world has got to be smell of baking banana bread, and Carolina holds an amalgamous hologram of that smell by combining the scents of piney woods and old men smoking out on the porch while aging magnolia blooms float from trees like snow flakes to the ground, where they turn to a sticky brown paste underfoot. It reminds me of half-remembered summers running barfoot along black tarred roads between my relatives houses, ideas so lost to time they seem more like a dream of something that happened to someone else. It's a great scent, and supremely reasonably priced.

Price: $.
Recommended for: those of who like warm homey scents; those who love Gone with the Wind.

L'Artisan Dzing!.L'Artisan says it is supposed to smell like a circus. Me? I think it smells like the best parts of a state fair and carnival on a warm day. Sweet hay, candied popcorn, funnel cakes, musky animals, oiled robber belts and gears grinding round and round on rides, and a heavy dose of incense wafting from a fortune teller's tent nearby. She wants you to come inside and hear your future. You say you don't believe in such things. Dzing! makes you want to go in anyway.

Price: $$-$$$.
Recommended for: those of adventurous spirit; those who like big, sweetly spicy foods.

Ayala Moriel L'Amour Immortelle. Sticky sweet amazing hot cocoa and maple syrup, one of the most delightfully realistic maples on the market. I was lucky enough to win a little bottle in a drawing, but I'd buy one even if I hadn't. It's delicate for all that sugar, a delightfully decadent experience. True bliss for lovers of gourmands.

Price: $$-$$$.
Recommended for: Your friend who always wants to go to brunch, your friend who thinks holidays should consist of hay rides, late nights, and big pancake laden breakfasts with family.

So that's it! Twelve wonderful scents for twelve days of seasonal giving. I hope you all get lovely scented things this winter, even if you get them for yourself. I know I got a lovely package in the mail just today...

Come back tomorrow for some thoughts on the Winter Solstice for those of us here north of the equator.

Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4 ~ Part 5
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$ - $1-$75.
$$ - $76-$130.
$$$ - $131-$200.
$$$$ - $200-$300.
$$$$$ - $300+.

For the Love of Perfume: A Reflection on Favorite Perfumes

2011-12-08T19:56:00.001-08:00

Love, Infatuation, and Perfume, Part 4

My favorite scents, and thoughts on who they might make good gifts for.

L’Artisan Iris Pallida LE 2007. Everybody’s got an iris. This one is mine. I once described it as smelling the feeling of having a sob caught in one’s throat, as hearing the sound of Roy Orbison’s "Crying" sung in a heart-wrenching Italian. It moves me to tears, the opposite of DSH Sweet Honey because it plucks my heartstrings in a way I find unavoidable. Easily the most expensive perfume I’ve purchased (it was my law school graduation present to myself) and I never regret it, though I do keep metally chastising myself for not wearing it more. I keep leaving it in the beauitful wooden box, forgetting that perfume is made to be worn. This week I promised myself to whip out that exquisite tragedy and spray it on, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe this weekend. I'd say that meant it wasn't a favorite, but I know that's not true, because every time I smell it, there's magic all over again.

Price: $$$.
Recommended for: the hipster, the coffee lover.

Worth Je Reviens. I like Worth perfumes for so many reasons, not the least of which being that the house was founded by a man who eschewed his family's traditional vocation of calling -- lawyering. Je Reviens is, in my opinion, the best scent gem hiding in the roughs of your local drug store, bar none. Yeah, that's right. I said it. Bar none. You want to walk into the drug store and for less than $20 buy a scent that is, to this day, unique and wonderful and well-made? You cannot go wrong with Je Reviens. The scent itself is hard to describe, because it's a little bit sweet and a little bit floral and a little bit salty, and yet comes together in a terrific mingling.

Price: $.
Recommended for: the eclectic friend; the lover of an excellent bargain.

By Kilian Back to Black. I truly love many tobacco scents, but I admit to loving this one the best. I tried not to. It's so expensive. But i keep coming back to that tiny sprayer. Not overly sweet, delicately spicy, lucious and warm, Back to Black is wonderful and sexy and reminds me of the slightly bitter yet undeniably passionate Amy Winehouse song of the same name.

"We only said goodbye with words. I died a hundred times. You go back to her, and I go back to...." I can easily imagine loathing this scent after loving someone who wore it. It is so beautifully elegant. I want not to love it. I want not to love the entire line. I want to side with all the other perfume bloggers who are like, "Yeah! By Kilian is not poorly made and way overpriced!" But I can't. I like a lot of the scents, and this one in particular. So I will pony up the immense cost because, frankly, it's beautiful and I want it.

Price: $$$$.
Recommended for: The humidor collector, the person who loves a warm, snuggly sweater.

Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4 ~ Part 5

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$ - $1-$75.

$$ - $76-$130.

$$$ - $131-$200.

$$$$ - $200-$300.

$$$$$ - $300+.

For the Love of Perfume: A Reflection on Favorite Perfumes

2011-12-07T19:43:00.000-08:00

Love, Infatuation, and Perfume, Part 3

My favorite scents, and thoughts on who they might make good gifts for.

L'Artisan Vanilia. Every time I sniff Vanilia, I can't believe it got discontinued. I love vanillas and I am always game to try new ones, but this one remains one of my singular favorites. It's so unusually green and sappy, not foodie sweet or liquored like vanilla extract. It has a lovely structure and drydown. I managed to grab a bottle after the discontinue about two months ago for a reasonable price, but I had to hunt for it. I recommend getting your hands on some while it can still be found.

Price: $$-$$$$, depending on size and deal you find. My almost full bottle after d/c was still only $$.
Recommended for: the quirky vanilla fiend, the collector.

Demeter Perfumes Salt Air. I know, it's a $6 bottle of perfume. So why can't I quit putting it on? I'll be the first person to admit that Demeter scents have a tendency to run the gamut from too-on-the-nose to trying-so-hard-they-are-harsh, but this one is right on the money for me. If you asked me to name the best thing I own for less than $10, this would win. Even if we ratcheted the amount to $20, which would include things like Coty Sand & Sable and Worth Je Reviens, this might still win. It's completely neutral and smells like the smell that hits me every time I get close enough to the ocean to feel my constant yearning to return to the sea unclench. I'd pay a whole lot more than $6 for that experience, but I'm really glad I don't have to.

Price: $.
Recommended for: the beach lover, the eclectic DIY fashionista who will enjoy the low price and unusual scent.

Bond No. 9 New Haarlem. My first Bond love still remains the strongest. There's something about the blend of coffee, patchouli, and vanilla that can't go wrong, and not because I live in Portlandia, where the air is virtually suffuse with those scents. The combination works effortlessly, and not only do I deeply enjoy smelling it throughout the day, but I get tons of compliments on it. Yes, it's on the sweet and foodie end, but if you can deal with that (or like me, love it) then you can't go wrong with this one.

Price: $$$.
Recommended for: the hipster, the coffee lover.

Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4 ~ Part 5

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$ - $1-$75.

$$ - $76-$130.

$$$ - $131-$200.

$$$$ - $200-$300.

$$$$$ - $300+.

For the Love of Perfume: A Reflection on Favorite Perfumes

2011-12-06T19:52:00.000-08:00

Love, Infatuation, and Perfume, Part 2

And now we begin a week of my most beloved scents, in no particular order.

Slumberhouse Flou. I think I might be the person most in love with this little scent in the whole world. I want to explain to you what it is about Flou that makes it one of my all-time favorite scents after only five months together, but it’s so hard to explain that affection if you don’t feel it yourself. I think it’s strange and beautiful. I think it’s sad and sweet and lively and poignant. It manages to conquer a lot of different moods, and that’s part of the trick to be sure, because it means I pick it up often and yet never find myself disappointed. I’m pleased it was made here in Portland, and I hope this tiny new perfume house continues to get the attention I think it deserves for making terrific scents.

Price: $.
Recommended for: the eclectic friend, the friend who has everything, the friend who is loves modern art.

CB I Hate Perfume Black March. I have almost completely used up my 100ml bottle. Personally I find that fact alone astonishing. If you had asked me five years ago if the thing I’d be mostly like to smell like on any given day was rain splattered dirt and fallen greenery, I’d have laughed. It’s a sign how much this place has gotten inside me. I don’t think I’ll ever stop thinking of myself as a Texan in some ways, but I realized this weekend standing in front of the only Studebaker stage coach that made the journey across the Oregon Trail available for public viewing (the other three are in private collections) and listening to a lovely woman talk about the incredible difficulty and hardship those original pioneers had to overcome to get here that I am very proud to consider myself an Oregonian.

There is something about getting here from another place to start a new life despite incredible obstacles that resonates, not only for me personally, but for so many Oregon transplants I know. Exiles, drifters, the lost, and the damned – the came here to start over. I’m one of them. When I smell Black March, I think about that, and how this place has changed me, about who I am now that I never expected to be. The west may be closed, but the idea that you can come to Oregon and find a new life remains. Here among the rain and dark earth and tall pines that were there before I was born and, I hope, will be here when I am gone, I was not born anew, but unexpectedly healed. If someone hands you a bottle of that, it’s hard not to love it.

Price: $-$$.
Recommended for: the outdoorsy friend, the friend who thinks they hate perfume.

DSH Perfumes Sweet Honey. Here’s how much I loved Sweet Honey. I bought one on a whim because it was on clearance. A week later I bought a second bottle for fear it was going to would disappear when Dawn launched her new site (very nice, I might add) and consolidated some of the offerings from her line. A lot of people would probably find Sweet Honey sickeningly so; not me. I find its overwhelming sweetness so thoroughly fantastic that I cannot get enough of it. I can close my eyes and actually see strings of think honey yawning between my fingers when I smell the scent. Life can be brutal and ugly and sometimes there is something so perfect about a golden sweetness that overcomes the bitter it literally drowns out the ashes in your mouth, the grim on your heart. To me, this scent does that.

Price: $-$$.
Recommended for: the friend who stops at every bakery.

Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4 ~ Part 5

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$ - $1-$75.

$$ - $76-$130.

$$$ - $131-$200.

$$$$ - $200-$300.

$$$$$ - $300+.

For the Love of Perfume: A Reflection on Favorite Perfumes

2011-12-05T19:45:00.001-08:00

Love, Infatuation, and Perfume, Part 1

Dear reader, let me talk to you about love and infatuation and perfume.

