Perfume Shrine: Hermes by Lord's Jester: fragrance review of a Brave New Scent & giveaway

Perfume Shrine: Hermes by Lord's Jester: fragrance review of a Brave New Scent & giveaway

082910

I am a writer (poetry, novels, plays, etc.) and a Professional Perfumer certified by the Natural Perfumers Guild (which entails a pretty in-depth application). I have the most experience with poetry and plays; I have 10 perfumes for sale (and they're quite good). These in addition to 1000 other things I'm interested in. I try not to think about the MS, even though it affects, negatively, every single aspect of my life. I'm dizzy, can't walk (half block max), can't sleep, have terrible tremors, can't cook, etc.

--Adam on Facebook

*Taiwan*

Once I went on a trip around Taiwan with a couple of white people. They were my friends; this is back in an age where I actually had friends (it's so hard for me to get around, I barely leave the apartment anymore, like, never). These two were college students who majored in Chinese; to this day, it confuses me that I was able to learn Chinese as fast as I did. It was a combination of natural language facility and being intimate with a Chinese/Japanese woman. Those first few weeks I was with Ms Liang, we did a lot of talking by making signs and drawing pictures. That affair ended fairly dismally.

We headed to Taijung, no particular plans. We wanted good food, and to visit a hot springs, of which there were many on the island. In Taijung we ended up lost. There was, however, a hot springs not too far away. We went to the hot springs. It was isolated, up on a hill, with a few restaurants nearby. We were alone, not a person for miles. We stayed one night, then we were planning on a trip across the island, over the mountains and into Hualien, where I had yet to be. I would soon discover Hualien as a welcoming, traditional yet modern, complex place which I would call home for some time.

To get to Hualien, we had to hitch a ride. Being nice, I agreed to let one of my friends ask for a ride. Now, it's unfortunate but true that the following confusion ensued: the way you ask to hitch a ride is to ask, "Ma fan ni, wo shiang yao da-ge bian che." Now, as with all Chinese, you have to be extremely careful how you use the tones. My friend went and flagged down a car; a few moments later, the target car screeched away. When I asked my friend to tell me what had happened, turns out he basically said I want to take a shit! "Da bian" is to take a shit; "da-ge bian che" means to hitch a ride, of course _depending on the tones you use_.

Hard to be mad at the guy; he didn't know any better. Turns out, he never listened when his teacher explained the tones to him. He simply didn't believe that the tones make the difference between your being understood or not. I explained what had happened; he was nothing but apologetic. Next time, I was the one to flag a car. Turns out, it was a big truck which gave us a lift, with us hunkered down in the empty bed of the very large truck. I'm not sure if we planned on going to Hualien, but that's where we ended up. It was a sleepy town, on the open Pacific. Once we got back to Taipei, and I had a permanent falling out with my girlfriend, I had Hualien on my mind. I ended up moving there for more than a year.

*OPP*

By James Dickey

The Sheep Child

Farm boys wild to couple

With anything with soft-wooded trees

With mounds of earth mounds

Of pinestraw will keep themselves off

Animals by legends of their own:

In the hay-tunnel dark

And dung of barns, they will

Say I have heard tell

That in a museum in Atlanta

Way back in a corner somewhere

There's this thing that's only half

Sheep like a woolly baby

Pickled in alcohol because

Those things can't live his eyes

Are open but you can't stand to look.

But this is now almost all

Gone. The boys have taken

Their own true wives in the city,

The sheep are safe in the west hill

Pasture but we who were born there

Still are not sure. Are we,

Because we remember, remembered

In the terrible dust of museums?

Merely with his eyes, the sheep-child may

Be saying saying

I am here, in my father's house.

I who am half of your world, came deeply

To my mother in the long grass

Of the west pasture, where she stood like moonlight

Listening for foxes. It was something like love

From another world that seized her

From behind, and she gave, not lifting her head

Out of dew, without ever looking, her best

Self to that great need. Turned loose, she dipped her face

Farther into the chill of the earth, and in a sound

Of sobbing of something stumbling

Away, began, as she must do,

To carry me. I woke, dying.

