Time in a Bottle

 
If I could save time in a bottle

The first thing that I'd like to do

Is to save every day
'Til eternity passes away

Just to spend them with you

- Jim Croce
Time in a Bottle


sung to the same song ...
If I could have sex in a bottle

our marketing leads to the same thing of course
promises, promises, promises

Arpege taglines: promise her anything ... but give her Arpege

or

No bottles to break – just hearts!


Illustration: Perfume Bridge Lura Astor

Hombre means Man, Man oh Man

ambergris

Star Date September 2011
somewhere known as California the Golden State

Mid-sleep, the sense of smelling ambergris



message from the whales
a nice feeling
I layer it with fragrance when I awake

Check out Scentual Antiquities ambergris click here 


painting of Sperm Whale Scarred Giant by Chris Harman

olfactory diagnosis may become mainstream

Say ahhhhhh
let's smell your breath,
your skin, your eliminations, your toes

Healers, midwives, medical professionals
have long documented the use of smell in pre-diagnosis

Why Ida Meister, working in the fields of oncology and neuroscience, loves her amygdala click here

I've heard doctors speak of smelling ketones on the breath of diabetics ...

"... early stages of basal-cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer, can be detected by analysing the odour of a person’s skin using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry ....

Dr. Buszewski is now tweaking his device so that it works with the bio-marker profiles of a range of diseases.

If he can do this successfully, olfactory diagnosis could become mainstream without a wagging tail in sight."

read here - Olfactory Diagnostics: Smelling Bad
   The Economist 28 August 2008   click here

photo: Greenman Lura Astor

Sniffer Rats and Tuberculosis Detection

More on sniffer hero rats-

this time detecting tuberculosis
a disease still with us

Only 50% of the patients with TB are diagnosed. 

Left untreated, a person with active TB can infect 10-15 new people each year.

click here

sniffer rats sniffing landmines click here

Hey Men from Boys in a Bottle

Check it out

scent bomb bombykol

Scent bombykol
is the sex pheromone
secreted by female silkworm moths
when sexually available
and it gets the male silkworms
doing the flutter dance

"It is smell, therefore, that guides the Moths, that gives them information at a distance".

click here for a great article and pictures

photo: bombyx mandarina Reanimator86

chili smoke singe

smell of autumnal

roadside chile roasters

spinning smoked scent

singes nostrils and memory

When in New Mexico, thinking

"a chile is a chile"

is just  ha ha ha ha ha ha

Happy Autumnal Equinox!

photo: Yellow Leaves Lura Astor 

botanical poisoners

Dr. Anderson    We drank, and Price just fell to the floor.

Bergerac     What made you think it was, uh, poison?

Dr. Anderson    Well that’s the funny thing … the smell … 

Coroner Dr. Rodgers    What we have here is common old garden poisoning … in this case we have an intelligent adult, a respected financier, a pillar of society here on Jersey, dying from the poison … hemlock …. Grows in marshes and ditches. Looks like sickly cow parsley.

Dr. Anderson     The effect of hemlock is instantaneous. It must have been administered by someone at the ceremony.

Dr. Rodgers     It must be 150 years since someone was last murdered with hemlock. Jersey has its very own Lucretia Borgia!

-from Bergerac/Poison February 1987 

Don't just put it in your mouth - some plants look alike but one is poison. 

- Advice from the 1970's, learning to harvest free plant edibles growing wild in cities and countrysides.

Remember recipes from Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons ... cattail pollen flour and more?

 


Wicked Plants: Botanical Rogues & Assassins

through 30 October 2011
San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers

click here

 

The dose makes the poison -Paracelsus

color

The color alone seemed a form of wealth.

The landscape was gentle, and the deep green grass made me feel mellower:

to have seen this was to have discovered a part of this poor country in which people lived in contentment, with space and a mild climate.

- Paul Theroux The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas 1979

photo: Big Sun Lura Astor

ahhh the smell of sulfur - thus all the fart jokes in the world?

I prefer matches, thank you. I love the smell of sulfur.

- from The Two Jakes 1990 Paramount Pictures, Richard Farnsworth, Jack Nicholson

Check Out

primordial soup makes smelly lab

and down the hall they complain

more on sulfur      vi-eggra? men get sulfur?

sulfur - last of the series

green aria - the reviews are in

Stewart Matthew collaborates with renowned fragrance designer Christophe Laudamiel and composers Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurdsson

smell of fear, recovery, ash, cash, balance

huffers, volcanic ash, the smell of aliphatic hydrocarbons

anise sulfur

steam locomotives and beautiful perfume 

green aria      includes podcast

Niki de Saint Phalle - DC

Niki de Saint Phalle's larger-than-life sculptures are now in Washington DC; to date, the only major outdoor sculpture corridor in our nation’s capital by a woman. Through October 2011 on New York Avenue NW, between 12th &13th
click here 

Known for her sense of color and playfulness, Niki de Saint Phalle died in 2002 but her work lives on in her famous sculptures, whimsical gardens and grottos throughout the world, and in her perfumes in sculpted bottles. 

Her Tarot Garden in Tuscany, Italy Il Giardino dei Tarrochi click here

FREE EVENT  Those in Washington DC on Saturday 10 September 2011 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts for all ages 11AM-5PM. Materials are provided to create Niki-inspired works click here 

 

 
photos:  Niki de Saint Skull
Niki de Saint Phalle's Queen Califia Patty Mooney
Sagittarius

bear this in nose

A  bear's nose picks up 100 times our scent.