It’s a funny thing, love. The crazy rollercoaster emotions that typically come with it are usually sufficient to make even the sanest person loses all sense of proportion, propriety, and reason. It is hard to imagine anything that makes people act quite as crazy.

The problem with love, of course, is that in its incipient stages it look an awful lot like infatuation, a far more fickle and fleeting emotion. It’s got the same overwhelming, synapse exploding, gut wrenching potential in its early moments, but much like Romeo and his discarded Rosalyns, it tends to have a short shelf life.

I cannot tell you how many scents I have loved, or thought I loved, when I first sniffed them. How lovely! How wonderful! How singular and magical! A week later, I sniff again and think "ho-hum" or worse "eek." It is in these moments I feel glad I am forced to be judicious in my scent purchases, or I fear my collection would be overrun with Rosalyns, and the Juliette would be lost among them in the proverbial weeds.

Occasionally I will keep something on my "To be purchased" list a long time, sometimes for over a year or two. When I finally get together the money to buy the long sought after scent, I find I always have a moment’s pause. I cannot help it. After loving something for so long, I canot help but stop and wonder – do I really love it, or was I just kidding myself?

I will sniff and resniff, moving scents up and down the priority shopping list, sometimes removing them completely, as I think about what my collection is missing, what I’m most likely to war over the next three months or so, and I seem not to be able to live without. That’s why it sometimes takes me weeks or months longer to get around to reviewing a new release compared to my blogging cohort. I am stingy with my love, and I only want to promise you something is good if I feel sure it is, and that I wasn’t just moved in the moment to thoughtless oaths like fickle Romeo.

With that in mind, dear reader, I provide you the following list, which wil be posted over several daily posts this week. These are not necessarily the releases I think you should buy for yourself and another, for I am far too much of the mind that scent is singular to be able to cobble together a Gift Guide of Scently Proportions (though I might do one for other things because that seems like it might be a fun project if I have a little time this week). Instead these are the nicest perfumes I have found in a while, some of which I own already because their beauty demanded immediate acquisition and some which seem to constantly haunt my "To Be Purchased" list because they represent not that fleeting glance of infatuation that can turn one’s nose and heart for a few minutes or even a few months, but those scents I have loved for well on a year or more.

In the following days, I will post about scents I love, scents that make this list...

Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4 ~ Part 5

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$ - $1-$75.

$$ - $76-$130.

$$$ - $131-$200.

$$$$ - $200-$300.

$$$$$ - $300+.

Haul out the holly; put up the tree before my spirit falls again!

2011-11-28T23:01:00.001-08:00

Scent Spotlight: aroma M Geisha Amber Rouge

Tonight "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" was on television, but I didn't watch it. I didn't put my Christmas tree up this weekend like I normally do, I didn't go to the Christmas Tree lighting downtown, and I haven't even driven over to see the red reindeer nose on the new Made in Oregon sign. I didn't even put batteries in the twinkle lights on my wreath yet.

Quite frankly, I am feeling positively Grinchy.

And that's too bad, because thanks to Marie McElroy, I have a new scent to add to my winter holiday favorites. About two weeks ago, I received a delightful surprise in the mail - aroma M Geisha Amber Rouge. And despite my other wise sour puss, I had to tell you about it because it's too good not to share.

According to the aroma M website:

Following in the tradition of the grand perfume house of Guerlain with Shalimar Initial and Chanel with Chanel No. 5 Eau Permiere, we have taken our cult favorite, Geisha Rouge, and given it a new interpretation - Geisha Amber Rouge. This is a beautiful feminine fragrance composed of seductive sensual spices and woods. It is mellow yet racy, smoky and appealing. It is a gentle, irresistible red flame conveying the meaning of vivacious sensuality held in check but just barely.

Geisha Amber Rouge gives a nod to Oriental perfumery in its use of rare vintage ingredients from the desert. Moroccan amber joins forces with deep wood resins, cinnamon, clove and hints of star anis. Characteristically spicy notes of the original Geisha Rouge blend with that of Japanese incense. Inspired by exotic travels to Morocco and Istanbul, Geisha Amber Rouge is a perfume poem, an ode to the Byzantine. Drawing on the treasured oils from the silk road, Geisha Amber Rouge is representative of aroma Ms cross-cultural fluency in creating perfumes, creating an olfactory journey between east and west.

Notes: Tonka bean, tobacco, vanilla, sandalwood, cinnamon, star of anise, clove

What a lovely scent! I've worn it several times since it arrived, and depending on the day, different notes take prominence, but all of them seem entirely fa-la-la-fantastic. Tonight the opening is heavy on the clove, the middle a strong blend of tobacco and tonka bean, and the finish a wallop of sandalwood. When I wore it a couple of days ago, I would have sworn it was all cinnamon and anise and vanilla! No matter what blend I get, they're all warm, sweet, and terrific.

I've seen a lot of reviews that describe the scent as throwing-sparks-sexy, and I'll agree that I get a bit of sparkage, but mine if more of the snuggle together by the fire under a blanket for...discretion. I think it's sexy, but I don't find it quite as viscerally va-va-voom as other reviewers. Instead, I find it sweet and romantic. Moreover, it's so...Christmas-y! It reminds me of sipping holiday cider through a straw, playing in the snow, kissing beneath mistletoe, and lying in bed together with only the lights from the tree twinkling in the room.

They say there's no place like home for the holidays. I say, nothing beats love at the holidays. And this scent says that to me, in spades.

Available direct from the perfumer or from LuckyScent.

Want more? Try...
~ a review from Eyeliner on a Cat
~ a review from Eiderdown Press
~ a review from Pretty in Dayton
~ a review from Perfume Pharmer
~ a review from Perfume Diary

Perfume generously provided for review by the perfumer.

Help an Indie Perfumer and Win Free Samples!

2011-11-26T11:20:00.001-08:00

Also, a quick request to all my lovely readers. Will you help a sister out? More specifically, I'd like to ask you all to help out Bellatrix. In exchange, you can enter to win samples from Croatian perfumers!

All you have to do is click HERE, take a short survey, and Presto! You'll be entered to win samples of fragrances from two Croatian perfumers!

>How's that for some holiday spirit?

(Okay, the picture isn't exactly cheery, but I still thought it was kind of hilarious.)

Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Pt. 1 and the Politics of Choice

2011-11-19T11:46:00.001-08:00

A Personal Reflection on Mainstream Messaging, the Practicalities of Child-Rearing, and the True Definition of Reproductive Rights

((Trigger warning: The following post does not talk about perfume. It will, however, talk about abortion, miscarriage, difficult pregnancy, and domestic violence. This may be upsetting for some of my readers, and I wanted to warn you up front so you could pass this post without reading further if you choose. No hard feelings on my part, I promise. Feel free to skip this post if you’re here for the perfume; I promise we will return to that tomorrow. Also, Twilight Breaking Dawn: Pt 1 Spoiler Alert.))

YA and Fandom, generally

If you read this blog with any regularity or follow me on twitter, it’s obvious I deeply enjoy the genre of literature popularly known as Young Adult. Among the fandoms I admit I belong to is one replete with problems. Dear reader, I admit it. I am also a Twilight fan. FN2. As someone recently exclaimed at a feminist event I went to, “You can say it: Yes I read the Twilight books, they were awful and I loved them.” I have read the books, all of them. I own and have seen the movies several times. FN3.

I am also an ardent feminist. In the context of Twilight, as you may already be aware, this is kind of a problem.

Twilight and Feminism: Fiction and Philosophy Collide

The internet is covered in angry screeds against the terrible messages being fed to young readers through these books. There’s the fact that Edward seems to confuse the idea of pursuing someone with stalking them. FN4. There’s the fact that Edward is extremely controlling, and his need to be in charge of every aspect of Bella’s life, to the point of disabling her car to keep her from leaving at one point, is classic domestic violence behavior. Lest you think I’m picking on Edward, Jacob (and the wolves)? Not much better. In one scene, he forcibly kisses Bella when she is adamant that she does not want him to, clearly violating her consent. He uses emotional blackmail (threats to his own life) to cajole Bella into physical intimacy. He warns Bella repeatedly that, due to his nature, he has an explosive temper and if she does not behave in a way that is pleasing to him, he may lose control and hurt her. Again, we’ve wandered into classic DV behavior, the kind that if a friend told me about, I’d be driving them to the courthouse to get a restraining order if I had to fill out the forms for them myself. Bella is problematic herself, as she is a classic victim, hiding the behavior of these men from her family and friends, lying to diminish the pain they have caused her, blaming herself for provoking behaviors in them that clearly violate her autonomy and individualism. FN5. FN6. FN7.

All that said, like all texts, the books can be read a number of ways. FN8. I think that’s good. I think there are lots of ways to read a text and good texts allow for a multiplicity of readings. I think Twilight fans get a bad rap for being unaware of what we’re reading, which may be true for the younger readers, but isn’t necessarily true for the many adult fans. And I think you can admit a piece of work has problematic messages and still enjoy it. FN9.

Breaking Dawn and Bella’s Demon Spawn: Reproductive Rights Issues

But even as a Twilight fan, I struggle with Breaking Dawn. It is my least favorite book in the series, and the first half my least favorite half of the book. Given that, I wasn’t super looking forward to this recent film release, but I decided to go do the marathon thing anyway because I like to get my fangirl on among other fans as a pastime. Watching the film’s take on the material raised some issues for me I’ve always wanted to address, but also made me reevaluate my own position a little, and I wanted to talk about that.

My biggest hang up with the books has always and forever been with Bella and her “demon spawn.” I have struggled immensely with a book that appears to rabidly affirm the idea that a fetus’ life is more valuable than the woman carrying it. I’m adamantly pro-choice. I’ve had a pregnancy that resulted in a miscarriage that almost killed me, much to the sadness of my husband and myself. I’ve also had abortion, a choice I made as a teenager that I don’t regret and that, given the violent isolated situation I was in, I think was the right one. FN10.

It has always galled me that Bella insisted on risking her life to have Renesmee, even when her own partner was begging her not to do it. In the film adaptation, Edward says rather succinctly: “I thought we were supposed to be partners. You made this choice without me.” Reading the books, which are written from the perspective of Bella (and in this section only, briefly from Jacob’s), I always wanted to yell at her, “Yeah! Listen to Edward and Jacob! Your life matters, too!”