In the summer sun of the hillside, with my eyes

Far more than human, I saw for a blazing moment

The great grassy world from both sides,

Man and beast in the round of their need,

And the hill wind Stirred in my wool,

My hoof and my hand clasped each other,

I ate my one meal

Of milk, and died

Staring. From the dark grass I came straight

To my father's house, whose dust

Whirls up in the halls for no reason

When no one comes piling deep in a hellish mild corner,

And through my immortal waters,

I meet the sun's grains eye

To eye, and they fail at my closet of glass.

Dead, I am most surely living

In the minds of farm boys: I am he who drives

Them like wolves from the hound bitch and calf

And from the chaste ewe in the wind.

They go into woods into bean fields they go

Deep into their known right hands. Dreaming of me,

They groan they wait they suffer

Themselves, they marry, they raise their kind.

*Quotations*

I think it's very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the last century before the Soviet Union gave it a bad name. Socialism had a good name in this country. Socialism had Eugene Debs. It had Clarence Darrow. It had Mother Jones. It had Emma Goldman. It had several million people reading socialist newspapers around the country. Socialism basically said, hey, let's have a kinder, gentler society. Let's share things. Let's have an economic system that produces things not because they're profitable for some corporation, but produces things that people need. People should not be retreating from the word socialism because you have to go beyond capitalism.

--Howard Zinn

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

--Churchill

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

--Karl Marx

The people can have anything they want; the only problem is they do not want anything.

--Eugene Debs

I believe if you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place. The story will come from the landscape.

--Annie Proulx

You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.

--Robert Merton Solow

My heart, sit only with those who know and understand you.

--Rumi

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find resources of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

--Rachel Carson

If myth is translated into literal fact, then myth is a lie. But if you read it as a reflection of the world inside you, then it's true.

--Joseph Campbell

It is not true that disorder is required in order to describe disorder; it is not true that chaos on the written page is the best symbol of the extreme chaos to which we are fated: I hold this to be a characteristic error of our insecure century.

--Primo Levi

Peace love and ATOM jazz

082210

The relations can't possibly understand. I gave up trying about 10 years ago. Sure, you can tell them about your many various ailments, but they won't really get it. For everyone, MS is a mystery. It's unlike cancer, or diabetes, or meningitis. There's nothing you can say that will help folks understand. It's not pain; it's a whole lot more complicated than that. Dizziness, vertigo, coordination trouble, trouble walking, tremors, etc. That's about as specific as you can get. Your life was sent into a mixed-up world some time ago. I don't personally know anything that comes close to MS. You watch your body disintegrate, steadily, unable to do a thing about it.

--Adam on Facebook

*Taiwan*

I must impress upon you the overbearing nature of a city like Taipei. Motorcycles and mopeds rule the streets. When pulling up to a red light, all the motorcycles pull around the cars, like bees on a frenzy. Of course, once you pull out, the cars take over. It's a crazy scene on the street, with motorcycles and mopeds going _both ways_ on sidewalks. You'd think the frenetic nature of the roads would have folks being careful--but they have a very Buddhist attitude about accidents: you just go headlong into it; if the gods meant you to get in an accident, you will, no question. This is not to mention the gangs, who pretty much rule the streets.

Once, I saw a huge mafia man get pissed at a club-goer. He was so large, no policeman would mess with him. Mafia man got so mad at this fellow, he beat him to death with a stool! Everyone was quiet just after the beating; no one wanted to be on the receiving of that man's ire. I think some helpers dragged the fellow into the back, where he was picked up by two officers. Another time, in Hualien, I heard some shouting on the corner; when I went to the window, I saw a lone man in the middle of the intersection, clearly dead. They ruled with an iron fist. I was always told if you didn't mess with them, they'd leave you alone.

This is not to mention the ex and reformed gangsters you're likely to meet, out and about. It might be the guy you have dinner with at the local eatery, a fellow you happen to meet on the street, or the man you run into on a visit to the nearby betel-nut stand. It could be any and all of these folks. Your neighbor, the monk at your nearby monastery (monasteries look very different in a large city than on the countryside), the teacher you find to be very worldly. Gangsters, especially the reformed ones, can wear any number of faces. They might have disappeared from Taipei only to reemerge in Hualien some day, under an assumed name.

*OPP*

By Richard Hugo

Graves at Elkhorn

for Joe Ward

'Eighty-nine was bad. At least a hundred

children died, the ones with money planted

in this far spot from the town. The corn

etched in these stones was popular that year.

