Brown paper packages, tied up with string....

Dear reader:

Because I owe you a full post, but it may take until this next weekend to get it to you, I offer the following brief reflections, links, and photos to tide you over.

Flowers from my yard next to a painting
I own on my desk at work... FN1.

On watering the lawn...

I watered the law for the first time last week. I don't mean this lawn, or a lawn of my own. I mean I haven't lived in a house for more than a few weeks since I was a little girl, and even back then yard work was done by people other than me (i.e. my brother) because I had a lot of the indoor chores and nursing responsibilities. So this is the first time in my life that I can remember deliberately turning on a hose and watering a lawn. It was late afternoon/early evening. I stood in the shadow of the house with my thumb pressed over the end of the nozzle.

 As the water hit the parched grass and tree roots and bark, I smelt their thirst. Is that a weird thing to say? Maybe. True, though. I smelt the relief of the earth and the way the dirt turned from dust back into something more, the water and the wetness and the life. It was a visceral scent experience that left me feeling more aware of the space around me, and I thought, "I have to tell someone." I wanted to say it was sweet, or earthy, or green, but it was and wasn't those things, the sum of the parts being more than their individual pieces summed up in some neat cosmic column. It made me love and marvel at the Earth can manage without and often in spite of us. We should take better care of it.

On random acts of kindess....

So tired....

A few days ago I stood sobbing in one of the worst neighborhoods in Portland next to my broken car, trying to figure out who I could call to help me. In my despair, I hardly noticed as a car pulled up next to me. This is a reflection of my general unhingedness, as I am usually hyper-aware of stranger danger and the like.

A nice little old man got out and helped me, even offering to follow me to his cousin's auto repair place if I needed. I declined since I was very far from my house and couldn't figure out how to get home without having to take a very expensive taxi during rush hour. He told me to be careful and drove away.

Thank goodness for the goodness in the world. Sometimes it is the only thing you can keep faith in.

On aquatics...

I normally hate what passes for an aquatic scent, but it has been so hot here (breaking 100 degrees!) and I have been dessssperate. Luckily for me, I have been the recipient of some of the based water inspired scents I've ever been lucky enough to try, so get ready for a little something-something about that soon.

On books...

This last week and weekend I was mostly housebound outside of work, and while I spent the bulk of my time working, working, working on putting the house together, I also read three books. All three were terrific, so I thought I'd tell you all about them really briefly.

I read the second installation of Veronica Roth's series, Insurgent. For fans of The Hunger Games (Happy DVD release!), I think you'd enjoy the adventures and inner struggles of the heroine, Tris. I think the books are tightly written and fast paced. High on my list of recommended YA dystopian reading.

Speaking of dystopia (so hot right now!), I also read Lauren Oliver's Delirium. Oliver's writing has a lyrical quality to it that is beautiful, lush, and majestic. It made me want to visit Portland, Maine (or "the other Portland," as we call it) to see how much the fiction and the reality overlapped. It is a beautiful book, and I'm excited to see where the second in the series, Pandemonium takes the story.

So many books...and we
took over ten boxed to Powells.
We're book hoarders!

Last, I finally sat down and read John Green's The Fault in Our Stars. And by sat down and read it, I mean I literally sat down on the couch and read the entire thing in one sitting. I couldn't put it down. It was the most entertaining, hilarious serious book about cancer I think you could ever read. I still can't get over the all the ways it shouldn't work but magically does. It deserves all the intensely high praise it gets; I bet I read it again within the year. It's a very dense book; lots of big ideas compressed into throw away lines of funny dialogue. I cannot imagine how much work it took.  Truly an accomplishment of the writer that so much is done with such a conservation of language.

Thanks to Hillary K. for demanding I read it, and then coming home from Europe, so I would finally get around to it.

Okay readers. That's all the news that is fit to print for now, I'm afraid. I'll be back soon though.

_________________
FN1. To clarify, sometimes when I say "my," I mean, "I possess the bundle of rights pertaining to said object," not as in "I created that."  "My" sometimes (most often, in fact, in colloquial speech) implies ,"I have the rights to said object or property, including the right to transfer, lease, sell, destroy, or keep said objection."

And that's your law & linguistics lesson of the day.

David just told me to stop feeding the trolls, so I'm done now.

A Love Letter to the Perfume Community

Dear reader:

A few days ago, I got the loveliest email from a complete stranger. Someone who reads this blog saw that I was having a hard time and reached out to me, just to say, "You don't know me, but I see you. I'm here. I care. You matter."

I cannot tell you, dear reader, how much it meant to me, how much you mean to me. Life is so hard sometimes, so fragile and unclear and confusing, and self-doubt has got to be one of the most opportunistic predators ever conceived. But there is so much to love about life, any life, even my currently dissatisfying life, that I have to tell you how much I appreciate that you all come back here and read me.