Without ever getting into the moral and ethical issues of when life begins or when a lump of tissue because a person, I do not accept that anyone has the right to tell me I should die for someone else. Every society in history has made exceptions to laws against murder to allow for killing in self-defense and defense of others. The right to protect your own life from a credible threat is something that every society has deemed acceptable. We are not lambs waiting for the slaughter. We have the right to fight for our lives. That includes a woman facing a life-threatening pregnancy.

Reading T:BD I have never understood Bella’s refusal to even consider this perspective. It was the point in the story where her penchant for consistently discounting the value of her own life and acting like a Victorian tableau of the self-sacrificing Angel in the House goes a bridge too far for me. She’s been begging for forever with Edward for over a thousand pages. She’s been willing to sacrifice (1) the lives of those she believes she will eat as a newborn vampire with little to no regard for the human sacrifice her new form will require; (2) the love of and relationships with her non-vampire friends and family because they cannot see her as a vampire/will be her mortal enemy/she might try to eat them; (3) the love of another paramour who may be a better, healthier fit for her; all in the name of an eternity of love with Edward. Suddenly all that goes out the window. Bella will die right now, and no suggestions that she might have a child or be a mother in some other way will be considered. It seemed unreal to me. Bella stopped being a person I could understand or empathize with.

Watching the film, though, I had to check myself. Here is a woman who is pregnant. She has made a decision about what she wants to do regarding that pregnancy. She is fully informed of her options and the possible risks to her own life and health. She is sober, rationale, and steadfast in her choice. Seeing the pressure mount against her was a real and difficult thing to watch. One of the things the film clearly demonstrates in a way I’d always missed on paper was the systematic way Bella is badgered by everyone around her to change her mind. The disregard for her right to make a choice about her life and her body was something I hadn’t really considered before. It made me want to fight with her, not against her.

And this gets into the tricky bit for me. Like the characters of the book, I just wanted Bella to live. I wanted her to consider her life one worth saving. Like the pro-choice woman I am, I resisted a story that tells women their lives were worth less than the fetus growing inside them. In doing so, I ignored Bella’s right to make the choice that was right for her even if I didn't agree with it.

One of the areas of law I occasionally guest lecture on is Feminist Jurisprudence and Reproductive Rights. One of the main points of my lectures is this: we have a tendency to define reproductive rights very narrowly when we talk about them, boiling the entire area of rights down to the narrow issue of legal abortion. Reproductive rights, though, are about a lot more than that. They encompasses issues such as: whether a woman can sign away the rights to a child before it’s born and then change her mind afterward (FN11); whether the state has a right to limit the ability to conceive of women charged with criminal offenses as a condition of probation, or to extend a criminal sentence for a drug addict through the end of her pregnancy in order to protect the health/life of the fetus (FN12); whether a woman has the right to have a large number of fertilized embryos implanted simultaneously, even if she already has many children she cannot financially support (FN13); whether or not a person has the right to adopt based on sexual orientation (FN14); who takes ownership of fertilized frozen embryos when a couple gets divorced (FN15).

All of these questions raise issues relating to our right to make decisions about reproduction. Can a woman have a mid-wife in a hospital instead of a doctor? Can the hospital refuse and insist she use an MD instead for her delivery? Who has primary rights of custody of a child born through surrogacy: the mother of the egg, donor of the sperm, the person who carries the child to term in her body? These aren’t easy questions, and people land all over the map. When you drill down to specifics about the multiplicity of issues wrapped up in reproductive health, people tend to have internally conflicting positions they haven’t explored. No one has asked them to. We simply ask: pro-life or pro-choice? As though everyone, to some extent, isn’t at least a little of both.

When it comes to the health and life of a pregnant woman, I have strong feelings. I look at my husband and our life, and I know the world I’d leave a child behind in without two healthy parents. I know that my husband’s position is much like Edward’s eloquent short statement in the film: “Do you believe I could love, or even tolerate, anything that would take you from me?” It may be selfish, but David has been pretty clear about his feelings on the matter: anything that takes me from him isn’t worth it. He wants me to live, period. I recognize the responsibility I’d be leaving him with if I died, and care too much for his mental, emotional and physical well-being and my own to create a situation like that.

At the same time, my sister Erica was very clear to me and to everyone else regarding her recent pregnancy: if it came down to Erica or the baby, she would accept no choice that limited the chances of a successful delivery of a healthy child. If that meant she had to die or have seriously compromised health, even if it resulted in permanent disability, she’d do it. Save the baby. It wasn’t the choice I’d make for myself or that I would have made for Erica left to my own devices, but I respected Erica enough that if the situation had come down to it, I’d have followed her directive because, in the end, it’s her body. It’s her life.

Returning to the legal aspect of these issues for a moment, there is a line of cases with a similar fact pattern that I’ve always found distressing and that sprang to mind as I watched Twilight: Breaking Dawn: Pt. 1. A woman, late in her pregnancy, goes into a hospital. The pregnancy is in distress. It is endangering her life, and may also endanger the child’s. The hospital strongly recommends early delivery by Cesarean Section. FN16.

For a host of reasons – financial, ethical, moral, religious, health-based – the woman refuses. She will not have the c-section. She will wait to deliver naturally. The hospital is adamant the surgery go forward; the woman is equally adamant that it not. The hospital board calls its lawyers, who file a motion with the court seeking a court order to force the c-section, whether the woman wants it or not.

In one case, the court denies the motion, pointing out that the idea of physically restraining a woman and forcing surgery upon her she doesn’t want for her own good, a surgery that may not be necessary, violates her bodily autonomy in a way that can’t reconcile with our fundamental freedoms. There will be no surgery, even if it costs both mother and child their lives. FN17.

In other cases, the court grants the motion, and issues a court order allowing the hospital to go forward with the c-section without the woman’s consent. The court indicates in its decision that the balance of lives at risk outweigh the woman’s right to choose her method and condition of delivery, whatever her reasons. If she has to be restrained and cut-open against her will to save her and the child, so be it. If it means weeks of recovery, a more expensive procedure, higher risk pregnancies later in life, the inability to have a vaginal pregnancy in the future, well, so be it. Those things pale in comparison to the value of life, even if it means cutting open a woman and taking the child from her body while she fights,sometimes physically, against the choice.

The latter choice may be the sensible one in terms of lives saved, but at what cost to our individual and collective liberty? Does anyone have a right, in the end, to take the fetus from a woman’s womb by force? Does anyone have a right to tell her she can’t have it if she wants, if she is fully informed of the risks, and says no, I want to do this even if I will die? I don’t think so. I don’t think I have any more right to tell Bella Swan she can’t keep her demon spawn, even if it kills her, than I think the Religious Right should be able to tell me I have to continue an unwanted pregnancy, any pregnancy.

The film makes me reevaluate my personal disregard for Bella’s voice in the decision. I cannot discount her, and it is the height of hypocrisy for me to personally dislike her for making a choice different from the one I would make. It makes me no better than the people who call women who have abortions names, who discount their voice in making the reproductive choice that’s right for them. I admit that my dissatisfaction with T:BD was a lot about that, and about the way Bella’s self-righteousness mirrors so many of the people who have condemned me for my own decisions.

Reproductive Rights: The Fiction vs. The Reality

And yet, I still dislike T:BD for the following reason: Bella’s choice is one made in a perfect fictional vacuum, completely divorced from the reality of the situation. A sixteen or seventeen year old girl who faces a difficult pregnancy and asks herself, “What Would Bella Do?,” is going to be making a decision based in a world created by its author largely without negative consequences. If you choose to carry a life-threatening pregnancy to term IRL, here are some advantages Bella had that you will not.

1. Free, private home healthcare from an expert surgeon.
2. A giant family who do not have to work, have no children or other responsibilities of their own, to take care of you day and night throughout your pregnancy because they never have to sleep.
3. A relative who can control your mood swings, assisting you to feel calm and at ease so that stress does not further contribute to your deteriorating health and the health of the pregnancy.
4. A miracle drug (i.e. venom) that may not only save your life, but heal every injury that you suffer related to the pregnancy within days, including returning the use of your legs after your back breaks and your spine is injured.
5. Considerable wealth sufficient not only support you through the pregnancy, but to sustain you and your child and any of its special needs into and beyond childhood.
6. A giant family of people who do not have to work, have no children or other responsibilities of their own, who can provide full-time child care for you at any time and are happy to do so.
7. A child that will grow into complete autonomous adulthood within a matter of a few years, such that you will no longer be responsible for his/her care and upkeep.

If Bella’s choice had meant her life, I might honestly like the books better. If Bella and Edward had been burdened with a child whose “specialness” meant any kind of negatives beyond a misconception about her being a killing machine that is resolved relatively easily within the context of the books and within a year or two won’t even matter, I might have liked the books better. Hell, if Bella herself had turned out to be the newborn killing machine we were promised, and had to be kept away from her mostly human child for years, that would have made it a better, more interesting story.

Bella’s choice seems ridiculous because it’s too easy. When Edward says, “But you’ll die!” Bella’s response is, “No! The Venom!” A real pregnant woman in distress like Bella was does not have the option of vampiric healing post-delivery. She’s going to be very sick, probably permanently disabled, and that’s if she’s lucky enough to live. The child isn't going to Renesmee perfect, either. Her child is going to cry, get sick, need constant care at great expense for many years, and there aren’t going to be a houseful of wealthy caregivers who do not require sleep hanging around to help with every problem. Money is going to be an issue because not everyone has a relative who can see the future and game the stock market appropriately. People don’t raise their children in homes with six additional childless couples who want nothing more than to hang out and help with the baby.

My problem with Breaking Dawn, in the end, isn’t Bella’s choice to continue a life-threatening pregnancy. It isn’t that she “won’t listen to reason,” or bow to the desires of others. It’s that her choice is free of consequence, divorcing it from the real difficulties that face a woman with a life-threatening pregnancy. It preaches a kind of moral absolutism to young readers who have no context for the problems of the real world. If Stephenie Meyer did a disservice to reproductive rights activists on both sides of the coin, it’s that she diminished the value of Bella’s choice by taking those consequences away. If you are pro-life, you take that position with the full knowledge that being a parent is a difficult, time-consuming, life altering choice. The ease of Bella's motherhood discounts the real sacrifices parents make for the children, over and over.

