Breathing in Brooklyn

Brownie and I "ceberated" Spring Break yesterday by going to NYC to spend money stimulate the economy play.  Along the way, we saw Hugh Jackman heading out of a Gap near Union Square.  The man, he is tall.  And wet.  Near soaking, actually, as were we all, because the Northeast got hit with a Nor'easter this weekend and it was sheeting rain all damn day.  Re: Mr. Jackman, no I gawk openly, chase him down the street, attempt to get a picture or anything else.  I did do a double-take.

Anyway, the highlight of the trip was easily a trip to the CB I Hate Perfume gallery in Brooklyn, the website of which I've linked to in the blog title.  The gallery is fucking awesome.  It's a medium-sized room with white, cubbyhole type shelves on two sides of the wall (this is where the testers are displayed), a table, some random stools, and then a few steps up to the back area where they mix all the scents.  There are several lines of perfumes which tend toward the natural/outdoorsy side of scents, as well as several series of single-note accords.

Basically, it's a perfume heaven.  The other perfume heaven, of course, is Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab (BPAL).  The difference, for those who know neither or for those only familiar with one, is fairly simple.  BPAL works to create scents that are olfactory interpretations of literature, artwork, myths, experiences - whatever has captured Beth's attention.  The clearest example of this is the Salon series, where a work of art has been "translated" into a scent interpretation - certain notes in the perfume may have been chosen because they're represented in the painting (i.e., a painting with sunflowers will have sunflower in the scent oil, etc), other notes may have been chosen because they match the color of the painting (i.e., a form of synesthesia: the way we often think of the color orange when we smell the fruit of the same name).  The blends then create a sort of mood or feeling.  Example: Falling Leaf Moon gives off a mood that is reminiscent of wandering through a forest in New England in late October - melancholy, damp, woodsy, and the idea of a pumpkin pie floating in the background.

CB I Hate Perfume, conversely, can best be described by the accords.  The accords aren't interpretations.  They flat-out smell exactly like what the label claims.  If the label says Mango, it smells like a mango.  If the label says Clean Baby Butt, it smells like baby powder.  Smokehouse smells exactly like a barbeque joint.  The perfumes are interpretations of ideas or experiences, much like BPAL, but whereas BPAL will create a scent that gets across the mood, CBIHP will create a scent that smells like the actual moment.  To contrast with BPAL Falling Leaf Moon above, CBIHP has a scent called M3: November which smells exactly like you've been dropped into a forest in the late fall.  It isn't a mood, it's an experience.

That said, the differences are obviously minor, but distinct.  Another small difference:  CBIHP smells 'cleaner' to me, BPAL 'richer,' if that makes any sense.

Brownie and I wandered in at about 1:15 and were met almost at the door by one of the employees, a British-sounding chap named Russell.  We were allowed to dump dripping umbrellas in an umbrella stand, told to drop our coats on one of the stools, and then given a brief tour of what was where: perfume series to the left (with water perfumes available to spray at will; CBIHP doesn't use alcohol in their perfume) and accords to the right.  We were then told that any accords we wanted would be made to order, told if we wanted Cradle of Light to order about 25 minutes before we wanted to leave so that they'd have time to make the water perfume up (quite expensive, that one!), and were then left alone to sniff, sniff, sniff and sniff some more.

They have damn near everything.  There were only two scents I could think of that I would have loved that they didn't have: sunflower accord and neroli accord.  Everything else, however, was there.  And I mean everything, from wet concrete accord (smells like rainy sidewalks) to roast beef accord (beefy and lightly herbed - made me hungry!) to an accord jokingly called "You know what this is..." which was, I am not kidding, Play-Doh.  Honest to FSM, Play-Doh.

The thing that really blows my mind, however, is the water line of accords.  I've seen and tried lots of aquatic perfumes, but I have never once smelled one that smells like real rain.  With BPAL, I always feel like the aquatics are something that lend more to the mood of a scent rather than a description of "this here smells like an actual ocean."  So when I picked up CBIHP's Rain Storm accord, the last thing I was expecting it to smell like was a thunderstorm.  BUT IT DOES.  It smells like actual, real, true, falling from the sky RAIN (which I had ample opportunity to verify, given, as I mentioned earlier, the city was being drenched in the stuff).

I ended up with two perfumes and three accords:
- Fig Leaf / Revelation perfume
- I am a Dandelion perfume
- Rain Storm accord
- Wet Lawn accord
- Pimms Cup accord (a quick google later tells me that Pimms Cup is a gin-based citrus liquor, which I'm now mad to try)

A lovely time was had by all (except my wallet, of course).  I'm thrilled with my scents and will review them in later posts.

Getting out of bed

Getting out of bed in the morning has taken to posing something of a problem for me (er, moreso than usual). I can't decide how much of this is January/February-standard SAD and how much of it is the general "where is my life going"-type angst that I've been feeling for the past year. Admittedly, part of the problem this morning is that it's gray and raining (boo, January, it's supposed to be snowing now, not raining!), and rain is guaranteed to keep me in bed as long as possible.

