Steerage

“Ladies and Gentlemen, we’d like to welcome you aboard  Delta flight number XXXX, from Los Angeles to Atlanta. We have a full flight today, and, since we expect this flight to be a hot and smelly fucking nightmare, let us suggest that if you have any medications such as Xanax, Valium or Ativan with you, take them now. And feel free to see the Flight Attendants if you have any left over.’

‘We would like to encourage those of you currently boarding to move your fat asses along as quickly as possible, so we can fill this flight to our Boeing 757-200’s ideal cattle-car capacity. For those of you holding up the line by attempting to jam a large suitcase into the overhead bin, let us join your fellow passengers in the sincere hope that your luggage is filled with bed bugs which will infest your home upon your return.’

‘Currently, we are number 157 in line for takeoff. We wish those of you with connections to make in Atlanta the very best.  Now, please direct your attention to the tiny screen in front of you, where the Chairman and CEO of Delta Airlines is making a completely bogus and utterly laughable attempt to tell you how wonderful flying with Delta really is.’

‘Flight Attendants are currently passing throughout the cabin with applications for the American Express Delta Skymiles credit card. We expect that you will use it frequently, believing that we will actually redeem your points with free tickets and upgrades. Hah! Suckas!”

Cartoon image from cartoonstock.com, via Google Images. Image may be subject to copyright.

Book Review: "Coming To My Senses" by Alyssa Harad

Don’t we all just love to pretend we’re sooooo unique?

I’m not.

As I read through Alyssa Harad’s “Coming To My Senses” over the holiday weekend, I was struck, time and time again, by our close trajectories.  For both of us, the exploration of perfume has led to a deeper and much longer-lasting knowledge of what a sensual life is and what femininity is. An understanding, like a gift. 

Harad says that, prior to perfume, she was a “Birkenstock-wearing feminist.” I wasn’t exactly that, but there was a lot I’d lost sight of over time. She was unsure about life after grad school; I had seen both my parents through their last days and badly needed some joy. She stumbled across her first perfume blog by accident. I was taking calls at a consumer-oriented radio talk show and heard that you could buy deeply discounted perfumes on the internet. I googled a name, several blogs appeared, and down the rabbit hole I went.

After that it should all be quite familiar to those of us who are already perfumistas or fans or obsessives or whatever label you’d like to use. Here are the Big Blogs — NST and PST; BdJ and Perfume Posse. Looking around the room I see March, and Victoria and Marina and Ida — hi, y’all! And I’m guessing about the perfumes she’s discussing: is that Chergui? Lonestar Memories? Avignon? Here is the culture on perfume on the internet: the abbreviations, the swapping, the gifts, the decant sellers and splits pages; “the Perfumista Black Market.” 

One of her early discoveries concerns the reaction of friends when you tell them you’ve become deeply interested in perfume. “Perfume? Really?” And that quizzical look, the one that says, “Should I start being disappointed in you now?”

Since Coco Chanel, the mainstream perfume industry has ridden fashion like a remora rides a shark.  Recent converts to perfume are forced to pay for this with shame. Shame at collecting much more than you’ll ever use. Shame at the frivolity and the expense. Shame at your unseemly attraction. Almost no one, Harad points out, looks at a wine, book or art collection this way. 

Perfume wears close to the  psyche. This beautifully written book is a story of a life reclaimed, a maturity attained by making peace with femininity and with traditions of an earlier time. More than that, it’s a guide to bravery: enough to insist on a little glamour. Here’s how the beauty of the fragrance you’re wearing sinks in and becomes, well, you. Here’s how this little habit, which you might have once scoffed at, changes everything.

“It didn’t stop with smells,” she says near the end. “Flavors had a new clarity and complexity. I invented new recipes with familiar ingredients and sought out spices and fruits I’d never tasted. I paused to enjoy the silky cool of the flour between my fingers….The world had more color and more contrast.”

It does for me, too. 

Full disclosure time: “Coming To My Senses” was sent to me by the publisher for review.

Available in all the usual places. The ISBN is 978-0-670-02361-5.

Photo by Pat Hall Borow. All rights reserved.

RamiFictation

Pretty soon, it will be “OlfactaRama’s” fourth birthday. 

When I started, I didn’t think anybody would ever read it. I was a newbie and wrote as one, and made mistakes, and learned some things, and became part of a great community. Nobody can be a newbie for four years, though. So for the last couple, I’ve just been an enthusiast.

When I started the blog, I was obsessed. It seemed as though I just couldn’t learn enough about the subject. I devoted a significant part of each day to reading all the other perfume blogs I could find, and the fora, and the books. My perfume collection grew and grew, as I learned how to buy fragrance the smart way, how to identify a bargain, win an auction, how to do splits and swaps and decants. Ultimately I had to get a new cabinet as the collection outgrew a smaller one, then dresser-top space, then all of the above plus shoe boxes and drawers. That cabinet is full now.

All obsessions end. 

“OlfactaRama” is what I guess I’d call a personal experience blog. That’s why I’ve always written it first-person. It’s not informational — God knows there are several perfume blogs who do that better than I ever could — although there is information in it. It’s not a perfume review site, although I’ve done them. It’s not p.r. or stealth marketing. I’ve never made a cent from it, although I have received a few books and a few handfuls of samples and some truly mind-blowing gifts from readers. It’s not about trends —I could hardly care less. I guess it’s been a way of communicating with the like-minded, and exploring something I love. I’ve made some great pals, too, and plan to keep them.

But I look back at my roughly 275 posts, and even I can see that the level of enthusiasm in them has waned. It’s not because perfumes are less interesting than they used to be (although many are). There are enough niche perfumers and artisans and vintage finds and the occasional interesting mainstream release to keep a perfume reviewer going indefinitely. It’s not because there are more perfume bloggers than ever before (although there are). It’s that I’ve said what I want to say, and I feel like keeping on just for the sake of keeping on would be, well, jumping the shark.

I’m not going to disappear from the perfume blogosphere, though. I’ll be around, commenting and contributing to fora and so on. 

So, to all of you who have read me and commented and entered my drawings and sent me samples and decants and even bottles — thank you so much! I’ll always be astounded by the generosity of the perfume community.

For four years now, I’ve made and kept a weekly deadline. I think not having the pressure of that deadline will free me to keep playing around with my oils and absolutes, trying perfumes that interest me, and especially to keep delving into the general olfactory and sensory world. I’m keeping the domain name, for that reason. The “Rama” part of “OlfactaRama” is a take on “Cinerama” — the early wide-view movie projection system.

 I see from my stats that many readers are subscribers now, so don’t take me off your feeds — I’ll use the name to write about a more general aesthetic: smell, taste, books, art, life. 

Photo by Pat Hall Borow.

The photo is of my empty Un Jardin Sur Le Nil (Hermes; perfumer: Jean-Claude Ellena) bottle. It was the first full bottle I bought online after becoming a fragrance blogger. I finished it a couple of months ago.