That is the discussion that needs to happen with young readers of the book series. We need an analysis of the easy resolve of Bella’s decision, not whether she had the right to make the choice in itself. My hope is that when my feminist blogging sisters and brothers begin to pick apart Breaking Dawn on completely rational and reasonable bases, they will remember that the fans who love the books are looking for people who want to respect the characters and talk about their motivations and choices, for good and for ill.

Because that's the thing about choice: no matter which choice you make, it's a difficult one. Whether you continue a pregnancy or terminate it, there are consequences. In that context, I think it’s important to discuss Bella’s exclusive right to choose for herself what will become of her pregnancy and the agency that choice demonstrates, while simultaneously looking at the ways the one-sided presentation of the choice and the way its aftermath diverges from reality and into a land of fiction where real pregnant eighteen-year-old girls facing real life-altering choices cannot follow.

__________________
FN1. As a little girl in front of me at the movies Thursday night had eloquently pointed out on her t-shirt: I have “SO MANY TEAMS.” I watch Vampire Diaries obsessively. I’ve been to Harry Potter book releases and Wizardrock concerts and watched documentaries about Harry Potter-inspired fan work. I’m super psyched for the release of The Hunger Games.

I’m into a lot of fandoms, most of them teen/YA related. To be fair to myself, I’ve always been this way. I was also into: 90210 (original and reboot), Melrose Place, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Felicity, Gossip Girl, Veronica Mars, Angel, Greek, The O.C., Gilmore Girls, Dawson’s Creek, Supernatural and probably every other teen show you’ve ever seen that was created after 1988. It’s just a genre of storytelling I enjoy. One of my all-time favorite movies is Brick which would be a YA book if it were a novel. I love John Hughes and Cameron Crowe, who are masters of stories about teens and young adults. So this isn’t a new thing for me any more than YA is a new genre, and I’m not going to dig out my original Christopher Pike books or my hardback Nancy Drew collection to prove it to you. YA is changing, IMO for the better, and getting more of the recognition it deserves, but that’s an entirely separate post/discussion.

FN2. Again, we can talk about why I like the books at some other time, because that too is a lengthy discussion.

FN3. I’ve only seen the film Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 once.

FN4. Watch this video if you haven’t already.

FN5. If I don’t stop talking about the DV parts of the books, I’m never going to get to the choice issues I want to talk about. I need to say this though: it would be nice to see anyone, anyone, write a BDSM YA book that actually involves a lot of discussion of consent and boundary setting, etc. Because I get the appeal of dominance/submission dynamics in sexual relationships, believe me. I just think there’s a framework to create that kind of dynamic in that protects individual autonomy, consent, and choice, and then there’s this.

FN6. I could also write a significant piece of sexual autonomy vs. slut shaming wrt Bella and Edward, but that is also another essay.

FN7. I am also not touching the class or race issues buried in the book, but I do recommend that all twi-fans and twi-haters read Natalie Wilson’s Seduced By Twilight, which does a great job of respecting fans and simultaneously problematizing the book series. It’s a wonderful thought-provoking book by a great author/speaker. If she comes near you, go see her.

FN8. True for almost every fandom, and this article by Sady Doyle about alternate universe HP series focused on Hermione is a great example of that. Also, see my ongoing argument with my husband entitled: “Severus Snape: True Hero or Selfish Bastard.”

FN9. Dear self-congratulatory Buffy fans: I am one of you and have been since the beginning and never missed an episode -- NOT ONE IN SEVEN YEARS -- but I could just as easily put together a video that showed Buffy going right along with being stalked and being in love and having a relationship with a sometimes violent and abusive guy who made the people who loved her scared for her and generally uncomfortable, someone Buffy hides from her friends and family routinely, blaming herself for the unsavory aspects of their relationship.

And then we can talk about Angel/Angelus, because let’s not forget: Buffy did that crap TWICE.

FN10. Dear anti-choicers: Please direct all hate mail to feminine.things @ gmail . com. I screen comments, so no one is going to see you call me names anyway. You might as well just send them directly to me.

FN11. Baby M, In re Baby M, 537 A.2d 1227, 109 N.J. 396 (N.J. 02/03/1988) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_M].

FN12. State v. Looney, No. 99-F0065 (Parish of Ouachita, Fourth Judicial District Court, Feb. 25, 2000) (District Court Judge Carl V. Sharp gave Kathy Looney a choice between sterilization and ten years in prison, following her conviction for beating three of her eight children with an extension-cord. A month later, the sterilization condition was deleted and Looney was mandated to stay on Norplant. In December of 2000, the Court then deleted the Norplant condition.); State v. McGee, (Shelby County Juvenile Court June 25, 2004) (Tennessee Juvenile Court Referee Claudia Haltom signed a court order for long-term birth control for Loretta McGee, 33-years-old, who is mentally disabled. Ms. McGee was called to Juvenile Court for a proceeding involving one of her ten children.); U.S. v. Vaughn, Sup. Ct. D.C., Crim. No. F-2172-88B (August 23, 1988) (Superior Court of the District of Columbia lengthened the sentence of a pregnant, drug-addicted woman in order to keep her incarcerated until her baby was born. Vaughn was convicted of check forgery.)

These are only three cases involving state-mandated birth control. There are many more.

FN13. In case you don't know 'Octomom's' story, go here.

FN14. In Re Gill, the case overturning the 33 year ban on same sex adoption in Florida. [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/us/26florida.html].

You can read more generally here.

FN15. - Davis v. Davis, 842 S.W.2d 588, 597 (Tenn. 1992)[http://www.bioethics.gr/media/pdf/biolaw/nomologia/DavisvDavis.pdf]; Kass v. Kass, 1995 WL 110368 (N.Y.Sup.) [http://www.divorcesource.com/research/dl/children/03mar54.shtml].

You can read about more cases here.

FN16. Pemberton v. Tallahassee Memorial Regional Center, U.S. District Court, N.D. Florida, Tallahassee Division., October 13, 1999 (court enforced a hospital delivery with c-section over mother's desire for vaginal delivery at home with a midwife) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemberton_v._Tallahassee_Memorial_Regional_Center]; Jefferson v. Griffin Spalding Count Hospital Authority, et al., 247 Ga. 86, 274 S.E.2.d 457 (1981) (Supreme Court of Georgia upholds superior Court order to force a c-section) [http://supreme-court-georgia.vlex.com/vid/jefferson-griffin-spalding-hospital-20402875]; Samantha Burton v. State of Florida (hospital sought a court order to confine a pregnant woman, Samantha Burton, for fifteen weeks to protect her fetus) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burton_v._Florida; http://www.aclu.org/reproductive-freedom/florida-court-upholds-right-pregnant-woman-determine-medical-care]; In re Baby Boy Doe, 632 N.E.2d 326 (Ill. App. Ct. 1994) (Illinois courts declined to issue court order to force c-section).

You can read more about various legal battles of pregnancy between health care providers and the pregnant woman here and here.

FN17. She ended up delivering successfully.

You know I've never been to heaven, but I've been to Oklahoma.

2011-11-12T10:29:00.001-08:00

JoAnne Bassett Perfumes Collette parfum

It's possible that if I favorably mention JoAnne Bassett's Night Queen one more time within a single month, people will think I am on the take. Take heart, dear reader: unlike our elected representatives, Feminine Things remains, at date, bribery free. FN1.

So I'm not going to talk about Night Queen. In fact, we're not going to talk about Night Queen at all. We're going to keep her out of this.

Instead I'm going to talk about another offering from JoAnne Bassett Perfumes Collette parfum. According to the card that came with my sample, the notes are as follows: Cepes and Whit Cognac from France, various citrus essences, and others.

According to JoAnne, the scent concept has its roots in France, motherland of perfumery. FN2. I have never been to France (or Spain or England or anywhere but all over the US and a bit of Canada, really). So let's see how my little nose meets the challenge, shall we?

Collette opens citrus but immediately turns toward this slightly green open-air dirt smell on me, one that I seem to mentally associate with the smell of standing over a freshly dug grave before anything is put in it. It isn't the foremost experience of the scent, but it hangs around like soil clinging to exposed root. I think that must be the mushroom "used to ground and reveal secrets of Mother Earth," as the scent description provides. I have a friend who is a budding mycologist; I'll have to ask her what she thinks.

As the song says, I've never been to heaven, but I've been to Oklahoma...and Wyoming and South Dakota and New Mexico. I can't tell you why this scent makes me think of the Badlands or the year I lived in Santa Fe or a few days I spent once in Wyoming or long drives across portions of Oklahoma, but there is something about a scent that aims to capture the beauty of earth that makes me think of the stilling grandeur of such places.

These are not places full of obvious life. They are not like the lush greenery where my heart and soul find succor and internal sustainability. FN3. And yet, they are no less alive. Stand in the places in the world that appear barren for more than a few minutes, and what you'll find is that the impression of isolation from modernity may fit, but isolation from life itself is not. In the supposed emptiness of the desert or the tundra teem a million lives that ignore us, not the other way around. Our view of our environment is myopic and self-centered, which is a reflection of our limited bodily knowing of the world. But if you close your eyes, and you listen and you feel, not with your hands as we typically choose to define the world, but with your whole body, you will realize that the world is a thousand fragile things in every moment, most of them missed by us all the time.

We worry about the dishes and the laundry and being late to movies and who will feed the cats and if our jobs will last and if we will be happy and who will win the last football game of the season and if the writers of Vampire Diaries will ever just get on with it already and give Damon and Elena the hook-up they deserve and stop torturing us, and we miss...

...everything. So many everythings. The birth a bird in the tree by our window, the death of the worm its mother feeds it. The way our loved ones are slowly changing in front of us, the way our lives pass away in massive floods or slow forming drops.

Some people will send you to an island if you want to slow down, or a forest if you want to reconnect with nature, and I understand that. But if you want to remember yourself, I say go to the desert for a few days. Force yourself to look past the initial sense of nothing and see the world, in you and outside of you. Notice how the earth and the land meet in the far horizon in an unbroken line that seems impossibly long, how the wind feels against your bare arms, how the sounds grow sharper as you notice them, as if hearing them for the first time. Lay on the ground, look up at the sky, and realize you are clinging to the earth as you float through an infinite space of impossible magnitude with a kind of magic that we call science because we like to think we are in control. Your life is everything to you, and nothing to the universe. You are infinitesimally small and extraordinarily large in every moment, even in your death.

