051610

I am incredibly lonely. Being tied to home is the problem. I can't even get women to look at me when I'm in a wheelchair. It's been nearly three years since I had a girlfriend. I am isolated, trapped, by my own inability to walk. If you all know folks with MS, don't let them disappear. It's a bitter life with no hope. It'll just be getting worse, so make connections while you still can. I can't help thinking I have a lot to give, despite my disabled state. I am totally isolated and trapped. You may think it's easy to meet people; with a wheelchair? I'm stuck trying to steal looks from people at parks and on the street. This is SO not fair!

_____

"I tell you that you will win thereby in this life, and that at every step you take along this path, you will see so much certainty of winning and so negligible a risk, that you will realize in the end that you have wagered on something certain and infinite, for which you have paid nothing."

--Blaise Pascal, on the existence of god

*Poem*

Goodbye

We never said goodbye.

Up and down and

over the hill we went,

and we did not say

goodbye. That's the part

which hurts the most.

Maybe when I forgave her,

on that frigid night,

I did manage to say

I didn't care about

any of the irreconcilable

differences, but I never

said goodbye.

She told me she wouldn't

be half the person she'd

become were it not for me,

and I took that statement

and I did not look up.

She was coming back to me,

I was sure of it. But then,

the things that you're

most certain of have a way

of turning to dust as soon

as you gaze upon them.

*Lord's-Jester*

This week we made another attempt at Phoebe, and one at Daphne. With Phoebe, I made a couple of leaps of faith as far as what might work; I put honeysuckle in the heart and mastic on top. Wrong choices! What I ended up with was far too grassy; it contained none of the precious character of osmanthus. Back to the drawing board, though I have a fairly good idea what has to happen: I need to take out everything that gets in the way of the osmanthus. No honeysuckle and no mastic. I need to get out of the way. This perfume seems much more rarefied than it is; I think it's the anonymous flower (osmanthus) in the middle of it. It's working--the way I had it. Failure #23. Long line of failures, but this is one I hope will be one of my best perfumes.

One thing that's a problem: I cannot find pine-needle absolute. The most I can find is pine-needle macerated in fixed oil (useless for alcohol perfumes). This is so not fair. I had a bottle of pine-needle absolute that I got a while ago from Aftelier (got .5oz again, in a pinch; Mandy knew); I had _no idea_ it was so hard to find. This is like powdery amber in every bottle; the idea that I can't get it anymore has me beside myself. Nowhere, no how. It was a trick of mine to include pine-needle absolute in base sections far and wide; the fact that it smells like amber was an added bonus (in truth, it doesn't really; it's a sweet approximation of amber). The idea that I can't get it now was a surprise I wasn't expecting.

Daphne is my chypre. As such, it's dense and rich. It's also somewhat sprawling; I put everything but the kitchen sink in there (20 notes altogether). What I tried to do was to feature tonka bean; it's an overbearing material, so I can't hide it for the life of me. Also, the point of chypres is that they have oakmoss in them (cypress too); as such, I tried an offshoot of amber in the base (tonka instead of vanilla). The perfume is very complex, and I'm hoping for the best. The problem is, I can't seem to cut down enough on the very-vanilla tonka bean; Uta and I smelled it and concluded it's still heavy on tonka bean. Back to the drawing board, though I'm quite sure I've eliminated enough of the offender; now it's a matter of balancing _the rest_ of the perfume.

*Quotations*

'Do you know what's wrong with Americans? They're too serious. They don't have enough sense of humor.' I knew just what he was saying, because the Japanese Buddhist world has this knack for seeming very formal and very strict on the surface, and then just having a freewheeling, very tolerant time behind the surface. That's a trick. A lot of American Buddhism is still crypto-Protestantism.

--Gary Snyder

There never was a great soul that did not have some divine inspiration.

--Marcus T Cicero

In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.

--Salvador Dali

Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.

--Allen Ginsberg

I was tired of the comedians who made jokes about their mothers-in-law and crabgrass and avoided the serious issues. I was just sick to my stomach of wearing the dumb tuxedo and entertaining middle-class morons.

--George Carlin

The perfumes are powerful magicians, being able to transport you through the years that you lived.

--Helen Keller (translated from French)

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.

--Woody Allen

The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.

--Charles DuBois

Nothing is; everything is becoming.

--Heraclitus

There is no knowledge of true being. The world is fundamentally in a state of becoming.

--Nietzsche

*Music*

Rufus Wainwright, All the Days are Nights. Maybe this is the album he meant to make, but it lacks the epic qualities of the rest of his work. Oh, I had high hopes for this record! It's just solo piano and vocals, and the tempo is all wrong. I'm all for solo piano and vocals, but this record is seriously lacking. Maybe other fans will hear it and say, "Oh, this is the album we were hoping for;" I think those types will be few and far between.

Tina Dico, The Road to Gävle. This is ear candy, especially if you've gotten used to the sound of Ms Dico's voice. From the first track to the last it's very fresh; this is a musician who's not used to the instrumentation that's common among others, as such, it comes off as very cutting edge. Really, anything she were to do would come off as fresh to the unaccustomed listener. Here's looking forward to a long career for Dico.

Peace love and ATOM jazz