There is a documentary on the negotiation of space between animals and humans, especially in regard to housing developments and land useage. Park rangers state that it is easier to train one bear than 1,000 humans.

I've spoken to people who smelled the strong smell of bear in the outback, but have never smelled it myself. Meanwhile, in summer heat bears come down to soak in Los Angeles foothill jacuzzis.


photo: Wildpark Bad Mergentheim

Check Mate ... End Game ...

Weekend preparations are underway

hanging around to be smelled

 










I smelled her

awake from a dream with this phrase,
love the play on the verb, for smelled

moves in both directions

he smelled her, his nose going into the skin, and,
the smell came in from a distance, to be smelled.

Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto adds scents of spices
within his suspended, sculpted shapes.
His installations fill space and invite interaction as
viewers are sniffers as well as touchers.

pictures/coverage
at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome click here and here

at the Armory New York City click here and here for slides

Lavender Water by the Bucket

Det. Supt. Foyle: You left the room?

Mr. Ellis : It was too dark.

Foyle: Well, I know somebody did because um Fleming ah said he heard the door open before the shots were fired.

Guy Spencer: That was Rosemary Harwood.

Foyle: How'd you know that?

Guy: I was just outside.

Foyle: Erah, how did you know it was her if you couldn't see her, because it was, it was too dark to see anything?

Guy: I smelled her. She um, she wears lavender water, errr,

I'd say she wears it by the bucket. It was definitely her.

- from Foyle's War, The White Feather
photos: Molinard  Lavande Extrait Double Lura Astor

Liquorice Licorice Anise Fennel

Reglisse Noire

created by perfumer
Jessica September Buchanan
of 1000 Flowers
click to right in 
Feed Your Inspirations




is a refined beauty
a scent that will wear well in any season

click here for interviews with the perfumer and reviews liquorice dreams by the perfumer click here

If you remember Callard and Bowser's licorice toffee ... Reglisse Noire offers a wink.

Licorices from around the world at Licorice International click here

Smelling Reglisse Noire I don't get the playful cutting of licorice candy found in Pink Sugar/Aquolina, the bit of austerity found in Anisia Bella/Aqua Allegoria, or the Good 'n' Plenty opening of Anis/Etro.
I do get persistent refinement that pleases from beginning to end.

Shiso leaf adds to the refinement and though star anise is used, I fondly recall Swedish limpa bread with its anise, caraway and sometimes cardamom, Italian snowflake pizelles, freshly chopped fennel, anise tea.

More recently, Shiso/perilla leaf, of the mint/basil family, made the leap from sushi plates to summer cocktails.

Liquorice potables: ouzo, raki, pernod, absinthe, anisette, are renown for whatever remnants of stories trail those who partake.

Growing up, we had 2 parakeets, JoJo, with palest blue of sky feathers, and Miss Blue, lapis lazuli blue with black/white mask. While lying on a bed reading, the birds would fly over, perch on our chest, and scrape our teeth, their feathers smelling of softest anise. Whatever social primping or mineral from our teeth the birds gained, we too benefited from kind whiffs of calming anise.
And, in history, birds have been perfumed to fly through feast halls wafting scent with wings.

Star Anise is related to the magnolia family, but a far cry from the buttery lemon scent of  magnolia flowers.

Related by odor, not by genus, anise is used to attract fish, mixed with wine helps cure asp bites.

Sulfur is used to detect gas leaks and capsules of anise oil were added into white metal plane bearings of early steam engine trains in Britain, releasing scent during overheating.


Koku radio has a broadcast on the smell of licorice increasing vaginal blood flow and information on how various odors affect gender blood flow.

Congrats Jessica September Buchanan on your beauty of a scent!

illustration: Star Anise
photo: Shiso Pepsi
photo: Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway No. 957 Helena 
photo: Sweetbay Magnolia Derek Ramsey/Ram-Man 2008 and the Chanticleer Garden

poetry sillage

 

don't feel like writing a poem,

instead, I will light the incense-burning vessel

filled with myrrh, jasmine, and frankincense,

and the poem will grow in my heart

like the flowers in my garden.

- student of Hāfez
خواجه شمس‌الدین محمد حافظ شیرازی

15h century AD

Perfumery and Ritual: The Use of Incense, Flowers, Distillates, and Aromatic Objects in Asia. Workshop took place at Universitat Heidelberg click here

incense peppermint click here 

Nathaniel Musselman incense crafter click here

smells so good click here

photos: Fallen Leaves and Trail Lura Astor

Art Humor

I friggin' love Art History meets Theatah

Highly recommend

Guerilla Girls Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art

click here
some of their famous posters click here

Lee Krasner, painter, wife and helper of painter Jackson Pollock, received a posthumous retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, 6 months after her death in 1984. As of 2008, Krasner is 1 of 4 women artists to have had a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art ... the museum has *only* been open since 1928.

One more from 70 Million, both directed by David Freymond


National Museum of Women in Art in Washington DC click here

 

 






Guerilla Girls 1985

Scented Fans

Scented fans have a long history

The Fan Museum in Greenwich, London
current exhibit click here

Air à la Mode

features fans of Sylvain Le Guen
with one, scented by perfumer Francis Kurkdjian click here
through 13 November 2011

Books for sale include one from the exhibit on the sound of fans as live music plays. Hadn't thought of that extra sound of air ruffling en masse.












photo: Fanning the Senses The Fan Museum 2007 
photo: Don Quixote Bolshoi Ballet Marc Haegeman 2006