'Our dearest one is gone.' The poorer ones

used wood for markers. Their names

got weaker every winter. Now gray wood

offers a blank sacrifice to rot.

The yard and nearly every grave are fenced.

Something in this space must be defined--

where the lot you paid too much for ends

or where the body must not slide beyond.

The yard should have a limit like the town.

The last one buried here: 1938. The next

to last: 1911 from a long disease.

The fence around the yard is barbed, maintained

by men, around the graves, torn down

by pines. Some have pines for stones.

The yard is this far from town because

when children die the mother should repeat

some form of labor, and a casual glance

would tell you there could be no silver here.

*Quotations*

Why did I write any of my books, after all? For the sake of the pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. I have no social purpose, no moral message; I've no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions.

--Vladimir Nabakov

Everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink--for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.

--Honoré de Balzac, on why coffee was excellent for his writing

I have liked remembering almost as much as I have liked living.

--William Maxwell

I fought against the bottle, but I had to do it drunk.

--Leonard Cohen

I come from a kind of old-fashioned Midwest, and I live in a technocorporate, positronic, cool, late-late-late Eastern world. The two worlds hardly ever talk to each other, but they're completely, constantly talking to one another inside me.

--Jonathan Franzen

If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.

--Thomas Jefferson

Astonishment is the root of philosophy.

--Paul Tillich

Critics, the more kindly ones, have called my work 'witty,' a dangerous label to wear, since to many it suggests 'trivial' and 'superficially felt.' I would wish to be seriously funny, and cannot understand the supposed difference between certain poems called light verse and others ranked as poetry.

--XJ Kennedy

I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man.

--Charlie Chaplin

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

--Oscar Wilde

Peace love and ATOM jazz

081510

I've spent the past week, solid, in a hospital. Nurses were nice, which is saying a lot compared to my last experience as an in-patient. Soon into it, I had a large catheter stuck into my jugular vein, with stitches. No going anywhere. I was there for the long haul. My MS doc hoodwinked me, saying just go onto the emergency room. He didn't say it was going to take a week! Couple of days I could understand; not a week. Other than not being able to get around (no more than half a block), speech impairment, hand tremors, etc., there's really nothing to write home about. I had the Tysabri flushed from my system; not that it was building up in my body, just that it was starting to have unknown consequences. The speech is better. Onto better things. I really don't know what exactly. As long as it's not Rebif, I don't care. I'll find out the deal on Monday.

*Writing*

Two weeks ago, I mentioned writing plays. I have a good deal of experience writing plays; one of them has been produced, one I had a group of actors read (full cast), one I had another group read (different group), one we (Erin Leary and I)

attempted to have produced, to no avail (it was in Bellingham, and we were stuck in Portland), etc. As I said, the one thing I look forward to is cast parties, more than having books published. If I could look forward to cast parties, as a playwright, life would be extremely good. It will take me a while to get to that point, but for me, it's plays or nothing. This feeling is totally to do with with having seen, from a young age, Broadway plays; the buzz of a new play gets me going every time. It will be a long haul, but if there's anything that excites me, it's the idea of going to a new play as the playwright. It may take the rest of my life, but if there's anything that I can dream of, it's going to be opening night.

*Japan*

I've talked of the lascivious nature of my comrades in Taiwan. I met a German guy in Tokyo who was close to that obsession. He was nuts to find someone to go meet women with. The one time we went out, we went to Karaoke. That's a very Japanese tradition. Not sure where it comes from, but it's a very Japanese thing to do. (They say it started in the '60s with Sing Along with Mitch, hosted by Mitch Miller. It's even more common in China and Japan than it is here.) In any case, in Japan, it boils down to making a fool of yourself in front of friends. Humbling is what it is; no hiding from anyone.

In Japan, one rents a room just for friends. You retire to that spot and sing away. You can order drinks, food, cigarettes, etc. The Karaoke spots in Tokyo are extensive, with full buildings just for Karaoke. This is very unlike China, where it's about making a fool of yourself in front of _everyone_. In truth, I think the Karaoke tradition is much more common in Japan than anywhere else. If you're lucky, the Karaoke place is in a spot with lots of shopping, so that you can go off and shop when you're through. A solid cultural tradition is this.