So by this point it's 1pm. This morning I have managed the following:
- finally pull my butt out of bed around 10:45-11
- eat a bowl of oatmeal (breakfast is a new thing I'm trying as of this morning, so we'll see how that goes)
- drink my coffee
- check my email, facebook and forum
- sit and contemplate blogging for a while before deciding to attempt to get a post out

I was going to blog last night because I was in sort of the right mood (i.e., contemplative or whatever), but then it occurred to me that I had pot de creme in the fridge (leftover from Brownie's birthday on Thursday) and an unwatched Vampire Diaries on the DVR. I went for the easier option. I didn't even feel guilty about it, which I figure is a good step for me. But then, Saturday night at midnight shouldn't be a time to feel guilty about wanting to relax.

At this point I'm trying to convince myself to go to the gym. I really should: the running is good for me mentally and emotionally (well, and physically, but I never seem to think about that as much this time of year - it's all about trying to keep my mood at a supportable level).

It's idiotic the things I contemplate when I'm sitting here at 1 o'clock on a Sunday and trying desperately to get myself to do something about which I might actually feel good. I've spent 20 minutes trying to figure out what BPAL I have that is appropriate for a miserably cold and rainy winter day. I have a few that work for miserably cold and rainy autumn and spring days, but for some reason none of those seem right for winter, as though winter were to need something with that extra level of "well, it really should be snowing but it's not." In the grand scheme of things, this entire line of thinking is insane, and I know this, and I also know that chances are extremely high that I'll throw on something woodsy and be done with it. And none of this matters.

What I probably should do is get my ass off the futon, go to the gym so I can run and lift weights for a while, come home, shower, and work on the novel for a while. I had a lengthy conversation on Friday night which ended at 3 and kept me up until after 5 thinking about how guilt can be used as a subtle, awful weapon in a relationship. Nothing about the conversation itself need be said, as it's not my current issues that were being explored, meaning that this isn't a space for any of that to be discussed, but it did occur to me at some point as I was lying in bed reeling from some nasty memories which I wish would just die already that a problem with the novel in current form is that I was nowhere near hitting exactly how guilt can be used as a mechanism of control, but that this is something I can fix in revisions. Therefore I think I ought to be revising while all of this is fresh in my head (or, really, sort of fresh - I've been turning this over and over and over for about a day and a half now so that everything's shifted a few times by now).

I think I am going to go to the gym. It's probably the best thing I can do for the blahs at the moment.

Cliches

At some point I will remember that going to Kansas to visit anyone for any reason whatsoever inevitably ends up being something along the lines of $600 once I get out there. Always. This time I went out for a wedding of a good friend. The wedding was great, the reception moreso: it basically functioned like a giant reunion for my old college crowd (the pictures of which are now on facebook). We're seriously getting old here - while I managed somehow to stay out on Friday night until 2 for the first time in so long I seriously can't remember, the reception went until about 10:30, a few of us went out and grabbed a quick snack after, and I was back at my parents by midnight. People, I am not even thirty yet. Sometimes I really miss college.

The oddest thing about the trip was Friday before I went out - everyone was in town by Friday dinnertime, so I was expecting a giant group of us to get together, have dinner and play. All of that fell through - I ended up only meeting up with one friend and his boyfriend at 9 or so - and so I found myself sitting around for most of Friday early evening online and chatting with my mom and basically feeling lonely and out of the loop. I'm used to feeling like that where I am now, just as I'm used to the fact that the vast majority of my social life atm is online, but it was a really weird feeling to have that happen back home, where I generally expect to be hugely busy all the time. Brownie wasn't out in KS with me either, which compounded the lonely feeling, and I'd failed to manage to get together with any of the friends that still live in the area because everyone was too busy and I was getting over a cold. It was like going home and being a stranger to everyone not in my family. Things got better once I got out late Friday and the wedding on Saturday was a blast, but I can't count the number of times I thought "I hate adulthood" while I was there. Anyway, even the lonely and isolated bit wasn't bad since it helped me figure out how to start bringing the NaNo novel to an end.

I know that all sounds like a giant "you can't go home again" or "growing up sucks" type thing, but I don't mean it to. I think part of why some of the lonely/isolated feelings were resonating so strongly with me was in how I remembered those feelings being a much more considerable part of my life in high school or college than they are now. Not to sound maudlin, but I don't think I ever fully felt at home when I actually lived there, so it shouldn't surprise me that I often don't feel at home there now.

So I got home Sunday night and was greeted with the coming of Monday's mail by the arrival of a BPAL order and some samples of CB I Hate Perfume scents from a lovely wonderful online friend. It's almost stupid how much new smellies make me happy. Also: I just discovered that a new Editors album came out last week, so I've now downloaded that. It sounds like the Editors spent six months drinking with Depeche Mode and then decided to record it. I'm generally in favor of this.

On the ADHD/dissertation front: I now have enough legal speed to keep me awake through 2011. I should take one and dissertate this afternoon but I just. don't. want. to. because burnout. so I'm contemplating grading instead, or perhaps being completely academically non-productive and spending the afternoon testing smellies, listening to the Editors and fleshing out the NaNo outline some more (i.e., figuring out town layouts and so on).