Fragrant Poetry: The Cinnamon Peeler

The Cinnamon Peeler 

If I were a cinnamon peeler

I would ride your bed

and leave the yellow bark dust

on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek

you could never walk through markets

without the profession of my fingers

floating over you. 

The blind would

stumble certain of whom they approached

though you might bathe

under the rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh

at this smooth pasture

neighbour to your hair

or the crease

that cuts your back. This ankle.

You will be known among strangers

as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you 

before marriage

never touch you

- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.

I buried my hands

in saffron, disguised them

over smoking tar,

helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once

I touched you in the water

and our bodies remained free,

you could hold me and be blind of smell.

You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women

the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.

And you searched your arms

for the missing perfume

and knew

what good is it

to be the lime burner's daughter

left with no trace

as if not spoken to in the act of love

as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched

your belly to my hands

in the dry air and said

I am the cinnamon

peeler's wife.  Smell me.

~Michael Ondaatje

 

A few lovely fragrances with detectable cinnamon...

 
 1 Million (Paco Rabanne)
Bronze (Nanadebary)

Cinnabar (Estee Lauder)

Classique (Jean Paul Gaultier)

Dioressence (Dior)
Dolce Vita (Dior)

L'Eau (Diptyque) 

Egoiste (Chanel)

Euphoria Liquid Gold (Calvin Klein) 

Just Cavalli Her (Cavalli)

L de Lolita Lempicka (Lolita Lempicka)

London for Men (Burberry) 

Obsession for men (Calvin Klein)

Organza Indecence (Givenchy)

Rousse (Serge Lutens)

Spicebomb (Viktor & Rolf)

A few of my favorite less celebrated fragrances

Since almost every perfumephile agrees on the trancedental character of Bois des Iles (Chanel) or the easy swagger of Tabac Blond (Caron) and the quirkiness of Bulgari Black or Bandit (Piguet) there would be no point to regurgitate a list of "sign me up as a parfumista" fumes. Yes I do happen to love all of these celebrated perfumes. To prove one's mettle is the game of the novice and here at Perfume Shrine we're 10 years old.

But readers kindly suggested I share with them which are my favorite fragrances; at least some of them. 

So without further ado below find a list of personal favorites. They may not be the most obscure nuggets in Fragoland but they do not get the praise they deserve. I wonder why. Maybe for those still in production this highly personal list might be the kick off to encourage more people to buy them and therefore actually keep them in production for awhile longer...At any rate I frequently use these and enjoy them.
I decided to match them each to a line of poetry I particularly enjoy. See if you do as well.

Acqua di Parma Blu Mediterraneo Ginepro di Sardegna
All the white horses are still in bed

Annick Goutal Myrrhe Ardente
And then she would smile to show me how and it was the saddest smile I ever saw.

Annick Goutal Musc Nomade 
But we loved with a love that was more than love.

Apivita Earth
Moss circled; female; promised land.

Boucheron Femme 
Rage rage against the dying of the light.

Chanel Antaeus 
(They've aged us prematurely Yorgos do you realize?)

Crazy Libellule and the Poppies Musc & Patchouli
I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.

Frederic Malle Lys Mediterranee
Hope is the thing with feathers.

via

Guerlain Parure
For a moment you waved your bolero and your orange petticoat like banners. 

Guerlain Vetiver pour Elle
She seems celestial songs to hear.

Hermes Equipage
And I who longed to be buried one day in some deep sea of the distant Indies shall come to a dull and common death. 

L'Artisan Parfumeur Passage d'Enfer
A gloomy line of snuffed out candles.

L'Artisan Parfumeur Oillet Sauvage
But I shall write a sorrowful ballad for the forgotten poets

Lancome Miracle So Magic 
He kisses those adored lips; excites himself on that exquisite body.

Le Labo Gaiac 10 
And in a way I'm yearning to be done with this measuring of truth

Ormonde Jayne Tolu
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.

Oriflame Amber Elixir Night 
Towards these isles of yours that await for me.

Paco Rabanne La Nuit
Misted the flowers weep as light dies.

Ramon Monegal Mon Cuir
Oh there is thunder in our hearts.

Serge Lutens La Myrrhe
You will not read the riddle though you do the best you can do.

Sonia Rykiel Woman Not for Men
Oh it's hard on the man. Now his part is over.

Valeur Absolue Sensualite 
My face became all eyes and my eyes all hands.

Zara White Jasmine 
Thy hair soft lifted by the winnowing wind.

BTW I noticed an interesting phenomenon by going through the list. There are almost no chypres there. [edit to add: I just thought that La Nuit could be classified as a quirky leathery chypre and Parure is a fruity chypre.] That's very odd because I ADORE chypres and I wear chypres quite a bit in my everyday existence! So what gives?

I came to realize that there are no "favorite less celebreated" chypres because all chypres have become celebrated in online perfumedom; even "chypres" that are not technically speaking chypres (Chanel No.19 I'm talking to you)!

This is what an avalanche of sweet tutti fruti scents does to the average perfumista; they retaliate by embracing the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Companies please take note. Therefore I couldn't include "less celebrated chypres". These will need to wait for a subsequent post of "favorite celebrated chypres" so we can all oooh and aaaah together in awed rapture...

Leaves…leave…summer lives & leaves

I CELEBRATE myself;
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my Soul;
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.         5


Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the shelves are crowded with perfumes;
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it;
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it is odorless;
It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it;  10
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked;

via

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath;
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine;
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs;  15
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore, and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn;
The sound of the belch’d words of my voice, words loos’d to the eddies of the wind;

A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms;
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag;
The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides;  20
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.

