Marieposa

Suddenly you were there. A creature of the night with glowing eyes in the shadow of the new moon. You wrapped me in black flowers until brittle wood and leather strips melted into cat fur, and before I could realize it, I was you. In all those dark hours, I felt your amber-soft hand on my forehead and feverish flesh. In those sleepless nights when the breaths of unsaid words grew louder and louder. Because in the light we are all ready to taste sweet lies when hearts are hungry. Then we keep silent to keep the small world in order, dreaming of the happiness of the future to forget that the present has long since become the past.
Lead me to where my thoughts are. Listen to the unspoken words skin to skin at my side, because the unspoken speaks at night and its truths are bitter, even when the black wings of the moths smoothly brush over the surging waves, jasmine blossoms unfurl in slow motion, something much older than us lies over our souls. Then your leather hand closes around my wrist. Firmly. Gently. Just one step. A willing stumble into the familiar darkness. Because you don't shy away from my abysses, you are reflected in them, and so I close my eyes, intoxicated by the feeling of dizziness, when we lose the wooden floors beneath our feet, let ourselves drift in the stream of time, souls touching in a place that never was and yet always will be.

**

Whenever I smell BD, Patti Smith whispers in my ear: "Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire." And because I would never dare to contradict Patti Smith, I wear BD with all the passion I can muster. But is it just my eternal olfactory desire for dark flowers and coarse leather together with my boundless admiration for Patti Smith that makes this fragrance stay with me?
From a purely rational-analytical point of view, BD is not particularly complex: a truckload of hallucinogenic jasmine meets medicinal, leathery castoreum, which is clearly perceptible from the outset, offsetting the sultry indolicity of the flowers with its bitter accents, while increasingly audible civet notes begin to purr. The facets of dark Assam oud, which I find sometimes brittle, sometimes soft, provide a supporting backbone on which the floral tendrils snake ever higher up into the night sky, supported by liquidambra (which, according to my research, should be more or less equivalent to styrax), which softens the edgy animalism of the robust leather notes with sweet balsamic warmth.
On his homepage, Antonio Lasheras, who says very little about his fragrances and prefers to let them speak for themselves, describes BD as a "vintage floral fragrance" - and, yes, of course that hits the nail on the head. Blind-tested, I would definitely have guessed a lost fragrance legend from the 1920s or 1930s, but BD seems to me to be so much more than that. In its dark opulence and abysmal passion, the fragrance stands above mundane categories such as time and space. BD floats between worlds, between times, between souls and comes so incredibly close to me. There is a shattering honesty in the clear language of this fragrance and a physicality that takes no prisoners and that I no longer want to do without, even though I may not always be equally up to it.

Of course he wouldn't dance with her.
She stood a little away from the hustle and bustle, her eyes fixed on the light of the low sun, although she could only make out his fading silhouette. Shimmering like gold dust, tiny insects tumbled in the light. He must have flushed them out on his way through the tall grass of the meadow, while cheerful music was still playing on the dance floor and the girls in their white dresses were giggling as they spun in circles.
Her dress was also bright white and the delicate flowers in the bouquet in her hand had been picked with just as much care as the others. She was also the only one who had braided a ribbon into her brown hair that was as red as her lips - and yet she would always be the girl whose bawling father on the carriage had disturbed the dance, even if she had defended him from the others as a matter of course.
Of course he hadn't danced with her.
She would not notice that the hem of her dress had turned a damp greenish color from the moss and the wet earth at the edge of the meadow until the next morning. And she didn't see him turn around again in the backlight.

Was there a very slight expression of reproach in her serious gaze?
In the sunlight, her face, framed by warm brown hair, shimmered almost like mother-of-pearl, while the other white figures were already whirling obliviously across the green square and no longer seemed to be thinking about the strange dancer. With this one exception.
It gave him a little pang to see her standing there, apart from the others in her thin white dress, full of gentleness and modesty and yet ... hurt? He wished he hadn't overlooked her in the hustle and bustle, that he hadn't blushed embarrassedly and asked her to dance, spoken to her, asked her name. He could no longer shake off the nagging feeling that he had behaved stupidly, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He turned to the gravel country road and walked on quickly.

**

"A mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience." This is how Thomas Hardy describes his young protagonist at the beginning of his novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles", which was published in 1891 and is only three years younger than Hasu-No-Hana. I don't want to judge whether the scent is "free of any experience", but for me it is definitely a "vessel that contains nothing but feelings".
Around a base of bitter orange and iris over a base of amber, patchouli and oakmoss, which a few decades after its release would probably have been described as chypre with an oriental twist, the fragrance shimmers pearlescent in all the bright facets that colors can take on before they cease to be colors and turn white. Iris is hardly powdery here, but as velvety as the flowers of Iris Florentina, which shimmer in the same white-pearl-light blue as the fragrance. There are other floral notes that I can't name, a touchingly old-fashioned garden carnation (not listed - it was clear that my nose would do what it wants again) and citric notes that lay on the delicate petals like the finest gold dust. As the fragrance progresses, it retains its filigree delicacy and brightness, but becomes spicier due to the (imaginary) garden carnation, takes on a subliminal fruity note (perhaps from ylang-ylang?) and is finally framed by light woods, rather greenish patchouli and gently smoky vetiver and gently cushioned by oodles of oakmoss.