I know a lot of dark things happen in the recessed corners of this series of tubes, but good, glorious things happen there, too. Years ago, when I was back on livejournal, I read and was read by a lovely woman who lived somewhere among the Atlantic states. She was a librarian, and though I never saw a photo of her, she remains a truly beautiful woman in my mind. Through a strange series of events, she gave me a few things -- among them a powder blue ultra suede trench coat and The Magnetic Fields box set, 69 Love Songs. She will never know how much of an influence she had on me, but I can tell you that one of the happiest, best photos from my honeymoon features that coat, and a song from the box set was the song my husband and I danced to at our wedding. This beautiful, wonderful stranger gave these gifts, and I cherished them and wove them into the very fabric of my life. She will always be there, a bright mysterious thread glowing in the pattern of that time, one that reappears each time I think of those days and cherish them anew.

Perfume has been like that, too. I know  that I do not have the most exacting nose or most in depth knowledge of perfumery's history.  I cannot speak French, and I fundamentally do not get chemistry. All I have to offer you is one woman's impressions of the things she smells, sometimes without a lot of skill.

I cannot tell you how much I love having this place to tell you about perfume and my relationship with scent, about all the ways I weird other people out by sniffing at myself or following women who don't speak to me around the office, trying to identify their perfume like a crazy scent stalker. I have been reading Alyssa Harad's Coming to My Senses, and tonight I was reading a section  where Alyssa talks about winning a Perfume Posse drawing and getting a package from March at Perfume Posse. She described the feeling as though she'd gotten a package from a movie star. And it reminded me how, when I had only just started buying samples and trying to learn perfume, I won a drawing on Perfume Posse. 


 Now I am not a winner often in life; anyone who knows me will tell you that. But I won big time, to the tune of a 1ml sample of the top twenty-five perfumes of 2008 as voted by Perfume Posse readers. I was so broke back then, just a poor little 2L with a fifteen-hour-a-week job. Twenty-five samples? A fortune! That they represented the collective wisdom of the Posse tribe? Unspeakably cool. It was like someone giving me not only a treasure map, but the actual treasure besides.  I remember the day the package came, sitting on the couch in our old apartment, holding the small vials in my fingers with tears in my eyes thinking how immeasurably lucky I was.

And last week, when I got an email from one of you, I felt that way again.

I love doing drawings here, for a lot of reasons. I don't have the giant collection a lot of other people do, don't have the vintage scents or classics or rares, but one of the things that makes me happiest is making the mixes and decanting samples and sending them out to you. If anything, I feel like I'm doing my small part to pass along the kindness the Posse once showed me, and that I have received over and over again from other bloggers who also do drawings. When I won the bottle of ALoF's What We Do In Paris Is Secret from Now Smell This!, I felt that gratitude and wonder all over again.

One of my more embarrassing moments in college involves me being very late to a final presentation in a course, so late that I had missed my allotted presentation slot.  This was roughly the equivalent of missing the final, as the presentation was twenty percent of my grade.  I was slated first and a full fifteen minutes late when I finally sprinted into the building and down the stairs, taking them three at a time. My professor was standing the hall outside the classroom, and my first thought when I saw him from the stairs was, "Oh my gods, he's waiting for me. He is so irate he is actually standing out there waiting for me."

 Then he looked up and I realized from the curious expression on his face that he was pacing out of boredom.  In a series of seconds that felt, then and now, like hours, I realized he was killing time because the class was doing their end of course evaluations, and he wasn't allowed to be in the room. When I realized I hadn't missed my spot because he'd decided to do the evals at the beginning of class, my relief was so great that I burst out, completely out of context: "I love you! I love you! I love you!" To this day, I can still picture the bewildered look on his face as I ran beet-faced past him into the room.

I know this man fairly well now; we go out to dinner once or twice a year to catch up. We've never spoken about that day. Whether he had planned to do the evals at the beginning of class all along, or whether he did it to buy me additional time, I suppose I'll never know. Perhaps he doesn't even remember it. But I do. And not just because it was embarrassing. (So embarrassing!) I'll remember because it was one of those moments when a random act of kindness seemed so unexpectedly necessary and perfect that all I could think was "I love you." What I meant was, "Thank you. I am struggling so much right now, and I desperately needed someone to see that and help me, just a little. Thank you for your sensitivity, your kindness, your willingness to be a person and acknowledge my frailty and not make a thing of it, but to accommodate me all the same.  I see the goodness in you, and I love that you acted from that best place in yourself."

I wasn't going to write to you tonight, dear reader. I have a migraine so bad my teeth are throbbing, but when I read that part of Alyssa's book about the drawing, it triggered this flood in me. I thought of March and Patty and that first drawing, of the delighted grateful email I got today from someone who had received their package from me, of all the tiny vials of scent in carefully curated packages we all send each other every day, U.S. postal restrictions be damned, and I could see in my mind this swirling mass of colorful goodwill flowing between us, tying us all together, and I couldn't help myself. I had to sit down and write to you, right now, to say this:

I love you, each and every one of you lovely, lovely people, all out there living your perfumed lives. I may never meet you or know you, but you matter to me. I am grateful for every poorly spelled, typo riddled post you've sloughed through, every comment you've left, every scent you've recommended, or post you've written yourself somewhere for me to find and read and relish. You restore my faith in people, my hope for the future, my confidence in my own life.  In a world with more than its share of the rotten, you are the good eggs and you smell as sweet and lovely as your open hearts.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Good night.

