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Notes04/12/2021
Marieposa
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Marieposa
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39
The Bodleian Library
It had always been easy for him to concentrate. He usually devoured books in no time. What others understood by "learning", he had never really understood. You read a book, and then you knew what was in it. It was as simple as that. Until that fateful day. And it was all HER fault.
He couldn't take his eyes off her. Completely absorbed, she sat at her reading desk. Absorbed in herself, absorbed in the text she had opened in the leather-bound tome. The pale spring light that fell through the tall traceried windows with their ornate roses and pointed arches made fine particles of dust dance, backlighting a delicate glow around her lowered head. She had rested her head on her left hand above the book that had so managed to capture all her attention, and her honey-colored hair fell in a cascade over her shoulder.
Occasionally her delicate lips formed a word as in a dream. Sometimes the hint of a smile flashed over her.
There stirred in him the scarcely restrained desire to awaken the beautiful one, to bring her back from her self-forgetful abandon. To hear her voice as it must have sounded in her mind at that precious moment. He wished for nothing more than for her to sink into who he was in exactly the same way. To listen to what he had to say. He, with all his questions, doubts, uncertainties. With that exclusiveness with which she now devoted herself to her book.
Then, only then, would he dare to breathe her scent.
*
I must admit that it took me quite a while to understand Vol de Nuit, and deciphered the fragrance to me also only by accident. The name has lured me on a completely wrong track: warm asphalt, droning rotors, a little machine oil and the leather of Antoine de de Saint-Exupéry pilot jacket, who frankly looked more like Marlon Brando in my little daydream. I couldn't find much of any of that in this Guerlain classic. I was a little disappointed and convinced that others could do it better - Caron, for example.
Still, Vol de Nuit didn't leave my mind. Something about the scent was so familiar to me, triggering a sense of security, transporting me to a soul place. I just couldn't place which one it was.
It wasn't until I stumbled across Victoria Frolova's review on Bois de Jasmin, in which she compares Vol de Nuit very visually and impressively to the scent of a library, that the scales fell from my eyes. That's exactly what it was! Vol de Nuit smells like what it feels like to enter the Bodleian Library for the first time: Hesperides and aldehydes shimmer like the light streaming through the tall rose windows in the reading room. Iris, vanilla and the leather aspect of daffodils weave together to create the irresistible scent of quality old paper bound in creaky leather. And add to that the dry wood of towering bookshelves that hold intangible treasures, and the beeswax planked floors.
Unfortunately for me, I have trouble with some amber-musk compounds, to which I am hypersensitive. Such is the case with Vol de Nuit. In the base, the amber note becomes so excruciatingly sweet to my sensibilities that I can't wear the fragrance. Too bad. I guess I won't be able to avoid a visit to Oxford anytime soon.
He couldn't take his eyes off her. Completely absorbed, she sat at her reading desk. Absorbed in herself, absorbed in the text she had opened in the leather-bound tome. The pale spring light that fell through the tall traceried windows with their ornate roses and pointed arches made fine particles of dust dance, backlighting a delicate glow around her lowered head. She had rested her head on her left hand above the book that had so managed to capture all her attention, and her honey-colored hair fell in a cascade over her shoulder.
Occasionally her delicate lips formed a word as in a dream. Sometimes the hint of a smile flashed over her.
There stirred in him the scarcely restrained desire to awaken the beautiful one, to bring her back from her self-forgetful abandon. To hear her voice as it must have sounded in her mind at that precious moment. He wished for nothing more than for her to sink into who he was in exactly the same way. To listen to what he had to say. He, with all his questions, doubts, uncertainties. With that exclusiveness with which she now devoted herself to her book.
Then, only then, would he dare to breathe her scent.
*
I must admit that it took me quite a while to understand Vol de Nuit, and deciphered the fragrance to me also only by accident. The name has lured me on a completely wrong track: warm asphalt, droning rotors, a little machine oil and the leather of Antoine de de Saint-Exupéry pilot jacket, who frankly looked more like Marlon Brando in my little daydream. I couldn't find much of any of that in this Guerlain classic. I was a little disappointed and convinced that others could do it better - Caron, for example.
Still, Vol de Nuit didn't leave my mind. Something about the scent was so familiar to me, triggering a sense of security, transporting me to a soul place. I just couldn't place which one it was.
It wasn't until I stumbled across Victoria Frolova's review on Bois de Jasmin, in which she compares Vol de Nuit very visually and impressively to the scent of a library, that the scales fell from my eyes. That's exactly what it was! Vol de Nuit smells like what it feels like to enter the Bodleian Library for the first time: Hesperides and aldehydes shimmer like the light streaming through the tall rose windows in the reading room. Iris, vanilla and the leather aspect of daffodils weave together to create the irresistible scent of quality old paper bound in creaky leather. And add to that the dry wood of towering bookshelves that hold intangible treasures, and the beeswax planked floors.
Unfortunately for me, I have trouble with some amber-musk compounds, to which I am hypersensitive. Such is the case with Vol de Nuit. In the base, the amber note becomes so excruciatingly sweet to my sensibilities that I can't wear the fragrance. Too bad. I guess I won't be able to avoid a visit to Oxford anytime soon.
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Lily3013