~Walt Whitman (1819–1892), from  Leaves of Grass

I Love All The Mom Bodies at This Beach

The title of today's post comes from Ode, a poem by Elizabeth Alexander, from her book American Sublime:

I love all the mom bodies at this beach,
the tummies, the one-piece bathing suits,
the bosoms that slope, the wide nice bottoms,
thigh flesh shirred as gentle wind shirrs a pond.

So many sensible haircuts and ponytails!
These bodies show they have grown babies, then
nourished them, woken to their cries, fretted
at their fevers. Biceps have lifted and toted

the babies now printed on their mothers.
"If you lined up a hundred bodies,
I could tell you which ones have borne children,"
the midwife says. In the secret place or

in sunlight at the beach, our bodies say
this is who we are, no, This is what
we have done and continue to do.
We labor in love. We do it. We mother.

You can peruse our tributes to Mothers and Fragrances which either remind us of them, or which we will pass on to our children, on these links on Perfume Shrine:
Mothers and Kids and the Scents that Bind us Together
The Indefineable Allure of a Signature Scent

Poem brought to my attention by Bergamot/POL
Pic sent to me by the good people at Hermes.

Wandering Wonderland (Game & Giveaway)

Indie perfumer Roxana Villa of Roxana Illuminated Perfume has created a trial version of a green fragrance with rose at the heart titled "Smell Me". She will be giving away five samples of the fragrance as part of this blogging collective inspired by the tale of Alice in Wonderland.
GAME: To be entered to win a sample of "Smell Me" please visit each participating blog and determine which character from the story each blogger has assumed. E-mail your guess to Roxana (at) IlluminatedPerfume.com. Five winners will be chosen to receive a sample of the first edition trial of the fragrance!

"They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs"
~T.S Eliot Morning at the Window

Years back when I started perfume blogging I began with the enthusiasm of the passionate collector who was trying the plethora of new juice on the market as soon as they were available. Even though it was plenty, it was nowhere the sheer mushroom-sprouting-quality that has sprung lately. It was impressive just how involved and meticulous I had been in the project, first and second and third chorus echoeing in my ears "try this", "try this", "try that"... It was hard finding one's way into this enchanted land of fragrance, but once one did, everything began to have meaning and a passionate discourse among aficionados began concerning the relative merits of this or that. I recall I was grinning on several pretensions, as I continue to do. Some call me stregatto, others prefer to call me sane. The crux of the matter is that several things have changed as online perfume writing and online discussion of perfumes has evolved and we're seeing an expansion from all strata. I continue to file all in my big library and note little cryptic notes, which might make no sense, in the borders. Can I help anyone find their way in the entangled fragoland? It all depends on where you're going. And if you don't need to delineate a specific course, then it doesn't really matter which way you go and you're in for the ride down the rabbit's hole if you walk long enough. It's all good!


Check for hints of the other characters:
Roxana at Illuminated Perfume Journal
Heather at Memory and Desire Won't be participating after all due to personal reasons
Lucy Raubertas at Indie Perfumes
Beth Schreibman Gehring at The Windesphere Witch
Tom at PerfumeSmellin'Things: The hint is "quote the raven: 'teatime'"

Picture stills from the Disney film Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton with Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Mia Wasikowska courtesy of the guardian.co.uk for entertainment purposes. Alice illustration by Roxana Villa.

Fata Morgana: Arabesque...

I'll take communion with sea water,
distilled from your body drop by drop,
in an ancient copper cup from Algiers,
as done by pirates of old before the fight.

Where are you coming from? From Babylon.
Where are you going? To the eye of the cyclone.
Whom do you love? A Gypsy maid.
What is her name? Fata Morgana*.

A leather sail, all smeared with wax,
smelling of cedar-wood, of incense and of varnish,
like the smell of the hold in an aging ship
built in olden times on Euphrates in Phoenicia.

Where are you coming from? From Babylon.
Where are you going? To the eye of the cyclone.
Whom do you love? A Gypsy maid.
What is her name? Fata Morgana.

Fire-hued rust in the mines of Sina,
the capes of Gerakini and Stratoni.
That ship-coating, that old blessed rust gave us birth,
It feeds us, feeds on us, and then it kill us!

Where are you coming from? From Babylon.
Where are you going? To the eye of the cyclone.
Whom do you love? A Gypsy maid.
What is her name? Fata Morgana.






























The poem Fata Morgana by sea-faring Greek poet Nikos Kavvadias is set to music and sung by Mariza Koch.

*A "fata morgana" is a mirage, an optical phenomenon caused by abrupt variances in air temperature. Objects on the horizon, such as islands, cliffs, ships or icebergs, appear elongated and elevated

All photos © by Elena Vosnaki

The gift of endless dreams

Perfume Shrine loves to read. Loves to read all sorts of books. Especially those that have an inward afinity with what is not mentioned in everyday life.
And when on a cold, cold night, there is a classic which is being re-read that mentions scent in poetic terms, there goes a little inward smile. Especially so when the language upon which it is written is not the author's own.



Here it is from Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim:

"The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering through the windows, always flung wider open, brought into the bare room the softness of the sky, the languor of the earth, the betwitching breath of Eastern waters. There were perfumes in it, suggestions of infinite repose, the gift of endless dreams".

Following posts will hold tantalising surprises for our readers and the continuation of the Leather Series. None of the run-of-the-mill holiday posts for us.

Painting courtesy of morflot.org