Close your eyes and inhale. The dry night air is alive with mysteries, intimate and unknowable. Mysteries that smell like this.

FN4. FN5.
____________________
FN1. Though I am not above taking free perfume for consideration, review, drawing, etc. as long as it's on my terms Perfumers, see the solicitations policy up top. <g>
FN2. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, Mutherland! (Sorry, I'm a little punchy today.)
FN3. For lo, I have lived in ugly, uninspiring places, and in the immortal words of Fleetwood Mac, "Ooooh, never going back again."
FN4. If you got the Twin Peaks reference buried in this post, you are either a. someone I could be friends with IRL b. one of a very specific group of fumie tweeps I heart; c.someone forced annually to spend your Thanksgiving weekend watching Twin Peaks with me, d. all of the above.
FN5. Also, my apologies about the Vampire Diaries-related angst but no new episodes until January 2012? Really!?! *Dies*

Scent provided by perfumer.

You've never been to the riverside.

2011-11-08T22:49:00.001-08:00

Scents for a Day on the Winter Beach

"Down by the river, by the boat
where everybody goes to be alone,
where you won't see any rising sun.
Down by the river we will run."

There are no Beach Boys songs for winter beaches. They are not "fun, fun, fun." They are not "where the boys are." People do not play "beach blanket bingo" on beaches strewn with the detritus of winter storms.

And yet, I love winter beaches in all their stark beauty. Cold and clear or overcast and rainy, they always strike me as dramatic and moody, better settings for stories of weight than the sun soaked beaches of summer I now associate with serial rapists trolling for girls gone wild. FN1.

I went to the beach last weekend when I was supposed to be working on a number of projects because, frankly, someone asked me. When someone offers to drive you two hours to the beach and two hours back and not even ask for gas money, my rule is to always say yes if at all possible. FN2. While I was there, I got to thinking about the appropriate beach scents for the blustery winter day of sun and sand, and I was curious about your thoughts on the subject, dear reader.

For me, scents like Estee Lauder Bronze Goddess, which I recently tried and loved, don't work for the winter beach. It was a lovely warm mix of coconut and white flowers, and everything about it said warm bare skin and bronze bodies. It's a great scent, but didn't go with wellies, jeans, flannels, and a long wool coat. The same goes for CB I Hate Perfume At the Beach 1966. There's too much "little cartoon dog baring little cartoon girl's tan line" in it for me to think it was meant for stormy November weather. I have the same problem with the beautifully floral beach scents like Annick Goutal Songes. There are no flowers on the harsh and windswept winter beaches, only bare limbs of deciduous trees stripped of their leaves that line the cliff edges like a crowd of freezing-legged, stockingless girls mixed in among the evergreens.

While I like Demeter Fragrance Library's Salt Air for coastal wanderings, it didn't seem to have the right amount of coldness for me. It had a harshness, it smelled...warm. Or at least, not cold. I don't know how to put it, other than it is the smell I think of when I'm driving with the windows down and smell the ocean before I can see it, and the winter is too cold for driving with windows down. FN3.

After digging around in the tin of samples I never leave home without, though, I found one that completely fit the bill. The Difference Company Sel de Vetiver was exactly what I wanted in a winter beach scent. There is something about the combination of citrus and leather and salt that smells like a concentrated blast of air straight off the Pacific in winter. I had my friend sniff at my Sel de Vetiver laden wrists and she concurred; it smelled a lot like the air smelled, but deeper and richer. It's almost briny, and the vetiver on me smells like my hands after I've spent a long time sitting on a large piece of slightly wet driftwood.

Now that I've found the scent, I'm like an addict. All week long I've been sneaking off to the bathroom to put some on. I have a small 2.5ml sample that I keep parceling out in tiny not-quite-sprays, careful to use only enough to transport me out of my stuffy office and back to the beach for a moment. The sun was shining, the birds were flocking in a great crowd, everyone on the beach was in hoodies and jeans and there was a disproportionately high ratio of dog-people to regular people and it just seemed so...easy. The whole day seemed easy, and so few days have been like that lately.

Sel de Vetiver, which would make a great scent on a man or a woman, takes me back there, at least momentarily. It makes the price tag seem almost reasonable ($135/50ml). "It's practically a steal given the happy moment you derive from it," says a reasonable sounding voice in my head. This is the silky voice of temptation, the one that has a nasty habit of equating consumerism with sensory experience. I'm trying to resist that voice a little more; I really have more of everything than I possibly need, and the idea of moving in a few months after a decade of pack-ratting stuff into this apartment is starting to scare me. And yet...and yet...

I wantes it, the precioussssss.

Ah, well. Maybe someone will get me a decent sized decant from The Perfumed Court for Christmas. FN4. FN5.

What about you, faithful reader? What are your winter beach scents?

"Oh my God,
I see how everything is torn
in the river deep,
but I don't know why
I go away
down by the riverside."
~ "Riverside," Agnes Obel FN6.

_____________
FN1. As an advocate for sexual assault survivors at a college, can I just say -- I hate spring break. Not the taking of seasonal time off from school, but the "WOOOOOOOHSPRINGBREEEEEEEEEEAK" of popular culture that leads otherwise sensible people to engage in dangerous levels of stupidity on an annual schedule. It's like creating a version of "The Deadliest Game: Pervs Edition" complete with binge drinking, public near nudity, the idea that sex with strangers is daring and not moronic, and the things at risk are your soul, confidence, trust, sanity, and, possibly, your life. I'm not into victim-blaming EVER, but also think there are cultural moments where our collective idiocy pools and in American culture, Spring Break has got to be one of them.
FN2. Not being much of a "yes to stereotypical fun" kind of girl (see FN1 for example), this is one area of normalcy where I make myself say yes.
FN3. It's funny how "cold" is a smell that I didn't really understand before became a perfumista.
FN4. I know. I'm shameless. Seriously, we might as well subtitle every post beginning with my bitterness post where I fished for a bottle of Night Queen until the holidays are over "stuff Diana wants but cannot afford."
FN5. Seriously, though? I'd also take a decant of TDC Sublime Balkiss. Or any of the things on my Amazon wishlist. See what I mean -- shameless!
FN6. Okay, yes, I realize the song doesn't really fit because it's technically about a river and not the ocean but (1) it's still water and (2) its got the proper mood and (3) it's really beautiful (see video below) and (4) its been haunting me for like two weeks.

Winners, get your winnings here!

2011-11-01T19:35:00.000-07:00

It's that special time here at Feminine Things, the time when I get around to picking drawing winners and figuring out who I owe mail to. Without further ado...

First up: winner of the August 2011 Mix CD, which is a mix mostly of which what I was listening to in August, some new, some old, all awesome. Winner will also recieve a $15 gift certificate to their choice of Demeter Fragrance Library or The Perfumed Court, a few decants, and possibly a post card and other goodies is....

lauren!

List Randomizer

There were 10 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

lauren
Anna in Edinburgh
Lindaloo
Asali
ccdouglass
Elisa
Vasilisa
pureofheart
chickenfreak
Ms Amye
Timestamp: 2011-11-02 02:23:48 UTC

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Second, winner of the Halloween draw, receiving a copy of my October 2011 Mix CD, also known as "Music For Monster Lovers, Vol. 4," some fun Halloween themed goodies and a $15 gift certificate to Indiescents is...

Anna in Edinburgh

List Randomizer
There were 4 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Anna in Edinburgh
PerfumeShrine
Ines
samberg
Timestamp: 2011-11-02 02:23:26 UTC

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This is also a reminder to Candice, winner of EnVoyage Perfumes L’Emblem Rouge drawing back in September. It's been a month and no word. I'm giving you to the end of the week, at which point, I'll move down the list to the next lucky winner.

Winners, please email feminine . things @ gmail.com with your address! (no spaces)

Thanks to all who entered. If you didn't win, don't worry. November will feature at least two drawings because here at Feminine Things we have lots to be thankful for, and we aren't shy about spreading the happy around.

It's the End of the World As We Know It, and I Smell Fine

2011-10-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

For the love of God,
DON'T OPEN THE DOOR!

Perfumes for Your Post-Apocalyptic Isolation

If you knew me well, dear reader, you'd understand that my brain is often full of moderately morbid scenarios for the future. FN1.

So in honor of Halloween, I'll share one of these dark mental meanderings, which you can respond to for, naturally, a seasonal prize, for we are all about the prizes here at Feminine Things.

So think with me for a moment, dear reader, about the end times. I don't mean rivers of blood or rapture, I mean post-apocalyptic survival times. Imagine you have survived in a world without people. I don't mean The Walking Dead style survival.

Helllooooo? Anyone here?

I mean finding yourself in a I Am Legend style, you-may-be-the-only-living-human-survivor, complete isolation kind of world. Or, if you prefer, a Tom-Cruise-in-Vanilla-Sky-omg-where-did-the-WORLD-go!?! kind of environment.

It's just you and...

...you.

After you've managed to secure food,shelter, and housing, it would get kind of boring, right? You could raid libraries for books and stores for batteries to power some audiobooks or music for a while. But you're alone. I mean ah-lone. For all you know, it could stay like that for the rest of your life.

Fun Fact: They actually emptied
Times Square to shoot this.

So stop and imagine your city or town in a world where death comes swift and furious, taking humanity in one chilling wind, one moment there and within hours, gone. Imagine the empty art galleries and clothing stores and groceries, the beautiful gowns and hand-stitched linen suits left to moulder on hangers, the fine china and crystal all smashed and covered in dust.

The world, what's left of it, is yours. You can have everything or nothing. Somewhere out there, it all waits for you, the trappings of a life now lost.

Myself? I'd be picking my way through the rubble of my beloved Rose City toward Hawthorne Street, where the remnants of The Perfume House would await me. It might be the end of the world, but at least I would smell great. Seriously -- they'd have almost everything I could want. L'Artisans, Guerlains, Chanels, Goutals, and more. Resting in beautiful rows for me to make a day of before some sad fate befell me as well. I like to think, even in my most shell shocked, I'd still find beauty in things: a sunrise, a fresh apple, a supple leather, a beautiful perfume.