Diana

A litany of Saturday happy.... AND A WINNER!

 

Because I have been such a Debbie Downer lately, I decided to show a few photos of the hap-hap-happy happenings in my life while I announce the EnVoyage Perfumes Go Ask Alice sample (plus more samples, 2 mix CDs, the latest issue of Bitch magazine, and MORE!) drawing winner.

I had this delightful birthday pastry last weekend on my birthday trip to the Columbia Gorge (see above -- so pretty!).  The writing is in chocolate, and it made for an interesting counterpoint against the tart lemon.  It made me wonder if someone has made a lemon chocolate perfume, and if so, where I could find it.

I received this awesome t-shirt from my friends Becca and Steven.  Steven is the co-president of the University of Washington's Med Students for Choice.  This is their shirt this year, and despite my lack of MD, I get one anyway!  I am very proud of Steven for all the lobbying work that has been done by his group in Washington state.

While many state legislatures are currently working on bills hostile to reproductive rights, Washington House Reps passed HB 2330, which would require costs for abortions to be covered by any insurance plan (or purchased by any plan purchaser) who also provided maternity coverage. Sadly, the bill never made it to the floor of the Washington Senate before it expired, but I am hopeful it will be revived during the ongoing state budget talks.  As someone who had to terminate a life-threatening pregnancy shortly after I got married, I can tell you that having insurance coverage for that procedure as well as the two days I spent in the hospital and the follow-up care I needed was critical to David and I financially.  We would still be crippled with the cost of my emergency care today had it not been covered by my plan.

Okay sorry -- back to the happy!

Speaking of happy, if you never saw the tragically short lived Aaron Sorkin-penned TV show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, you should know it is available on Netflix.  And now also at my house, thanks to my friend LillieMae. I also got a copy of John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, which I am excited to read.  Hillary K., I look forward  to talking about it with you!

 These next two items were purchased by yours truly but I'm including them because they are perfumey and because they came to me a wonderful way. Also, to quote Serendipity, "I always appreciate my own thoughtfulness."

The first is my first scent from the lovely Mandy Aftel at Aftelier Perfumes, the lovely and incredible Fig.  A proper review is forthcoming, but let me say that I adore this scent, and was happy to let it waft me into happy sleep last night. Also, how cute is that packaging?  For realsies.  It's adorable. I am now so excited to try more of her scents.

The second item, also a fig scent (apparently I'm in the throes of a fig run, or something?) is a frankly huge partial bottle of Marc Jacobs Fig. It's a completely different fig than Mandy's, and from any other fig I own.  Nice, though, and acquired at an excellent price from Vanessa at Bonkers About Perfume. Vanessa has got to be the queen of packing and shipping, for nary a drop was spilt on the bottles long journey to me. Her recommendations on the use of bubble wrap for swapping are tried and true. Again, full recommendation pending, but so far, I am one satisfied fig loving customer.

I obtained both these figgy delights from a great little event on Scents of Self, called the Smell Good, Do Good sale. I had no idea the event was happening, but happened to be fortuitously on twitter on my vacay (because David and I have *wildly* differing sleep schedules and I was bored), which still has a handful of items left from the looks of it.  I have at least one other item coming from the sale, all proceeds of which go to benefit  Refuge, a British domestic violence charity that provides safe houses for women and children escaping domestic violence. so for m birthday, I got to help domestic violence survivors in need and get pretty perfume. The sale was a great idea and huge success, and I am pleased to have been able to buy things from it.

Speaking of awesome cause-related birthday gifts, I also received a $25 gift card for Kiva. For those of you unfamiliar, Kiva is

[A] non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Leveraging the internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions, Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help create opportunity around the world. 

Thanks to my gift, I am helping a woman in El Salvador support herself and her family through her small agricultural operation. I also made a personal donation to help a woman in Samoa continuing her food business of three years.  I am pleased to say the latter woman now has a full funded loan from people all over the world. I am really happy to be among them.

If you've never tried Kiva or microlending, but have always been curious, then now is definitely the time. Thanks to generosity of Reid Hoffman (Kiva board member, founder of LinkedIn & co-author of recently released The Startup of You), Kiva has a limited time offer where you can lend $25 to the organization or individual of your choice at NO COST TO YOU. Seriously.  At no cost to you, you can become a lender to hardworking individuals and groups seeking self-sufficiency. When the loan is repaid, you will be able to lend it again, over and over.  Over time, your $25 donation may help people all over the world have a better life.