How groundbreaking this fragrance, which seems so nostalgic today, must have been in its day! Or was it even ahead of its time? Like Thomas Hardy's novel?

I don't really want to dwell on the thought, I don't want to philosophize about what Hasu-No-Hana could be or have been for others, I just want to enjoy the heartbreaking beauty of this fragrance. Next to the majestic power and perfection of her sisters Phũl-Nãnã and Shem-el-Nessim from Grossmith's Classic Collection, Hasu-No-Hana may seem almost a little unassuming. It is not a fragrance that feels the need to push itself to the fore, and yet it strikes a chord in me that the other, reverently but distantly admired beauties were unable to touch.
Hasu-No-Hana's bright lightness seems as innocent to me as the young Tess Durbeyfield, who does not yet suspect the sad fate with which the future will punish her beauty and her tender, loyal nature. And yet a melancholy full of longing resonates from the very beginning. Almost like the scene at the very beginning of the novel, which I read again and again, in which Tess Durbeyfields and Angel Clare come within a hair's breadth of not meeting and in which this bitter-sweet what-if resonates.

Many thanks for the sample, dear Floyd. You've started something again ;-)

It was nothing more than a rustling in the dry lemongrass that I heard. A slight dizziness, a pulling at the temples in the glaring light.
If only I knew how it had come about ...
Then there was nothing but the scent of galangal by the waterfall. Lavender blue clouds, broken by the citrus glow of distant sunbeams, the dance of colorful prisms in the haze. Exhausted, I let my heavy limbs sink down next to the osmanthus bushes, my fingers glide pensively through the water of the pond, a murmur in my ear, a sweet buzzing as greenish shimmering adders curl around my arms. My senses fade for a heartbeat, blurred images as I look up, a slender leathery body making serpentine waves. The tuberose blossom in my hand. A flash in immortal yellow eyes as the hissing of the reptilian tongue forms itself into words.
"I can suck the poison from your veins, make the pain go away, heal you."
And so I let it happen. Maple sweetness lies on my tongue while the snake skin closes around my limbs, a world sinks into brittle darkness until my snake eyes are reflected in the calm water.

**

N.O.A.M. - short for New Oceans And Meridians - takes you to foreign worlds with its fragrances, invites you to travel through time and space and knows how to tell impressive stories. All the fragrances I have had the pleasure of getting to know so far are complex and original and I think I can smell the heart and soul that goes into them. In addition to the program designed for reissue, the small Swiss manufactory also offers fragrances with the "Essences", which include Naga Mantra, that contain particularly rare and/or expensive raw materials, which naturally reduces production to a small number of hand-picked bottles.
Naga Mantra opens with an incomparable top note of bergamot, galangal and lemongrass under which minty camphor notes shimmer greenish, which are contrasted by herbaceous lavender on some days and not on others. As the top notes fade, the fragrance reveals a triad of ethereal, tea-like osmanthus blossoms with tuberose, spicy hay and brittle dark woods. In this phase, the fragrance is a little unpredictable, sometimes allowing the floral aspects to become more prominent, with the osmanthus revealing increasingly pronounced leather facets as it progresses, or playing the hay to the fore with the maple syrup accents of immortelle and fenugreek. However, herbaceous greenery always pervades the fragrance like a slithering snake.
In the base, the interplay of notes calms down again, blending into a warm timbre of light tobacco, leather notes and dry dark woods, sweetened by coumarin.
It is precisely this coumarin in combination with the woods that curbs my euphoria a little. What is often described as slightly sweet and creamy is unfortunately always a bit scratchy and sticky to my nose, but I am of course aware that this is complaining on an extremely high level and a very subjective feeling that says more about my nose than about the quality of this extraordinary fragrance.

Thank you very much for the sample, dear Floyd. I think the snake mantra hypnotized me a bit.

When you found me, the days were short and the nights were dark. You knew at a glance how lost I was and you knew the darkness, but you didn't say a word. Your hand closed around my fingers, it was strong and warm, and I followed you to your simple hut. Even in winter, the rosebush there on the walls bears scattered blossoms and the little clouds above the fireplace tell of the fire that never goes out.
You invite me in, put a blanket around my shoulders so that its warmth envelops me like balm. Slowly the color returns to my cheeks and lips and you smile, showing me the dried herbs and rare spices in your kitchen, the tiny golden flowers and the strong tea. You instruct me to stoke the fire in the hearth, tend the embers and draw water from the well in front of the house. And so I stay by your side until the second moon lets the light return.
With bare feet on the loamy ground, we whisper poems into the smoke as the water in the kettle boils under the flames of the hearth fire. We stir the brew of black tea and flowers and secrets, filtering it through the finest leather until I can feel the threads of smoke silvering the tiny cracks in my insides, lightening the dark places.