In the midst of perfect ruin, what perfume do you search for? What scent would you acquire now that all the perfume in the world is yours for the taking but no one else will ever appreciate?

Answer below to enter! Winner will receive a copy of my October 2011 Mix CD, also known as "Music For Monster Lovers, Vol. 4," some fun Halloween themed goodies and a $15 gift certificate to Indiescents!

Comment by Monday, October 31, 2011 11:59 PM PST! Open to U.S. and International readers.

_______________
FN1. My David is really tired of having conversations that begin with "If you died..." or, alternately, "If I died...." or, literally, "When a bioterrorist/supergerm zombie apocalypse descends..." I have been told on more than one occasion to stop asking questions about our potential deaths. Also, he actually put together a zombie preparedness kit in the closet to make me feel more secure. Moral of the story? I am super wacky, and he is super tolerant.

The Reeking Stench of Bitterness (aka Scents for When I am All Bad Moody)

2011-10-23T13:55:00.000-07:00

Get that AWAY FROM ME!

There are some days when I wake up, get dressed, trundle over to my perfume cabinet and shudder in horror at the thought of wearing some of my truly beloved scents.

Why?

I overslept, my hair is wet, I don't have a stitch of make-up on, and my general attitude is that the world at large should just be glad I got out of bed and participated today. In other words, I am feeling, if you'll pardon the expression, like hammered shit, and there is no way I feel bold and sassy enough for a dose of Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Chypre, or beautiful enough for my tiny vial of Robert Piguet Fracas parfum, or thin enough for a hit of vintage Caron Tabac Blond, or sexy enough for my roller of DSH Perfumes Erotica.

Everything I pick up is like that quote from High Fidelity: "The thing I really learned from the Charlie Debacle is that you gotta punch your weight. Charlie was out of my class: too pretty, too smart, too witty, too much." There are days when a lot of my favorite scents are, quite frankly, too pretty, too bold, too sexy, too classy -- too much. I can't face them. I want to go back to bed and only strength of will and a desire not to get canned in the worst economy in a century make me do otherwise.

On these days, it can be very hard to find a fragrance and you definitely do not want to be testing anything, because the anxiety of trying something beautiful in an awful mood and hating it is deeply depressing in its own right. To that end, here are some thoughts on scenting your way through the dark down days.

~ Don't be afraid to be a coward. ~

A lot of people will tell you try new scents, look for inspiration, challenge yourself to rise above it and find the invigorating meat of life that will help you turn your mood around. To these folks I say, SHUT IT. In the immortal words of Winona Ryder in Heathers, "If you were happy every day of your life, you wouldn't be a person. You'd be a game show host." You're not doing yourself or any hard working perfumer a favor if the stream of cursing running through your mind as you spritz on a new scent is filth of the order most frequently uttered by eight-year-old boys who have just acquired a naughty vocab and are out of their parents' earshot. Run, don't walk, from challenging material. Be a coward today; it's cool. We all do it sometimes.

In bad moods people tend to: eat their favorite foods, wear their snuggly pajamas, watch their favorite movies. We seek, in a word, comfort. The unknown is not comforting. Because I'm not talking about ennui here; that's a different problem. FN1. I'm talking about a black mood, Sally, and not one born of the cumulative circumstances in a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, which might be overcome by a good ending a beautiful scent might provide because you're open to such a possibility. I'm talking about waking up on the wrong side of the bed and knowing the day will suck because you are in the mood to refuse any argument to the contrary.

On such a day, wear something you have absolutely no complaint about. If you have always and will ever after, Amen, loved Guerlain Shalimar or can’t get enough of Channel No. 5 EDT, bust that baby out. If you're ready to bite the heads off everyone, don't let a challenging scent get in the way.

This is my FIGHT FACE!

~ Wear a scent you already unconditionally love even if it is common, bad, or otherwise embarrassing. ~

Yes! Embrace the known, the overworn, the possibly common and mundane. If you have a big bottle of Estee Lauder White Linen or Ceasar Woman lurking in the back of the closet because you like them and don't care if other people think they are overworn or smell cheap or just all around suck in general, bring it out into the light. Have a brief, torrid, public love affair with banality! Love your bottle of GAP So Pink! with all your heart. You were already in the mood to tell the world “Screw You!” for the sake of it; you might as well wear a scent that might give you the opportunity.

~ Wear a scent that others find boring. ~

Yep. You've all got one. I know you do. You've got a scent you love but other people think smells like a dryer sheet, or you think smells like winter and noses in the knowes think of as white noise. Normally your friends notice and comment on the olfactory beauty in your wake, or hug you and say, "You smell wonderful, (sigh) as always," and then grill you on your recent scent choices. Perhaps on another day you might not want to admit that next to that $300 bottle of LE L'Artisan lurks a bottle of Paris Hilton Fairy Dust, but I say now is the hour of your reckoning! Get down with that reject scent; you're already feeling rejected and full of bile. Spray it all over and then if someone frowns at you, wave your arms wildly, spreading your averageness around like an obscuring cloud of scent underachievement.

~ Wear a scent that flies a little under the radar. ~

I have some very lovely scents that wear close to the skin and, unless you actually get closer than eight inches to me, you would never know they were there. FN2. These are the scents I am most likely to turn to when my mood is more rotten than a crab apple full of worms. Not because there is anything shameful or embarrassing or boring or wrong with them. Simply because the only statement I am hoping to make today is one to myself, a small reminder that despite the general bitterness eating at me these long hours, tomorrow will be better.

Must remember:
Not a workplace
appropriate response!

In these moods, I really like green scents. I like to use DSH Perfumes Hemlock or a little Miller et Bertaux No. 3 Green, Green, Green, Green to help assuage my ill temperament, though the latter is almost too large sillage-wise for this mood. Big sillage means attracting attention, and in this mood, I want no such thing. I know on these days I can be hard to deal with; no need to inflict that on anyone but myself. FN3. I need to purchase JoAnne Bassett's Night Queen, not because it isn't beautiful or glorious on me, but because I think I would find it equally silver-lining inspiring.

Another scent I find really comforting is Demeter Fragrance Library Salt Air, which has a harsh edge to it and isn't super low sillage, but doesn't necessarily smell perfumey, and therefore is unnoticed by everyone but me. There is something about being able to put my headphones on with the volume cranked and close my eyes and give my wrist a little sniff and pretend for a few minutes I am not trapped at work but instead barreling down the highway along the coast with the windows down that makes me feel a tiny bit better.

You know what else is comforting? Foodie scents. L'Artisan Bois Farine, aka the infamous "bread hologram" is really comforting and moderate to low sillage in smallish doses. Another scent that makes me feel better on a bad day is Olympic Orchids Carolina, which smells like banana bread and is similar to Washington Tremlett Royal Heroes 1805, but better smelling and better priced.

And last, but not least, I always feel it's best to smell like a cocktail when I really, really want one. To that end, I have the terrific Memoire Liquide Champagne et Mure #900 and Frapin 1270 EDP to make me feel boozy, but without the drunken rambling over-truthfulness I’m prone to in my tipsy moments.

What about you dear reader? What do you wear when you have a black day? Tell me below to enter a monthly mix drawing , this one my much overdue August 2011 draw. August 2011 Mix CD, which is a mix mostly of which what I was listening to in August, some new, some old, all awesome. Winner will also recieve a $15 gift certificate to their choice of Demeter Fragrance Library or The Perfumed Court, a few decants, and possibly a post card and other goodies.

Comment by Friday October 28, 2011 12:01AM PST to enter!

At least one more draw this week, so stay tuned.
_____________________
FN1. See video here for explanation.
FN2. Too close, you fool! I'm in the mood to ax-murder a body! NEVER GET THAT CLOSE IN THESE CIRCUMSTANCES! I could snap your poor self in half with nothing more than my jaws of viciousness on such an occasion.
FN3. And my lovely and long-suffering husband, who gets the backwash of my bad moody days by virtue of living with me, sadly.

I said, Doctor, is there nothing I can take?

2011-10-10T20:54:00.000-07:00

Perfume Challenge Week 38: Monday, 10/3/11 to Friday, 10/7/11

This week I bring you five scents from Amanda at Esscentual Alchemy Natural Perfumery, a line of scents that are 100% natural with modest sillage and longevity. She describes her line as follows:

When I create a perfume I do so intentionally. Being mindful of putting myself in a positive and loving, and uplifting emotional place. So that the perfume is positive, loving and uplifting emotionally as well. Each one blessed with good thoughts and wishes for the wearer.

Good thoughts and wishes? Sign me up.

First up, Queen of Punk - The Queen of Punk is a dirty girl. A dirty, dirty girl. Notes: Civet, Tobacco, Patchouli, Amber, Cognac, Rose, Coffee, Linden Blossom, Bitter Orange, Black Pepper, Mimosa.

In my life, I've known two kinds of punk girls. I've known fairly butch punk girls and I've known these surprisingly feminine punk girls who would smile sweetly at you while the ripped the nose ring right out of your face. Queen of punck belongs to the latter. Queen of Punk is a surprisingly light 'dirty' scent. I get a healthy dose of fat wet patchouli leaves in the opening, but they are not too heavy, which makes this scent a nice surprise in the world of patchouli scents, which tend use a heavier patchouli. The civet is subtle, blending seamlessly with the cognac and coffee. I don't get a lot of the floral aspects beyond the linden blossom, and the black pepper kicks me in the nose like an aftertaste. A very pretty, decidedly feminine scent for such typically heavy notes, which is indivicative of how well made it is. 3.5 of 5 nods.

Mint Ginger Truffle - Chocolate Mint Ginger asks you to drizzle on some Chocolate Mint, and then later sniff again, and you've found the Ginger Center! Mmm...a little scented truffle for your nose. Notes: Chocolate, Mint, Ginger.

A very light gourmand, just insanely light for the spunky mixture of notes. The chocolate is faint and powdery on me, putting the mint and ginger to the fore. The ginger is tangy, as though you were sucking on fresh ginger root shavings. The mint provides a freshness to the scent without making it all about the mint or reading as some terrible mint-flavored gum or syrup mess. If you like desserts that aren't overly sweet or foodie and tend toward the fresh or spicy, I recommend this. 3 of 5 nods.