*Adam's-Index*

Ways being in a hospital is similar to jail: no bars, but the effect is the same (I say from first-hand experience)

Differences from being in jail: every little noise you make is under the microscope of nurses and doctors

Similarities: sitting in one spot for days on end

Differences: everyone in a hospital wants you to feel better

Similarities: staring at the same walls can drive you crazy

Differences: health is the point of hospitals

Similarities: suffering, one way or another, is the end result of extended stays

Differences: in hospitals, it doesn't matter how ridiculous it is; if it's not under the purview of hospitals, it doesn't matter how ludicrous it is, it's not allowed. I take 4AP, which helps me walk; without it, I can't walk to save my life. Because 4AP is not common, interestingly it's not allowed. If you told a nurse about it, she wouldn't believe you.

Similarities: all you can do is watch TV (or read)

Differences: you really have to want to better yourself, and that's a lot harder in a hospital

*Quotations*

Man, if you have to ask what it is, you'll never know.

--Louis Armstrong

[I've long held that jazz is American music; whether you play rock, blues, jazz, etc., it always boils down to how well you can make jazz.]

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

--Henri Matisse

[Trenchant critique from Matisse. Rhythm married to meaning I would say.]

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with.

--Duke Ellington

[And I've always been that kind of man.]

To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.

--Nina Simone

[The _word_ from the high priestess. It's black classical music for sure.]

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

--BB King

[My feelings exactly.]

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

--Percy Bysshe Shelley

[I've long heard tell of this "legislation" aspect to being a poet, but I have yet to see any of it. Perhaps if my poetry were more mainstream....]

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

--JFK

[It seems very obvious....]

Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid.

--Tao Te Ching

[One of those great wisdoms.]

Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.

--Malcolm S Forbes

[Difficult to get yourself thinking this way.]

Do not look where you fell but where you slipped.

--African proverb

[There's nothing quite like a proverb to make you stop and double check yourself.]

Peace love and ATOM jazz

080110

I have a confession to make: the past few years, I've been trying to get myself writing novels. The truth is I have no use for novels (except as written by others). What I want, more than anything else, is to go to opening-nights of plays I've written. The cast parties have my name on them.

_____

Adamgottschalk.net

*Lord's-Jester*

The site is at Lord's Jester.

I'm planning to send into the Natural Perfumers Guild maybe five more perfumes: Phoebe eau de parfum, Daphne eau de toilette, Chronos eau de cologne, Dionysus eau de toilette, and a solid version of Selene (the one I passed Level One of Mandy Aftel's course with). Phoebe is my osmanthus perfume, Daphne is my tonka-bean brew, Chronos is my immortelle cologne, Dionysus is what I made for the Mystery of Musk, and the solid version of Selene smells just like the liquid one (and that's quite a feat; the liquid version has 16 notes, the solid 18).

Solid perfumes entail the use of an entirely different extracts; I've found CO2 extracts work quite nicely. I have a few more recipes to turn into the Natural Perfumers Guild. One is my ode to rose, one is my mushroom exercise, one is a cognac-vetiver-sandalwood affair, etc. There is no end to the combinations I want to try, and permutations of those combinations, and permutations of those. It's an endless endeavor, this familiarizing oneself with the way natural ingredients combine. I'm looking forward to it.

*MS*

A periodic posting of my current symptoms:

1. Can't walk further than about half a block, and even that's with difficulty.

2. Can't sleep. If it weren't for the Remeron, I'd never get to sleep.

3. Can't do anything with my right hand--and I'm right-handed. Can't write by hand (a problem in places like doctors' offices), can't type (one handed, with my left hand, is only okay), can't do bills at all, etc.

4. Can't make perfume--and this, in addition to the bills above, is just about the only reason I have an assistant. I get groceries delivered, so that's not a problem (lord knows I could never go shopping). In truth, my assistants are about the only people I see. Stuck at home, unable to go very far.

5. Still riddled with anxiety, a form of depression.

ETC.

*Hong-Kong*

One of the other people I got into big trouble with was a fellow named Andy Wyng (I'm friends with him on Facebook...we're talking 20-25 years later). Andy is a decent dude, and I'd like to say I corrupted him. Course I wouldn't be caught dead without some hash or otherwise. I was in Hong Kong and I'd be damned if I was going to leave any stone unturned. It shocks me to think of what I would do now, stuck without a wheelchair. So it was: I did it while I still could.

