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I realized something terribly important this week: Since my ex-wife deserted me, I've spent all my time seeking validation from women. In the same way certain feminists insist they need no validation from men, I take this concept and make it my own. My ex never once believed in me; therefore I dissolved. I need no woman for validation; I _know_ I'm an exceptional person, with a good mind and a good heart, and sound aims and plans for my future. I've been waiting for some woman to confirm this for me. I need no confirmation, no validation. In no scenario that I can imagine do I have time for adoration of a woman. Mark my words, I will be a figure of historical import; I need no one else to get there.

*Perfume*

In my opinion, the perfume I made with no top section is a total failure. It has no life. Perfumers add top sections with good reason. Maybe with synthetic perfumes it would work to have no top; with natural perfume, in order to make a perfume something with character, with resounding qualities, one really needs a top. This brew is just dead on the skin. It's not that one smells nothing (as I had, ludicrously, feared); it's more that what one smells is severely lacking an important piece--the top! I've learned from this experiment that a full and complete natural-perfume recipe _must_ include a top section. Otherwise, it's quite as if one isn't working with a full deck; the full impact of a natural perfume definitely comes from carefully planning each part, base as well as heart as well as top.

_____

My feeling is that a lack of olfactory education leaves us unable to speak intelligently about that most important of all realms: what we _smell_. Here's a very brief intro to olfactory terms. (This is reprinted, with permission, from Mandy Aftel's Natural Perfume Workbook Level I.):

Agrestic (relating to the country; rustic)

Amber (reminding one of amber, which is a combination of three notes, sweet, round, balsamic)

Animalistic

Anisic

Apple

Balsamic (reminding one of balsam wood, closely related to amber)

Berry

Caramel

Citrus

Dry

Earthy

Edible

Floral

Fresh

Fruity

Green (reminding one of green things, fresh mowed grass, fresh vegetables, ferns)

Heavy

Herbal

Lemon

Light

Liqueur (sweet, heavy, rich)

Marine (fishy)

Minty

Orange

Rich

Seashore (reminding one of the oceanside)

Sharp

Soft

Spicy

Sweet

Tea

Woody

With each major category above, there are different subsets. For example:

Woody can be floral (rosewood) or sweet (agarwood).

Spicy can be fresh (ginger), dry (black pepper), or sweet (nutmeg).

Floral can be heavy (ylang ylang), soft (orris), sharp (marigold), or green (violet leaf).

Herbal can be sharp (lavender) or anisic (basil).

Fruity can be apple (chamomile) or berry (boronia).

If a person were to say to me, instead of, "Smells like my grandmother," more succinctly, "This is a soft floral, with sweet woody overtones, and a touch of the animalic," they would certainly have a champion in me for life.

*Asia*

I still have the journal I kept while I was in Taiwan. Frankly, it's a little frightening to look at. I'd basically been living out of a backpack for some time; therefore, I guess, it was of paramount importance that I wrote _incredibly small_. Page after page is almost too small to read, and I feel like a sane man looking at the ravings of a lunatic when I see it. But I remember each page I wrote clear as day, remember where I was, what woman I was infatuated with, my life goals. I was still in a youthful phase of thinking that if I captured every last one of my thoughts, I would somehow begin to understand myself better. It's all drivel, just total stream-of-consciousness garbage. But the effort to trap every thought which passed through my mind is one that I remember only too well.

When I was in Nepal, during the final few months, I was walking in the low hills with my Nepali friend Ram. We were in an area seldom frequented by white folks; I liked it that way. One evening we came across a rather large home, totally out of place in this part of Nepal. Turned out the inside was like a big barn; the outside was only for show. We arrived and sat down by the fire (a hole in the mud floor at one side), the customary course of action. After a moment, the resident owner, a widower, came to greet us. He checked that we were okay sleeping on the floor, and that potatoes were okay for dinner. At this height, though we were in the low hills by Nepali standards, we were still over 13,000 feet, and potatoes were just about the only thing which would grow.

After we settled in a bit, our host asked if we'd like some wine. Ram and I looked at each other quickly before saying emphatically, "Yes!" We proceeded to enjoy spirits the likes of which I'd never had before, or since. On hearing our Yes, the host smiled broadly and went back into the kitchen. When he emerged again, he was carrying two large bamboo mugs, each with a bamboo straw in it. He handed them to us and I was confused: inside the mugs were what looked like piles of wet beans. Then our host went to get boiling water, which he poured into our mugs. "When you want more, just ask for more hot water," he said. Turns out the piles of beans in our mugs were actually lumps of fermented rice.

We enjoyed the best rice wine ever--and the fermented rice could be re-steeped over and over. What a show stopper. Re-steepable wine! And the rice didn't seem to lose much of its alcohol content. We had many mugs, and the stuff just wouldn't quit. We needed no dinner--Ram and I both passed out before too long; the altitude and tiring days climbing mountains were to blame. I've often thought that if Americans got hip to this idea, our country would never be the same. Wine that grows from rice and is released with successive additions of boiling water! Who'd be sober? Would we ever recover? I remember that one magical night near the top of the world. I slept more soundly than I had in months.

*Quotations*

It was not until this moment when I separated myself, when I considered myself truly distinct, that my writing acquired a voice.

--Sandra Cisneros

[This was definitely my experience in leaving New York, turning my back on my family and lifelong friends. Suddenly, I discovered my voice.]

One day while studying a Yeats poem I decided to write poetry the rest of my life. I recognized that a single short poem has room for history, music, psychology, religious thought, mood, occult speculation, character, and events of one's own life.

--Robert Bly

[It is this "concept intensiveness" that has always attracted me too.]

Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.

--David Hume

[I am constantly in flux between them.]

The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races: the men who borrow and the men who lend.

--Charles Lamb

[Would that I might always be certain I'm a man who lends.]

There are two distinct classes of what are called thoughts: those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord.

--Thomas Paine

[I greatly prefer the "thought forms" that strike me of a sudden.]

The most accomplished monkey cannot draw a monkey, this only man can do; just as it is also only man who regards his ability to do this as a distinct merit.

--Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct.

--Samuel Johnson

God is neither distant nor distinct from you.

--Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.

--Alfred N Whitehead

What an immense power over the life is the power of possessing distinct aims. The voice, the dress, the look, the very motions of a person, define and alter when he or she begins to live for a reason.

--Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

*Music*

Pop Mix 2010:

1. Revolution (Bob Marley), Charlie Hunter Quartet

2. Rambler, Bill Frisell with Ginger Baker

3. Waltz for Geri, Pat Martino

4. Chorando Baixinho, Paolo Moura and Rafael Rabello

5. What is This Thing Called Love (Cole Porter), Jo Stafford and Her Orchestra

6. Born to be Blue (Tormé/Wells), Helen Merrill

7. Those Clouds are Heavy, You Dig? (Brubeck/Desmond), Kurt Elling

8. My Treasure, Sinne Eeg

9. La Derniére Bergere (Sauvat/Sinevine), James Carter

10. 7th Floor, John Scofield

11. Take Five (Brubeck), Toots Thielemans

12. Suicide is Painless/Song from M*A*S*H (Altman/Mandel), Paul Desmond

13. Holding Back the Years (Hucknall), Erin Bode

14. Love for Sale (Porter), Dianne Reeves

15. Lush Life (Strayhorn), Johnny Hartmann/John Coltrane

16. Moaning, Brenda Boykin

17. Gatekeeper, Feist

Peace love and ATOM jazz