Can you imagine a better way to spend $25?

So while I'm in the giving mood, let's announce our winner!
_________________________________________

RANDOMIZER SAYS....
_________________________________________
List Randomizer

There were 9 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

1. karen!
2. Cymbaline
3. Maureen
4. solace
5. Elisa
6. Doc Elly
7. Christy
8. lawgoddess
9. Ines

Timestamp: 2012-03-18 01:25:48 UTC

CONGRATS TO KAREN! Please email  feminine(dot)things @ gmail(dot)com.  Thanks to everyone who entered.  Don't worry -- I'm doing another drawing next week in honor of the release of The Hunger Games. The incredibly great early reviews of the film and the awesome book it is based on means that next Friday cannot come fast enough!

See you at The Capitol.

Favorite coupledoms in Movies/TV/Books

Dear reader,

Do you know what a 'shipper is? It's someone who gets super into relationships in pop culture and feels very strongly about the fates and futures of said relationships. I, dear reader, am a shipper. I'm not hardcore, per se. I don't write fanfiction to create alternate universes where my couples get together. I don't wear 'TEAM' t-shirts. But I do strongly identify with a fictional relationship occasionally and root for that relationship.

So in honor of it being Valentine's week, and because I am feeling especially sappy this year, here is a list of a few of my favorite 'ships from movies, books, and television, along with a (sometimes unconventional) song for them and a scent or two.

~~~

1. Debi Newberry & Martin Blank, Grosse Pointe Blank

You know the story. "Spring of '96. Two young lovers with frightening natural chemistry. A girl sits in a seven hundred dollar prom dress on the front steps of her house, waiting for the most romantic moment of her young life. Boy never shows up. Not until now." Debi and Martin are wonderful because they lead us to believe those that loved us once, and loved us best, might still love us again. Even in an ugly callous cynical and sarcastic world like the one of Grosse Pointe Blank, love conquers all -- in fully-automatic style.

Martin: "I'm sorry if I fucked up your life."
Debi: "It's not over yet."

Song: Peter Gabriel, "Let My Love Open the Door (To Your Heart);" Neko Case, "This Tornado Loves You"
Perfume: I always think of Debi (half) ironically wearing CK Obsession to the reunion. Is that weird? Martin does have obsessive recurring dreams about her... Martin doesn't wear anything. Someone might smell him coming.

~~~

2. Jane Eyre & Edward Fairfax Rochester, Jane Eyre

Now and forever, Jane and Edward will stand out in my mind as two sad and broken people who find each other and, despite great obstacles of circumstance and social convention, rebel against everything in defense of their love for one another. Is their relationship problematic? Sure. Could I forgive Edward if I were Jane? I don't know. I only know that when she hears his name on the wind, she goes to him, and I am glad she does.

Songs: Depeche Mode, "Somebody," The Decemberists, "Hazards of Love"
Perfume: For Jane, Guerlain Mitsouko; For Rochester, Guerlain Habit Rouge.

~~~

3. Nora Grey & Patch Cipriano, Hush, Hush series

I wasn't sure how I felt about Patch initially. He ran hot/cold and was often mean, way meaner than Daniel was to Luce in Fallen. It's hard to resist roguish, though. Is it wrong when I mentally picture Patch, he's basically Jess Mariano? But, you know, more of a '50s tough, and angelic. I like that Nora doesn't always trust him and isn't always willing to listen. I like that she makes her own decisions. Over the course of the series, Nora grows into one of the bravest female protagonists I've found in YA today. I'm excited to see how the series resolves.

Songs: Lou Reed, "This Magic Moment;" The Smiths "There is a Light That Never Goes Out"
Perfume: Patch is supposed to smell like "mint and earth," so I'm tossing CB I Hate Perfume Black March onto the list, but I admit I also associate Il Profumo Patchouli Noir with Patch and Nora.

~~~

4. Ethan Wate & Lena Duchannes, Beautiful Creatures

Ethan & Lena - you want to talk about two kids who will break your heart? Here they are. The most wonderful thing about this series is that the stories are told from Ethan's perspective, and he's the devoted and wounded one most of the time. Lena is confused, wild, willful, and non-conformist. And even when they're apart, their love is strong enough it could reconfigure time and space, even tear the world in two.