Lumberjack Man - This sultry cologne combines smoky tobacco, leathery labdanum, musky agarwood, sensual ylang ylang, spicy ginger, fresh lime, bitter wormwood, savory saffron, zesty black pepper, warm and floral rosewood, blend into a rich, and warm, yet crisp cologne, that is loved by both men and women. Notes: Tobacco, Labdanum, Agarwood, Ylang ylang, Ginger, Lime, Wormwood, Saffron, Black Pepper, Rosewood.

Dear reader, if I said Lumberjack smelled like a lumbar yard, would you think I was wimping out on you? It does though. And also vaguely of Home Depot, but minus the chemical fertilizer smell. In other words, if you like wood scents, you'll like this. Lumberjack is a strong, spicy wood with strong ladbanum aspects, it reminds me of what I would expect the Log Lady in Twin Peaks to smell like when she's chewing her pitch gum. 3 of 5 nods.

Autumn Spice - Woody myrrh, sweet sandalwood, earthy patchouli, the sweet spices of cinnamon and nutmeg, freshly floral lavender, the rich citrus of a blood orange, and the sparkle of bergamot are all arranged in this perfume with a delicate touch. Notes: Myrrh, Sandalwood, Patchouli, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Lavender, Blood Orange, Bergamot.

Autumn Spices wears on me like a comforting friend. Mostly showing up as a sandalwood and spice blend, it has manages to be autumnal without feeling like a rehashing of the 'holiday' scented candles you find everywhere this time of year. One of the ways Autumn Spice manages is this is by using an unexpected base. Instead of going to the old autmunal stand-bys of heavy woods, smokey tobaccos, or sweet vanillas, it flourishes in a lavender and bergamot base, giving the scent an unexpected undercoating that reminds me of the scent of old books. If fall to you means back to school and late nights in a library cramming for tests and researching papers while drinkking gallons of herbal tea, this will smell *exactly* like those memories. 4 of 5 nods.

Fun fact: Autumn Spices is worn by Camryn Manheim, star of The Practice, a show demonstrating some heinously unscrupulous lawyering in thepursuit of roller coaster dramatic storytelling. I watched it for the latter, and still cringe at the memory of the former. Manheim is really talented and terrific in The Practice as Ellenor Frutt, though. She was also on The L Word and is now back on law t.v. in Harry's Law. I heart her.

Lime in the Coconut - This lime and coconut perfume might make you hungry...This smells like a delectable cream pie, and everytime I smell it, it makes me hungry first, and then makes me want to bake pies! Notes: Key Lime Hydrosol, Toasted Coconut Tincture, Lime essential oil

"You put the lime in the coconut, and drink'em both together, put the lime in the coconut, and then you feel better..." Sorry, had to get that out there. Love the song (even have the t-shirt), love the scent. A wonderful and realistic lime with a warm gently sweet coconut base. What is so impressive is that I've tried coconut heavy scents and lime heavy scents and this is the most realist scent I've never had. It's a unique and interesting blend of notes I've ever encountered in scent. My only wish is that the sillage was larger, but I could definitely wear it in my scent sensitive workplace, so if you need light scents, this is a great one. 4.5 of 5 nods.

She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up
Put the lime in the coconut, she called the doctor, woke him up, and said
Doctor, ain't there nothin' I can take, I said
Doctor, to relieve this bellyache, I said
Doctor, ain't there nothin' I can take, I said
Doctor, to relieve this bellyache
~ "Coconut," Harry Nilsson

Scents generously provided by the perfumer. Images from Esscentual Alchemy except for the t-shirt, which is from Zeusandhera thanks to Creative Commons.

Winners! Bellyflowers Botanical Perfumes ambre alchemé & JoAnne Bassett's Enchant

2011-10-09T23:40:00.000-07:00

Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Or in our case, pretty perfumes! Thanks to all who entered and stay tuned, more drawings coming soon.

Winner of JoAnne Bassett Perfumes' 1/4oz French flacon of Enchant Parfum and a mix CD made by yours truly is...

BELLATRIX!

Winner of Bellyflowers Botanical Perfumes' 15 ml sprayer of the eau de parfum of ambre alchemé and a mix CD made by yours truly is...

HJ!

Also, Candice, you won sample of EnVoyage Perfumes L’Emblem Rouge and a mini spray flacon of L’Eau de Emblem Rouge, the accompanying hydrosol spray, as well as a special CD made by me.

All winners please email feminine(dot)things @ gmail.com with your address!

Recommended Viewing: Missrepresentation

2011-10-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

Miss Representation 8 min. Trailer 8/23/11 from Miss Representation on Vimeo.

I have so many things to say about this...but they will have to wait .

For now, let me just say -- everyone should watch it.

Also, this is only part of the reason I am THRILLED to support Bitch Media. Thrilled!

Brave New Scents: JoAnne Bassett's Enchant

2011-10-01T00:51:00.001-07:00

A Natural Perfumers Guild Project

One of the two scents I am reviewing today for the Natural Perfumers Guild's Brave New Scents Project comes from JoAnne Bassett Perfumes. JoAnne wrote a lovely and reflective piece about her scent, which explained her process for creating the perfume. Enchant largely came together around the quote from Brave New World the project press release features:

I want God: holy basil, oud, champaca.
I want poetry: osmanthus.
I want danger: vetiver, patchouli.
I want freedom: orange essences, yuzu.
I want goodness: rose, jasmine.
I want sin: ambrette seed.

Other notes include: sandalwood, davana, pink pepper tree, high altitude lavender, galbanum, vanilla tincture. The scent is "resting in organic jojoba."

So what does a combination of God, poetry, danger, freedom, goodness, and sin smell like?

Earthy and mossy, supple and strange, gentle and delicate, Enchant is a complex and beautiful scent. It is so...complicated. On me, there is an opening flood of basil, champaca, yuzu, and a sweet patchouli. The scent unfolds delightfully over time, but is difficult to pigeonhole within mainstream perfume labels. JoAnne herself wrote, "I am not sure what to classify this new perfume. Such diverse oils - from oud to incense to a floral gourmand. It is a temptress." I have to agree. It is sweet, it is green, it is warm, it is rooted, and yet it also has a fragile quality about it. It reminds me in some way of the beautiful smell of decaying fir needles, after the greenness of the fir aspect has settled behind the sweetness of transition. What I find enchanting is that, where other scents might be these things in turn, JoAnne has made a scent that is somehow all of them at once, and simply....works.

JoAnne talks a lot about feeling the scent began with and was rooted in a kind of olfactory sacred space. I see that in this scent. When I smell Enchant, I think about the strength it takes to do yoga or Tai Chi. These kinds of movement, when done correctly, seem to flow effortlessly from one position to the next in an artful cascade of grounding and connected energy.
However, if you're like me, you know that trying to do yoga or Tai Chi is really, really hard. It takes strength. It takes practice. It takes patience. You have to really listen to your body, understand what it is trying to tell you, and connect with a sense of inner calm and peace that on most days is elusive. It looks easy, but it is deceptive because learning to access that kind of bodily knowledge takes years of serious effort.

This scent has all the strength and sense of purpose that kind of movement. When it is done correctly, it seems effortlessly in its execution. So does Enchant. At first sniff, you might find yourself impressed by the tender quality of the rose, the smoothness of the vetiver, the airiness of the orange essences. Sniff again, and you see the strength, the focus, the energy hidden beneath the surface, guiding the endeavor with purpose and intention.

A beautiful scent, and not like anything else I've tried. A parfum oil, it lasts for hours. At one point, I went to sleep with it on and found it still lingering eight hours later. If you're feeling bored with the things you've been smelling, I'd suggest trying Enchant.

And speaking of trying, JoAnne has graciously offered up a 1/4 oz French flacon of Enchant Parfum to one lucky reader! Winner will also get a specially made mixed Cd based on the theme of Huxley's Brave New World. Please post here by 12:01 AM Friday, October 7, 2011 PST and tell me what scents you associate with the sacred or divine?

For more wonderful scents and reviews, see the list of participating perfumers and bloggers in the Brave New Scents Project here:
_____________________________

~ Brave New Scents ~
The Perfumers:
Rohanna Goodwin Smith of Ascent Natural Perfumes
Anya McCoy of Anya's Garden
Jane Cate of Wing & a Prayer Perfumes
Elise Pearlstine of Bellyflowers Botanical Perfumes
Christi Meshell of Matriarch
JoAnne Bassett of JoAnne Bassett Perfumes
Adam Gottshalk of Lord's Jester
Liz Cook of One Seed Perfume
Ambrosia Jones of Perfume by Nature
Charna Ethier of Providence Perfume

The Bloggers:
All I Am A Redhead
Ca Fleure Bon (several writers here will be reviewing all the submissions)
Perfume Critic
Perfume Shrine
The Examiner

Yoga Image from Yoga Tours Worldwide.

Brave New Scents: Bellyflowers Botanical Perfumes ambre alchemé

2011-10-01T00:51:00.000-07:00

A Natural Perfumers Guild Project

Remember how I was talking about trying to live by the axiom of doing one thing, everyday, that scares me? Doing these events is always a little scary. The perfumes involved work very hard on their craft, and they take their work seriously. For many of them, its not just something they are committed to as a form of expressing sometimes profound beauty in an often challenging and ugly world, but it also their livelihood.

When someone created something and puts it out on the world, that's an act of bravery. For those of you who don't know how these projects work, let me tell you now that it often involves having someone you've never met put something they have created in your care. For me, this sometimes comes from a perfumer I've never experienced before. To be asked to sit in judgment of a creative endeavor intended to reside within the marketplace, and to be one of the first of a handful of people to do so, is a real and serious responsibility. It requires a lot of things, but mostly I think it requires openness and honesty. To put it bluntly, I am always touched by their trust in my judgment, and I do my best not to frack it up.