We went to Indian a lot. Andy had a lot of English friends. Part of what I did was getting to know them. There was a Scottish fellow who was the first guy I met who had a gig playing at a restaurant. He was _the worst_ person to have a gig like that; he didn't know any songs! He was just going along, hoping the owner didn't catch wind of his inability to play. Unfortunately for him, it didn't take long for him to be found out.

Andy and I barely escaped police in Chung King Mansion. We were in our little guest house, which was targeted by police. All we knew was the cops were there, and so we went into Andy's room to hide my hash. As far as I can recall, they found nothing on me. I remember it clearly: I stuck the bag into my shirt pocket, having experienced cops in America who failed at that. We were off scott free. It was a heavy experience though; what if we'd ended up in Hong-Kong prison?

Andy and I went to Japan a couple of times. The first time it was for some smuggling. No one had given us heads-up and we went through customs together; we didn't stop to think that would appear foolish to customs agents. We were told they wanted to look in our bags, and we were under specific instructions to bond anything they wanted to look at (bonding is a thing at international airports that allows you to enter the country without having your bags checked).

The second time we went, we came prepared. I didn't yet know what I would do. Good thing too: Jerry, my Australian friend, made sure that I knew, playing and singing as well as I did, I'd be a fool not to make music on the street. A call to Andy was all it took: I'd have a guitar delivered to me. What a blessing! We didn't share with others our take; needless to say, others would have been shamed by our income. "You play on the street like beggars! How can you earn so much?" Play we did; whether or not anyone knew how much we made was up to us.

*Quotations*

I think it's very true when you're a writer, you sometimes you have to spend time poking at part of yourself that normal, sane people leave alone.

--Vikram Chandra

In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.

--Janos Arnay

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

--WB Yeats

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

--GB Shaw

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

--John Ashbery

When I write, I try to tell a good (and accurate) story, both for its own sake and as a means of drawing out the underlying meaning, the themes that explain to us how we became what we now are.

--TJ Stiles

I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.

--Emily Brontë

Teach us to give and not to count the cost.

--Saint Ignatius of Loyola

I'd sooner be called a successful crook than a destitute monarch.

--Charlie Chaplin

The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship.

--Francis Bacon Sr

*Music*

August Rocks 2010

1. Before I Knew, Basia Bulat

2. Closer, Corrine Bailey Rae

3. Babyfather, Sade

4. Times Come Again, The J Band

5. Mailman, Peter Mulvey

6. Hey Hey Hey (My Little Beauties), Hawksley Workman

7. True Believer, Matthew Barber

8. Cole Durhew, Jeffrey Foucault

9. Beg Steal or Borrow, Ray LaMontagne

10. walk on the Wild Side (Velvet Underground), Tok Tok Tok

11. Windshield, Peter Mulvey

12. Philadelphia Lawyer, Jeffrey Foucault

13. I'd Do It All Again, Corrine Bailey Rae

14. Soldier of Love, Sade

15. Insanity or Death, Matthew Barber

16. Rattling Locks, Josh Ritter

17. You and the Candles, Hawksley Workman

18. Some People, Peter Mulvey

19. Winterwonderland, Tok Tok Tok

Peace love and ATOM jazz

072510

The MS totally destroyed my marriage. It started out one way, and by the end she was totally fed up. I can't take too much blame though; she didn't know total disability was around the corner. That's the way it goes when you've got tremendous MS. I still miss her (it's been seven years) but things work out the way they should. No contact with me since she left. That was on the west coast, long ago and far away.

--Adam on Facebook

_____

I don't think anyone realizes how desperate I am: I can't go anywhere without my wheelchair--do you know how hard it is to get women to pay attention to you when you're in a wheelchair? No, I'm fucked. Can't do any bills, can't see straight, can't walk, etc. The only people I ever get to see are my assistants. I am totally screwed.

*Hong-Kong*

Once, when I was in Hong Kong for my visa trip, I met a couple of Americans, one a b-boy and the other a woman of Japanese descent. I made their acquaintance slowly. I think on my first visit, they were checking to see whether or not I had some kind of staying power; on my next visit I found them to be quite hospitable. See, we were all basically white, and so we had to make use of the trails which had been blazed before us. In some cases, that means accepting what had come before; in other areas, one was free to make it up as one went along.