Songs: The Band Perry, "Walk Me Down the Middle;" Alison Brown, "Every Day I Write the Book;" The White Stripes, "Sugar Never Tasted So Good"
Perfume: Lena's scent, rosemary and lemons, which always makes me think of Miller Harris Fleurs de Bois, because it's meant to be a warm weather scent and it is always hot in Gatlin.

~~~

5. Bella Swan & Jacob Black, Twilight

Yeah, yeah, Edward is forever, he and Bella are both eternal sparkly diamond parents. Call me a heretic, but to me the more interesting relationship isn't the first person you love who screws you over, abandons you, and breaks your heart. It's the person who comes after them. The person that says "Yes, I see how broken and messed up you are. That's okay. I'll love you, anyway." That's the person who restores my faith in humanity, my hope for a better love tomorrow. You know that Garth Brook's song, "Unanswered Prayers"? I love that song. Because Charlie is right - sometimes you have to love what's good for you. Or at least, here in the non-sparkly world, you should.

Songs: Soltero, "The Moment You Said Yes;" Linda Ronstadt, "When Will I Be Loved;" Natasha Bedingfield, "Pocket Full of Sunshine"
Perfume: I always think Bella must smell like food since people want to eat her, but if we focus on the non-blood drinkable parts of Bella (Are there any?), then I want to give her and Jacob a warm, sunny scent reflective of their warmth and Bella's desert origins, like Tauer Perfumes L'Air du Desert Marocain or  Olympic Orchids Arizona. (Too on the nose?)

~~~

6. The Doctor & Rose Tyler, Doctor Who

They traveled through time and space, exploring both together and saving the world.  They literally bent (and sometimes broke) the laws of the universe to find one another even when it seemed. Their isn't just a love for the ages, it is a love for all ages, all times, all dimensions. He's her mad man in a blue box; she's his Bad Wolf. Enough said.

Songs: Lykke Li, "Unrequited Love;" David Bowie, "Modern Love;" Beatles, "Here, There, and Everywhere"
Perfume: I want to put Rose in something excellent like By Kilian Back to Black, but she's probably wearing Burberry Brit with those overalls. And I can't scent the Doctor, but I  know Esscentual Alchemy Natural Perfumes has taken a delightful stab with Time Lord, found here.

~~~

7. Elena Gilbert and Stefan Salvatore, The CW's The Vampire Diaries

I know, I know. Believe me. Damon and Elena means more Damon, and who couldn't use more of that?  Damon is so hot sometimes I think my eyeballs will literally melt out of my head. But when it comes to Elena, I'm going to have to say that she was a healthier, happier person with Stefan, and Stefan was a less Ripper/slightly more broody version of himself. They love each other and they're better for and with each other. We're all going to have to deal with that.

(Which leaves Damon conveniently available....right?)

Songs: Fiona Apple, "Slow Like Honey;"  Feist, "1-2-3-4;" Iron & Wine, "Such Great Heights"
Perfume: Elena is so innocent, but I can't help but imagine her running around Mystic Falls in Agent Provocateur. Okay, maybe she only wears that only when she starts running around in one of those ridiculous Founder's event ballgowns.  The rest of the time she probably rocks something like Prada Infusion d'Iris. Stefan probably wears something youthful and full of denial, like Davidoff Cool Water or Thierry Mugler Angel AMen. (And I like to imagine Damon wearing Bvlgari Black, and his songs for Elena have to be Chris Issak's "Wicked Game" and Ok Go's "A Million Ways to be Cruel".)

~~~

8. Logan Echolls & Veronica Mars, Veronica Mars

Oh, Veronica and Logan. How I love to want to kill both of you for being stupid.  If ever two people were a disaster of epic love proportions, it is you two. You hurt each other over and over, and yet there is not a moment after the kiss on the balcony that I cannot see you together. It just seems cataclysmically meant to be.

Logan: "I thought our story was epic, you know? You and me."
Veronica: "Epic how?"
Logan: "Spanning years and continents. Lives ruined and blood shed. Epic!"
Veronica: "Come on. Ruined lives? Bloodshed? You really think a relationship should be that hard?"
Logan: "No one writes songs about the ones that come easy."

Songs: Mike Doughty, "I Hear the Bells;" Blair, "Hearts;" The Be Good Tanyas, "In Spite of All the Damage I've Done"
Perfume: Veronica wears Jovan White Musk (Okay, this is a cheat KBell wears it herself, and I can't not think that when I mentally sniff her.) For Logan, something warm and sexy and not necessarily traditional - Costume National 21 or CB/Alan Cumming's 2nd Cumming.

~~~

9. Buffy Summers & Angel, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer

One girl in all the world... and one vampire redeemed find love against all odds. It's written in the stars by the Powers that Be.  Some day, hopefully in the not so distant future, she will stop carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. And when she does, the monster she made a man will be waiting. (I mentally retcon the Angel/Cordelia fiasco. When it comes to Angel and Buffy, there can be only one.)

Angel: "You still my girl?"
Buffy: "Always."

Songs: Urge Overkill, "Girl You'll Be a Woman Soon;" Bat for Lashes "Siren Song;" Tom Petty, "Angel Dream (No. 2)"
Perfume: Serge Luten Bois de Violette, which I cannot justify. I don't even know where Buffy would come by such a thing. I just feel like she would. Or maybe Atelier Grand Neroli? Sweet and not necessarily innocent or fragile, but hopeful nonetheless, particularly in those early seasons.