Day and night the fire will crackle in your hut. It must never go out.

**

Breo Saighead, later also known as Brigid, is a particularly versatile, sometimes contradictory goddess from Celtic pre-Christian Ireland. Among other things, she is considered the guardian of fire, bringer of light, mother goddess and healer, but is also known as a blacksmith and warrior and as the patron saint of poets - perhaps because stories are best told by the fire? Who knows ...
The festival in her honor is Imbolc, the moon festival on the second full moon after the winter solstice, when the days become noticeably longer in February and spring begins to assert itself inexorably against winter. And that could be the reason, more or less consciously, why Breo Saighead of all people came to my winter-weary mind when I smelled Ananda Wilson's The Witch for the first time.
With its dark ambery resins, balsamic warmth and notes of smoky tea, spices, leathery osmanthus and a few scattered rose petals, I would undoubtedly have categorized the scent as autumnal, wintry, and yet now in early spring it seems to be just what I needed.
For a while now, I've been torn between my longing for fresh greenery and the need to snuggle up. I'm not in the mood for my heavier winter fragrances, but find the cooler spring fragrances too demanding. A little unexpectedly, The Witch fills exactly this gap in between.
Perhaps it's the somewhat surprising ethereal camphor-like freshness that glitters over the fragrance for about fifteen minutes - I can't for the life of me identify which of the notes might be responsible for this effect, but it does ensure that the confusing density that often irritates me about natural fragrances is absent. Then amber balsam with a pronounced osmanthus note works its way to the fore, settling like rays of sunshine on the spring-hungry soul, and is balanced by a dark, smoky tea note and spices, as if someone had handed me a healing potion, brewed in a cauldron over Breo Saighead's eternal fire. Slowly, the smoke clears and makes room for the slightly animalic leather notes of Osmathus, the fragrance softens and begins to glow mysteriously like the last full moon of winter, before it becomes quieter and quieter, a spicy amber glow, and finally fades away.

Dear Brida, how can I thank you for sharing this treasure with me?

There is still the squeaking of the tire swing. An echo from childhood. A place that is always a different one, flows across my inner map, and yet it is there.
The sour pungency of rhubarb, the tug on the teeth, the smell of rubber that sticks to the child's clothes because the old car tire has become warm in the sun and it can't stop swinging higher and higher. Grass stains on the knees, the view of the black stones that seem to dissolve in the movement. A courageous leap, then it's just a few steps, following the meandering pale roots, along the delicate green of the grasses down to the old pine tree. The crown of daisies sways lightly, even if one of them is now lying forlornly on the lava stones. An inkling that every summer carries a little winter within it, every light knows the darkness, and even on the horizon, the snow on the highest mountain peaks will never melt. A small moment, quite inconspicuous and yet anchored in the soul. It shapes it like the glacier shapes the mountain and the surf shapes the coast.
Break off another stalk of rhubarb in your parents' wild garden, but even if you sweeten it with sugar, a grain of salt will remain.

**

Fischersund from Reykjavik has based its categorization of fragrances on the Icelandic seasons and distinguishes between the three dark, wintery Skammdegi fragrances and the three light, summery Langdegi fragrances. No 8 is one of these summer children and, in my opinion, the brightest, perhaps also the lightest fragrance in the Langdegi series, and yet it cleverly plays with opposites and contrasts.
The top note combines tart grapefruit with stalky bitter green, broken up by lovely hedione stars. The green quickly takes the lead, I perceive an ethereal cool note, would have guessed incense, which is not listed here, and suspect that it could be pine. Tree needles don't have an easy time with my skin, but share some of their natural facets with frankincense, and I suspect my impression might stem from that. The fruitiness of the grapefruit also takes on increasingly greener shades until I finally perceive it as rhubarb - and make a mental note to test intensively next rhubarb season to see if there really is such a clear olfactory relationship with grapefruit as I perceive it here.
The initial coolness is balanced by a mineral warm stone effect, for which Iso E Super could be responsible. The light, bright scent from the start turns into a transparent shimmer, but is prevented from flying away by a quirky but exciting, never unpleasant gum note. I imagine that vetiver is involved here, which can have this effect, but I'm not sure whether I've simply smelled the combination of grapefruit and vetiver so often by now that my head automatically complements it.
The cleverly used contrasts of warm and cold, light and dark create a quiet melancholy in this fragrance, which tells of summer and yet has not forgotten winter.