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I recently got a wheelchair again. It's an ultralight rigid frame, 14 (fourteen) pounds! It's easier to push than a stroller. It is liberating to sense that I am totally FREE again, free to go to coffee shops, free to explore, free to go to Central Park if I see fit. Free to wander, free to get lost, free to watch the sunset. Granted I'm not totally free--I would be hard pressed to make it to the upper east side, or the whole of the west side, for example. That's what Access-A-Ride is for. First thing I'm going to do is go to the park! For that matter Madison Square Park is right around the corner. Lollygagging has never appeared more apt.

*Lord's-Jester*

I got the title I wanted (Professional Perfumer); now I'm ready to rest on my laurels and let the income trickle in from my web site. I really don't feel motivated to SELL, SELL, SELL. I want further experimentation, want to play around with combinations I have yet to try, want to use my imagination to envision the likely results of further exploration. Some folks would be motivated to sell themselves hard; I am humble in my desire for perfume income. The reason for this: I can't stop thinking about the fact I could be a great writer, whether with journalism, poetry, plays, novels, social criticism, etc. (journalism, poetry, and plays I have some success at). I guess for me perfume will always be something I _can_ do, but I will always feel that in my heart of hearts I want to write.

The items I'm looking forward most to playing around with include flouve, honeysuckle, araucaria, and mastic. Honeysuckle is heady and deep; how well it will combine with other notes is the question. I assume it will take just the right notes to marry it with. Araucaria I'm told is a heart note; judging from its crystallized consistency, I'm guessing it's a note which falls part way between base and heart. When things have a crystallized consistency, I have trouble thinking of them as "pure heart" notes. Honeysuckle is definitely a heart note; the jury's still out on what category to put araucaria in.

Flouve and mastic are earthy type scents; some of my favorite absolutes are hay and tobacco, so I have high hopes for these two notes. Flouve smells like a complex cross between hay and tobacco; whether or not it can be used successfully in the same circumstances is the pertinent question. Mastic, a top note, is even tougher to put a finger on; it's grassy and I have the impression it will tie together rather deftly the top. Just as tagetes can be used to balance citrus notes, in miniscule amounts, so too I have the feeling mastic will work to balance floral notes. A note which can accomplish this feat is to be treasured. Really, I stop and think that there is far too much I don't yet know; I'll be calling myself a would-be natural perfumer for some time.

*Perfume*

From The Art of Perfumery... by GW Septimus Piesse (1857):

"Peau d'Espagne, or Spanish Skin, is nothing more than highly perfumed leather. Good sound pieces of wash leather are to be steeped in a mixture of ottos in which are dissolved some odoriferous gum-resins, thus: 1/2 an ounce of otto of neroli, otto of rose, and [sandalwood]; 1/4 ounce of otto of lavender, [lemon] verbena, and bergamot; two drams of otto of cloves and otto of cinnamon, with any others thought fit. In this mixture dissolve about two ounces of gum benzoin. Now place the skin in it to steep for a day or so, then hang it over a line to dry.

"A paste is now to be made by rubbing in a mortar one dram of civet and one dram of grain musk, and enough solution of gum acacia or gum tragacanth to give it a spreading consistency.... The skin being cut up into pieces about four inches square are then to be spread over, plaster fashion, with the [gum mixture]. Two pieces being put together, having the civet plaster inside them, are then to be placed between sheets of paper, weighed or pressed, and left to dry thus for a week. Finally each double skin, now called Peau d'Espagne, is to be enveloped in some pretty silk or satin.

"Skin or leather thus prepared evolves a pleasant odor for YEARS [emphasis added], and hence are frequently called, 'the inexhaustible sachet.'"

I have every intention of making Spanish skin at some point. Down the line I'd like to offer journal covers thus prepared. The fact that the above formula is _by weight_ makes much more sense to me now that I have experience making perfume weight-wise.

*Quotations*

Smells are surer than sounds or sights to make your heart strings crack.

--Rudyard Kipling

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

--HL Mencken

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

--Friedrich Nietzsche

Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why.

--Paul Newman

Feelings are like chemicals: the more you analyze them the worse they smell.

--Charles Kingsley

Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.

--Henry Rollins

There are no good girls gone wrong, just bad girls found out.

--Mae West

What we call nature is a poem hidden behind a wonderful secret writing; if we could decipher the puzzle, we should recognize in it the odyssey of the human spirit, which in astonishing delusion flees from itself while seeking itself.

--Ernst Cassirer

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them--that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

--Lao Tzu

If there is to be any peace it will come through being not having.

--Henry Miller

Peace love and ATOM jazz