~~~

10. Sydney Bristow & Michael Vaughan, Alias

In the first three seasons of this show, their love was so amazing and palpable and yet played with such restraint and subtly that I could not get enough of it. There is this scene from the first season that completely sold me on this relationship. Sydney is having an awful time.  She calls Vaughan and they meet on a pier pretending not to be together.  Overcome, Sydney starts sobbing, and you can just tell it is killing Vaughan he can't hurt her or help her or make it better.  Then Sydney reaches out and takes his hand, even though she's not supposed to and its dangerous and stupid and could blow her cover and get them both killed, because she cannot help herself. Even though  she can't even look back at him, and it doesn't matter because...he's her anchor.  He's the thing that keeps her in that moment from giving up.  From that moment on you just know somewhere deep inside, no matter what happens, they'll find their way back to one another.

Songs: Peggy Lee & Benny Goodman, "All I Need Is You"; Beatles, "I've Just Seen a Face;" Robin Thicke, "When I Get You Alone"
Perfume: Sydney might where a lot of different scents with her costumes, but she strikes me as a classic sort of girl -- Chanel No. 5 or Worth Je Reviens, maybe? Something that screams classic and elegant and refined, but not too noticeable - a great cover for the dangerous, adventure-loving spy in us all.

I have a tough time scenting Michael Vartan because I feel like, having spent a huge portion of his formative years in France, he'd have some strong personal preferences.  Vaughan, on the other hand, probably wears something very work-a-day government handler, like Old Spice. Boring, conventional, reliable, but also...attractive.

~~~

That's my list.  What couples for you 'ship, dear reader? I see Titanic is being re-released in 3D soon.  Who wants to tell me what they think Jack or Rose would wear?  Wish I'd done Tara & Willow from Buffy instead? Any Luke Danes/Lorelai Gilmore fans out there? What about Wash & Zoe from Firefly? Or Brian Kinney & Justin Taylor from Queer as Folk? (I will never forget that dance scene.) 

Inquiring 'shippy minds want to know.

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

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.

Summertime, and the living is easy…

Summer Thoughts, Perfumey and Not

So it’s summer, actual summer, here in Portland. I can tell because I keep seeing the sun. So since I love seasons and enjoy celebrating them, I was thinking it was time I talk to you about the scents I’m loving for the two months a year the temperature rises above 69 degrees here in Puddletown. So here it is, perfumey thoughts and not, for your warmer weather living.

Bands/Artists I can't get enough of: Still stuck on Neko Case, Florence and the Machine, and Fitz and the Tantrums. Also The xx, Claudine Longet, Julee Cruise, Feist, Midtown Dickens, Mountain Goats “All Eternals Deck,” Lady GaGa,  Alison Krauss and Union Station "Paper Airplane."

Surprise Go To Scent this Summer: By Kilian Love. So super sweet you’d think the hot weather would make me run the other direction, but I keep putting it on.

Houses I need to try more of: Hermes (still), Annick Goutal (still), Sonoma Scent Studio, Aftelier Perfumes.


Scent I wanted for a long time and finally purchased: Tauer Perfumes L'Air du Desert Marocain.

On the "soon to be purchased" short list: Miller et Bertaux no. 3: Green, green, green and green (still); L'Artisan L’Eau de Jatamansi (it’s been discontinued, and I need to grab it before it’s gone); Honore des Pres I Love Les Carottes (thanks Sam!), Washington Tremlett Royal Heroes 1805 (in time for fall!), slumberhouse Mur (so great!).

If I had a million dollars: I’d just buy every one of the Tauer Perfumes scents. Every. Single. One.

Happiest stumbled upon scent love of Summer: Three way tie: slumberhouse Mur, Olympic Orchids Carolina, DSH Spring Moss. I keep going back to all three.

Best newly discovered indie perfumer: Loving slumberhouse, aroma M, and JoAnne Bassett Perfumes.

Notes I’m weirdly over right now: fruits and leathers. Just not feeling summer to me.

Notes I can’t get enough of: patchouli (I bought the patch bunny set – wow!), vegetables, SUPER gourmands, anything earthy. If you’ve got recommendations in this area, please provide them.

Summer, in general and my life in specific: All winter I kept longing for the lengthy days of summer. Now that they are here, my self-discipline has gone to absolute crap. I’m trying really hard to keep going but all I seem to want to do is sleep. I think because I live on campus, I can’t get out of the mode that “summer” is the time to goof off, while Fall and Spring are for buckling down and actually working.

Also, I’ve been recently stymied by the announcement that Borders is going out of business. I write and edit in a lot of places, but Borders has been my go to off and on for years. In fact, I frequented my local Borders so often all the employees knew me by name. I was wandering through the Young Adult section the other day, and I met a girl there. She was probably no more than fourteen, and still stuck in that place where her body is straddling childhood and adulthood. With tears in her eyes, she turned to me and said, “I can’t believe they’re closing. Where am I going to go now?” She hugged her book to her chest and looked so lost.

Alas, poor Borders,
I knew them well...

Bookstores are not dying, necessarily, but their number is greatly reducing, to everyone’s detriment. The last bookstore in Laredo, Texas, a town with over a half million residents, closed over a year ago. Borders closing means another 400 bookstores will leave the world.

In 1989, Ray Oldenburg coined the concept of the “third place” in his book The Great Good Place. The idea is that a person’s home is their first place, their work/school location their second place, and that the “third place” is a physical space that helps define individual identity with the a community and communal identity as a whole. Oldenburg outlined the following criteria:

• free or inexpensive
• food and drink, while not essential, are important
• highly accessible/proximate for many (walking/short driving distance)
• involve regulars – those who habitually congregate there