The second scent I am reviewing today for the Natural Perfumers Guild's Brave New Scents Project comes from Elise Pearlstine's Bellyflowers Botanical Perfumes. Ambre alchemé is my first scent from Bellyflower, and Elise describes in her brief as follows:

Ambre alchemé is a sheer, golden floral with a sweet musky base. It takes its name from the old term for ambergris, ambre gris and from alchemy. Alchemy is an ancient practice harking back to distillation and early chemistry. The top notes of ambre alchemé are slightly sharp and lifting but mellow together to lift directly out of the bottle with a lovely mellow green scent. They transition to and left the heart note of golden boronia and aglaia blended with jasmine. Slight touches of black curreant absolute and wild rose keep the florals just a bit earthy and spicy. The perfume is anchored by ambergris absolute in a tincture. Ambergris is an ancient scented essence and is generally infused in oil or tinctured in alcohol. The absolute is solvent extracted using a two stage phytonic extraction which greatly concentrates the armoatic components of the raw materials. Ambergris is paired with two kinds of sandalwood, Vanuatu and Australian. The base is sweeted and extended with orris root and honey.

Top notes: Essential oils of Lime essence, Green Pepper, White Cognac, and Tagetes.
Middle notes: Absolutes of Aglaia, Boronia, Black Currant Bud, Wild Rose, and Jasmine Grandiflorum.
Base notes: Opoponax absolute, Orris Root CO2, Australian Sandalwood essential oil, Vanuatu Sandalwood essential oil, Honey absolute and Ambergris absolute tincture.

Proof that beauty can be found
in the most unexpected places...

This is a terrific scent. If JoAnne Bassett's Enchant is a calming and peaceful scent you want to mediate with, then ambre alchemé is a scent full of vigor and pep. Immediately on application, the scent is full of green pepper but it blends quickly into the middle notes.

Jasmine is wonderful and clearly the heart of the scent, but for me, the beauty is all about the base! I am simply gaga for the ambergris in this, which let me tell you, is not something I ever thought I would say, and a big score in my book for using the natural ambergris scent instead of the synthetic substitute.

The base here is so...dirty! Really! It's one of those scents that makes me think someone will smell it on me and then give me a quirked eyebrow and a thrilled "Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr." For the entire first hour of my first application, I kept sniffing at my wrist and grinning manically, as though I alone were enjoying a deliciously bawdy joke.

The top is, as advertised, slightly sharp on me, and I get a strong black currant note from the middle for the first half hour or so before it softens into the background a bit. For all those foodie notes, the base takes this far away from foodie in my book and lands it delightfully in a spices and edible florals area. If you put a dish in front of me and this scent steamed up, I'd anticipate an exotic and rich taste. It's a plush scent. I mean that in the way that velvet is plush; the scent smells the way a sensual textured fabric feels pressed between your fingers. If you brought a newly discovered plant to me smelling of ambre alchemé and brushed the petals of its bloom against my lips and cheek, I'd expect it to be a lush and tingling caress.

I'm going to warn you right now -- this scent isn't going to be for everyone. Neko Case has a line in a song off her Blacklisted album that talks of being "[s]afe from all the horrors in your stinging velvet arms." Stinging velvet arms is a good way to describe ambre alchemé. It is not a scent that would go gently into a good night. On me it has moderate sillage and lasts a long time (eight hours+). I would describe it as a daring scent, a bold scent. It would work for anyone bold enough to try it -- male, female, animal, vegetable, or mineral. It's a strange scent, though, and you may find it challenging if you pick it up thinking you're getting a traditional floral.

Luckily for me, I'm not much of a traditionalist.

Elise has also generously offered up a a 15 ml sprayer of the eau de parfum of ambre alchemé to one lucky reader, and I'm throwing in a copy my Brave New World-inspired mixed CD. Please post here by 12:01 AM Friday, October 7, 2011 PST and tell me what scents do associate with your sense of touch? What smells to you like touching velvet or silk, linen or leather? Since this is a hard one, alternately, tell me what new tv/music/film I'm missing.

For more wonderful scents and reviews, see the list of participating perfumers and bloggers in the Brave New Scents Project here:

_____________________________

~ Brave New Scents ~
The Perfumers:
Rohanna Goodwin Smith of Ascent Natural Perfumes
Anya McCoy of Anya's Garden
Jane Cate of Wing & a Prayer Perfumes
Elise Pearlstine of Bellyflowers Botanical Perfumes
Christi Meshell of Matriarch
JoAnne Bassett of JoAnne Bassett Perfumes
Adam Gottshalk of Lord's Jester
Liz Cook of One Seed Perfume
Ambrosia Jones of Perfume by Nature
Charna Ethier of Providence Perfume

The Bloggers:
All I Am A Redhead
Ca Fleure Bon (several writers here will be reviewing all the submissions)
Perfume Critic
Perfume Shrine
The Examiner

Photo of Ambergris from Gordon M. Grant/The New York Times.

Brave New Scents: A Natural Perfumers Guild Project

2011-10-01T00:38:00.000-07:00

"O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world!
That has such people in it!"
~ Miranda in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I

"I want God, I want poetry,
I want danger, I want freedom,
I want goodness, I want sin."
~ Adlus Huxley's Brave New World

A few months ago I was approached by the Natural Perfumers Guild and asked if I wanted to participate in a perfume project focused on the theme of "Brave New Scents," a play on themes from Aldus Huxley's frequently banned novel, Brave New World. FN1.

Intrigued, I did what I always do when someone asks if I want to try something new and it doesn't involve (a) heights (b) drowning (c) car accidents. FN2.

I said yes.

When I got the amazing package in the mail, I read through the materials with interest. The Vision of the project, as stated in the press release, is as follows:

The new avalanche of glorious aromatics, including the ones we create ourselves, deserve acknowledgement as perfume materials as the Outlaw Perfumers create Brave New Scents. The Outlaw Perfumers of the Natural Perfumers Guild are staking out more aromatic territory, moving into the 21st Century with an attitude of conquering new frontiers. The Guild perfumers are focusing on capturing the beauty of aromatics introduced after the year 2000, or that have been made available to us via the Internet after 2000, or that we created ourselves.

In the Brave New Scents project, the Guild perfumers are likened to the members of Huxley’s novel. Like the starring characters in the novel, these brave new perfumers go against the grain and out of bounds, thwarting the ever-expanding regulatory nanny state in order to showcase aromatic extraction feats and use 21st Century aromatics that are not necessarily condoned in mainstream perfume society.

That is some fiery language, people. The phrase "ever-explanding regulatory nanny state" has more political hot buttons in it than I can shake a tree branch at.

I will, instead, talk about Brave New World in the context of something I love though -- music. Yes, that's right, your intrepid sniffa has a mix for every theme, including this one. A song that didn't make the list, though, and I wish it had now, is Baz Luhrmann's "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)."

What isn't common knowledge is that the text was written in 1997 by a Chiacgo Tribune columnist, Mary Schmich, entitled "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young."

I cannot tell you how much this advice has served me in intervening years. I think of these words all.the.time. Seriously. All the time. A few things, in fact, I thought about this week are:

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements. FN3.
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday. FN4.
You are not as fat as you imagine. FN5.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. FN6.
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. FN7.
Do one thing every day that scares you. FN8.

These are some axioms I try to live by. On another day, this could have been a different list from the piece, but the list has turned out to be exceptionally useful for a young woman more or less making her way through the world on her own.

I remember driving, at one point, in a rental car across the west Texas desert as the sun was setting heading for Santa Fe, New Mexico to check out a college I'd been admitted. I had the windows rolled down and this song playing loudly, nothing but the still wind, my loud voice, the broad earth and empty sky. It was one of those moments when getting the hell out of dodge seemed like something I could actually reach out and touch. It was a moment pregnant with possibility. I'd decided on a whim to go. I'd taken off after work with only the barest of notice to my roommates, and no word at all to any authority figure.

I was twenty-one. I was on my own. I was about to decide which one of the new and exotic colleges I'd been accepted to would be my new home. I could do what I wanted, go where I wanted, be who I wanted. After years of pain and fear and loss...

...I was free.

Freedom is a scary and threatening thing. In the absence of rules, you have to learn to make your own. You draw your own lines in the sands of time around who you are and who you will be. You have to decide which lines you'll let shift, and which ones your stand firm on. You have to choose what you truly value, how you will spend this one life. Will you wear sunscreen? Will you dance, will you sing?

I reread Brave New World in anticipation of this project. It has a lot of complicated imagery, a lot of mixed messages. You could come away from it with a lot of different thoughts about what is and is not appropriate, what values are or are not necessary to a free or brave or civilized world.

For me: I choose, poetry, freedom, goodness, sin. I choose art and light and adventure. I choose love and laughter and even sometimes pain and sadness, because I don't want to be numb to the suffering of others.

I choose the fullness of life.

And with that in mind I bring you the two scents from the Brave New Scents Project.

"In spite of their sadness -- because of it, even; for their sadness was the symptom of their love for one another -- the three young men were happy."
~ Aldus Huxley's Brave New World

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~ Brave New Scents ~
The Perfumers:
Rohanna Goodwin Smith of Ascent Natural Perfumes
Anya McCoy of Anya's Garden
Jane Cate of Wing & a Prayer Perfumes
Elise Pearlstine of Bellyflowers Botanical Perfumes
Christi Meshell of Matriarch
JoAnne Bassett of JoAnne Bassett Perfumes
Adam Gottshalk of Lord's Jester
Liz Cook of One Seed Perfume
Ambrosia Jones of Perfume by Nature
Charna Ethier of Providence Perfume

The Bloggers:
All I Am A Redhead
Ca Fleure Bon (several writers here will be reviewing all the submissions)
Perfume Critic
Perfume Shrine
The Examiner

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FN1. My three phobias. The worst way I can imagine dying? Driving off a bridge into open water. Makes road tripping with me along the PCH super fun for David, let me tell you. We can only drive north, with me in the passenger seat. I'm working on the heights issue, but it's slow going. It's not so much that I am trying to overcome it as that I'm trying to determine the exact contours of my fear. Glass bottom helicopter tour? Yes. Plane turbulence? No. Rollercoaster? Yes. Ferris Wheel? No. The experimentation continues...

FN2. Today is the last day of Banned Book week. Remember to give someone you love your favorite banned book or donate a copy to a local library.

FN3. Done.
FN4. This is one of my anti-"freak out" mantras.
FN5. Oh, body image issues, I loathe you.
FN6. I need to do more of this.
FN7. Another anti-"freak out" mantra.
FN8. I try, very hard, to do this. Next up? Sensory deprivation float. Why? Groupon.