One area the three of us got into was late-night music clubs. B-boy you see (cannot for the life of me remember his name) was a graffiti artist; that's how he met his woman, in those circles. Needless to say, the lot of them have a much dirtier, nastier reputation; as far as I can tell, the vast majority of graffiti come from wealthy backgrounds. B-boy made like he was from Southie, a tough suburb of Boston; I'm sure he was indeed from a suburb of Boston, just not that particular one.

Among other things, he taught me to dance. Very much on a hip-hop sort of a tip; we did some nasty dancing too! He taught me one move I remember clearly: when standing square, pull your back leg up to meet the front one; then spin in place to face the other way. Got a lot of mileage out of that spin move. We got up to no good; I'm sure I was flirting with his Asian woman. On a few trips to Hong Kong (we were in the lowly Kowloon), he hooked us up with some mad digs.

One time, in Kowloon, he was walking along in front of our guesthouse; as there is a bunch of Indian clothes stores in the neighborhood, B-boy was accosted by a salesman, probably wanting to sell him a suit of some kind. There he walked, and he felt a light tap on the shoulder. He swung around and clocked whoever it was that was tapping. He made like he was mortified, but the Indians had an unspoken rule: to engage in a sale, one must never touch the mark. I think B-boy was pretending to be broken up.

*Top-Five*

5. The garbage here is out of control--somehow it all gets cleaned up. This is, of course, the original garbage landscape.

4. Museums and galleries are just waiting.

3. Broadway shows

2. The best music in the world

1. The streets

*Perfume*

From the Mystery and Lure of Perfume by CJS Thompson (1927):

"It is a well-known fact that the sense of smell varies considerably in individuals and is much more acute in some than in others. This depends on the sensitiveness of the olfactory nerves, the human organ of smell, which are situated at the upper part of the nasal cavities. They were first recognized by Theophilus Protospameaus, a Greek monk in the eighth century. The organ is essentially formed by the filaments of the olfactory nerves, which are distributed in minute arrangement in a limited portion of the mucous membrane of the nose.

"The sense of smell is therefore derived exclusively through those parts of the nasal cavities in which these nerves are distributed. If the nasal cavities be filled with rose-water, no smell is perceived. It is a curious fact that some persons whose sense of smell is quite normal cannot distinguish certain odors. When a perfume is placed under the nose, there is no sensation of smell so long as the breath is held, or breathing is carried on through the mouth.

"It is common knowledge that there is an intimate relation between the senses of smell and of taste and the same substance which excites the sensation of smell in the olfactory nerves may cause peculiar sensation through the nerves of taste, and may produce an irritating effect on the nerves of touch, but the sensation of odor is yet separate from them.

"Man uses the sense of smell in combination with taste much more during mastication and deglutition than during the act of putting food into his mouth, the chief importance of smell in association with taste being to perceive the quality of foods, to influence their selection, and to excite appetite. Although the susceptibility of man to odors is more extended, he is inferior to animals of both classes in the sense of smell. The distance at which a dog can track his master is extraordinary."

*Quotations*

The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.

--Wendell Berry

Needless to say, one more time, deconstruction, if there is such a thing, takes place as the experience of the impossible.

--Jacques Derrida

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

--Benjamin Disraeli

Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace, and wit, reminders of order, calm, and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still, and absorbed.

--Germaine Greer

Continuing to write after that heartache of disappointment doesn't take only discipline, but also self-forgiveness.

--Elizabeth Gilbert

I don't think you ever stop giving. I really don't. I think it's an on-going process. And it's not just about being able to write a check. It's being able to touch somebody's life.

--Oprah Winfrey

The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. Freedom and slavery are mental states.

--Gandhi

I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.

--Einstein

Dare to err and to dream. Deep meaning often lies in childish play.

--Friedrich Schiller

Maybe I am slightly inhuman. All I ever wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.