• welcoming and comfortable
• both new and old friends should be found there

Community centers, coffee shops, and local bars can function as third places. But for youth, who frequently do not have the organizational structures to reserve community center space and who cannot get into bars. We all know that real community centers, where they existed at all, are barely hanging on in the face of massive cuts to social programs due to economic downturn. The same goes for libraries. Schools frequently try to fill this space after normal school hours, but often does not truly meet community needs, especially for young people for whom it functions more as a work environment.

Malls and bookstores have become centers for young people to congregate, eat, hang out, and socialize, often without the threats of violence or criminal activity or the barriers that tend to outline space as being only for adults. I feel like every time a large bookstore goes under – one that provides hang space, cheap food, meet study groups, free wireless, and opportunities for meeting up in safe, clean spaces – it makes me sad, particularly for geeky kids who may find their solace in books and among other bookish kids. As one of those kids who lived in books, the girl in the bookstore got to me, because I couldn’t think of where to tell her to go. Truthfully, I spend a lot of time in bookstores still.

So I guess I feel sad, too.

"Your daddy's rich and your mamma's good lookin'.
So, hush little baby don't you cry."
~ Ira and George Gershwin from Porgy and Bess, but my favorite version is Ella Fitzgerald's, seen below:

Perfumes: The Guide, A Reflection and A Drawing

In 2008, when  began my journey into Perfumania, a little book came out called Perfumes: The Guide. Like so many young perfumistas with no idea where to start, I took the book like a bible, letting it lead me in my quest through the perfume wilds. I was so crazy about the book, I actually ended up with two copies. I carefully read reviews, getting samples of the scents considered the best by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez. I put little coded notes to myself in the margins. Check marks for things I’d tried. Check pluses for scents I really loved and might want to own. Check minuses for scents I didn’t enjoy. After about three weeks, I felt like a huge failure. Luca and Tania loved scents I hated and hated scents I loved. I felt like I had the worst scent taste in the world.

So I talked to my perfume mentor, Angela, who shook her head sadly at me. Then she told me all the things you tell someone new to perfume: personal taste has a tremendous amount to do with taste; price point has nothing to do with quality; the more you smell the better your nose gets; like what you like and to hell with everyone else – you’re the one who has to wear it.

So I did what she told me. I put the book on my book shelf and let my perfumey wanderings take me wherever it went, like dandelion seeds in the wind. Now, three years have passed. I have tried many, many scents. Some wonderful. Some terrible. Some completely unmemorable.

This morning, I got out my copy of Perfumes: The Guide down from its shelf. I went through, page by page, marking off the scents I’ve tried since that May so long ago. As I did, I noticed several things about their approach I didn’t notice a perfume newb, and also several things about my own exploration that are worth noting:

• I’m shocked by their complete and utter confidence that what they are smelling is what everyone else will smell. I find that to be rarely true. Some similarity, sure, but never this emphatic certainty.
• I still haven’t tried enough Chanels and Serge Lutens.
• There are really not enough independent perfumers in this book.
• When I first started out, I strongly avoided any complex scents I couldn’t immediately peg as something familiar. I loved roses and vanillas. I hated things like chypres, vetivers, and florientals. Now I tend toward more complex scents.
• It’s really pleasing not to be able to flip more than one or two pages without marking off scents I’d tried.
• I find Luca Turin’s desire to insult perfumers far less entertaining or charming now that I know how hard it is too make perfume, especially good perfume.

All that said, I think the book is actually more useful to me now than it was when I thought I needed it. I no longer feel limited by the opinions given, and I find the descriptions somewhat useful in finding scents of certain notes or styles I’d like to try. So to that end, I’m holding a drawing for my still pristine and completely unused extra copy of the book.

Anyone who wants a copy of the original hardback edition of Perfumes: The Guide, despite its flaws, and accepting of the various, but limited, ways it can guide you, post here by Friday, July 1, 2011, 12:00 AM PST. 

I’d love to see it go to a good home, where someone else can use it to assist you in all your perfumey wanderings.

Things are not the same it seems as in such tender dreams...

Last night David and I got into a protracted discussion over the virtues and vices of box bookstores while watching “You’ve Got Mail” on cable and this lead me to google about my very most favorite bookstore in all the world – the Bookstop on W. Alabama in Houston.

That is how I discovered that my beloved Bookstop, which since 1982 housed in the shell of a 1930s Art Deco movie theatre the most extensive book and magazine collection I’d ever seen until I moved to Portland and visited Powells, is gone.

Forever.

On September 15 of this year, the doors closed without my knowing it.

This is how life breaks your heart, over and over. I cannot tell you the number of school days I skipped to drive an hour downtown to visit this bookstore after one of my boyfriends took me there on a first date. I remember that night we went there, just before we went to see “Priscilla: Queen of the Desert,” which was the first time I was exposed to queer culture or drag culture in a sympathetic light. As someone who was already aware of my own confusion about my bisexuality, seeing the film was an important moment for me. The boyfriend didn’t last long, but the Bookstop! That Bookstop was one of my top five favorite places in the world! The first time my husband visited me and met my family and friends, I took him there, and I remember that his enjoyment of it endeared him to me all over again. The one and only time I took my brother skipping school with me, we had breakfast at that Bookstop, before we went on to go ice skating at the Galleria. I discovered two of my very favorite books of poetry at the Bookstop. That Bookstop was the first time I discovered that Vogue did different versions all over Europe and that not all models were skinny or pretty in the same ways that Americans expect them to be. I loved, I just loved, that bookstore. I got my college prep books there. I got my first travel books there. I dreamed there.