--Edward Hopper

Peace love and ATOM jazz

071810

I have always sensed that I am somehow different. Then about 30, the diagnosis came, and I was like, "Well, that makes sense." It explained a lot of what I'd been through. Ten years later, I still feel that this is what life intended for me. It's hard, but sometimes I can't picture any other way to live. It's secondary progressive in me, so the past ten years have been hell, with me just getting worse from the get-go. I can't write by hand, can't type (left handed works), I can't walk further than about half a block, speech is very difficult, I'm dizzy, etc etc.

--Adam on Facebook

*Engineering*

Having studied engineering in college, I can tell you one important way to generate electricity: install natural-gas collectors on dairy farms. Natural gas is actually 60% methane; all it takes to render it useful is to clean it up. Many villages generate electricity straight from the piles of dung. But the real aspect is _most of the world_ uses natural-gas collectors. We've got this huge source of energy just waiting to be tapped. I know from experience in college that most Americans are hard-pressed to think about generating electricity from a pile of crap. But this is _the only way out of this mess_. We've got untold amounts of electricity to generate, but most Americans couldn't imagine generating power from piles of waste. We've got to get over this hang-up. The hang-up is just that: it's a hang-up, and we've got to move past it.

*Japan*

I learned about bossa-nova in Tokyo. I was staying at this other guest house, different from the one I'd stayed at from the start. This was a huge Japanese-style abode, with tatami mats, sliding wooden doors on the outside, the whole deal. The group of guests was similar but different. As many nationalities were represented as the other, and there was a similar laid-back atmosphere. What the other one lacked in the way of ambiance was more than made up for in the sense of place, of space, of carving your own name out in the Japanese landscape.

Oddly, in the underbelly of the guest house, I met a few like-minded souls. I think in those back rooms we were doing heroin. That's a vague memory. Through some cassette exchanges (this was back before the advent of CDs) I ended up with one tape in particular that I listened to so much I plumb wore it out. I memorized every lick, vocal bit, and solo on the tape. It was a no-brainer when years later, in the middle of an intense jazz-listening decade or so, I came across a CD in a used-CD shop.

On that disc, I recognized a few titles; this was Jazz Samba Encore. I went to give the CD a listen and sure enough this was the same recording I'd heard in Tokyo. How worldly is that: learning about a latin-American art through jazz veins in a guesthouse in Tokyo. I've kept this a secret, except for writing about it in this newsletter. It's always struck me as trenchant, that I should learn about the far-flung corners of the world in the single city of Tokyo. We live in doubly concentrated times.

*Quotations*

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

--Wole Soyinka

Plenty sits still; hunger is a wanderer.

--Zulu proverb

Hungry bellies have no ears.

--Polish proverb

Hunger is the best sauce.

--Danish proverb

Writing a novel is like making love, but it's also like having a tooth pulled. And sometimes it's like making love while having a tooth pulled.

--Dean Koontz

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

--Gandhi

In the end, we will remember ot the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.

--MLK Jr

The future is always beginning now.

--Mark Strand

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.

--Lincoln

I like men who have a future and women who have a past.

--Oscar Wilde

*Music*

1. Who Says, John Mayer

2. Closer (live), Corrine Bailey Rae

3. Saving Grace, Everlast

4. Some Surprise, Paul Noonan & Lisa Hannigan

5. (I Keep on) Rising Up, Mike Doughty

6. Letter from a Flying Machine, Peter Mulvey

7. Thirty One Today, Aimee Mann

8. All That Time You Missed, Erin McKeown

9. The Devil Raises His Own, Freedy Johnston

10. From the Morning, Nick Drake

11. Fugitive (live), David Gray

12. ...Plus the Many Inevitable Fragments, Peter Mulvey

13. Pleasure on Credit, Mike Doughty

14. Unplayed Piano, Damien Rice & Lisa Hannigan

15. Borrowing Time, Aimee Mann

16. New Heights, A Fine Frenzy

17. Crossroads (Johnson), John Mayer

18. Central Station, Freedy Johnston

19. Vlad the Astrophysicist, Peter Mulvey

20. Three is a Magic Number (Dorough), Mike Doughty

21. I Don't Know (live), Lisa Hannigan

_____

Rain on the City, Freedy Johnston. This is fine music from Mr Johnston. There are moments when it feels Johnston is finally sinking into the music he was meant to make. From soaring vocals, to strings, to his basic attitude, the man always hits the mark. Highly recommended.

Peace love and ATOM jazz