And I can never visit it again.

The theatre is still there. It now houses a non-profit that runs an annual film festival in Houston. But the thing that was so special about it, to me, was that it was a beautiful old building repurposed into a portal that took me places, first metaphorically, and later, literally. The Bookstop on W. Alabama was the place that made me think I wanted to be a historic preservationist (a profession I considered seriously enough that I applied and was accepted to a graduate program before I ever considered law school). A profoundly important place in my life, a formative place, is gone now.

No review today. Instead, dear readers, I’d like you to think of a place you really enjoy. It could be a book store, a restaurant, a little gallery, or any place that is special to you. Think about what makes it special to you and, if you’d like, tell me why in the comments section. And if you can, go for a visit. You never know when your own Bookstop will disappear.

To love is just a word
I've heard when things are being said.
Stories my poor head has told me.
Cannot stand the cold
And in between what might have been
and what has come to pass
A misbegotten guess alas
and bits of broken glass.

Where do your golden rainbows end?
Why is this song I sing so sad?
Dreaming the dreams I dream. my friend.
Loving the love I love to love.
- "Long Ago & Far Away," James Taylor

It's all over and I'm standing pretty in this dust that was a city.

This post lovingly dedicated to Dr. Kristi Williams and the late Dr. Dorothy Berkson, two women who taught me the joy and the value of reading the works of the wonderful and audacious women writers who came before us, and to Judy Blume, whose many challenged books gave me, as a little girl, characters to guide me in my growth as a woman.


Because it is Banned Books Week, and as a writer/blogger I am also an avid reader, I wanted to take a moment to point out that written words are ideas expressed in a format that can be shared with others, and that to love freedom means to recognize that ideas, as ideas, are not in and of themselves, dangerous.

When we refuse to face, as a human race, the thoughts we’ve been persuaded by in the past – sometimes with unspeakable results – we refuse to learn from our own failings. When we are too scared by that which we don’t know, that which is foreign or alien to us, to confront it, we limit not only what we might be ourselves, but frequently fail to see the humanity in others. Lastly, consideration of a thing and being or doing it are not the same; by considering the plight of others we, in turn, may avoid entering darkness ourselves.

To that end, I give you the top 100 most frequently challenged and banned “classics.” I have highlighted those I’ve read and put a little plus mark by those that were enjoyable and/or thought-provoking. Now that school for me is, as Alice Cooper so musically put it, out.for.ever! I am endeavoring to read all the rest of them. I hope you will join me.

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald+
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger+
3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee+
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
9. 1984 by George Orwell+
10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
13. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White+
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne+
23. Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston+
24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison+
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac+
32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway+
33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf+
35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
37. The World According to Garp by John Irving
38. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
39. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
41. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton+
43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand+
44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf+
47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
48. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess+
50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin+ (My favorite on the list!)
51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
52. Howards End by E. M. Forster
53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
57. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald+
63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
66. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
68. Light in August by William Faulkner
69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
72. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams+
73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
85. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
87. The Bostonians by Henry James
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather+
90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
93. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie


Also, in honor of those who fight censorship in all forms, I give you the 2001 Clear Channel memorandum of "lyrically questionable" songs, which includes Louie Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World, "Peter, Paul, and Mary's "Blowin' in the Wind, and of course, a personal fav, Nena's "99 Luft Balloons."

Enjoy!

99 Decision Street.
99 ministers meet.
To worry, worry, super-scurry.
Call the troops out in a hurry.
This is what we've waited for.
This is it boys, this is war.
The president is on the line
As 99 red balloons go by.