Interesting theme. If I learned anything about myself throughout my nearly six decades on this planet, it must be that whatever I get into, I can't do it by half. Be it music, cinema, literature, Franco-Belgian comic books, artefacts - I dive into it with a passion. Accumulating quite a bit of knowledge and, well, a few things in the process. With perfumes it is no different.
It has to be said as well, though, that every once in a while, I sell things. In a radical way, one might say. Over the last twenty years or so, I've sold thousands and thousands of records, novels, comic books and CD's, as well as my entire film library (ranging from books and magazines to memorabilia, tapes and DVD's). If I hadn't done so, I would at one point not have been able to move around in my own apartment any longer. So in the end, it's healthy, you see. Also for the simple fact that I don't want to become a slave of my passions, or perhaps more precisely put: of my passionate nature. After every bigger sale, I felt thoroughly relieved. There are a few regrets, to be sure, but they probably make up less than 0,3 percent of the whole. Those regets are, if you will, part of the deal.
The difference between, say, a novel and a bottle of perfume, of course being that the bottle eventually runs out. I think that's a good thing. Like for Ursaw, in her splendid post, for me, accumulating items is an intuitive act. Something I do take into consideration when it comes to the olfactive arts, however, is that, a handful of all-time-favourite fragrances excepted, I try to avoid 100 ml bottles. You know: so many scents, so little time. Perhaps this is partly the result of the learning curve in acquiring so many different things over a lengthy period of time. I always use the words 'accumulate' or 'acquire' as opposed to 'collect'. For me, it's necessary to steer well clear of that dangerous cliff's edge on which stands the ever-obsessed collector, or his incurably possessed brother: the completist. For me, that would mean the end of enjoying perfumery (or anything else for that matter).
So am I ever going to stop buying perfumes? Well, only if the money runs out, I suppose.
Only about ten days ago, I brought home twenty-one second-hand novels from one of my trips to Brussels. Was my library in dire need of them? Not in the least. Yet over the course of one afternoon I joyfully acquired the books. Picked with precision and conviction. Why? Because their plot, theme, setting, characters, cover illustration (just as aesthetically important to me as the bottle a perfume comes in) greatly appealed to me. Whispered to me, you might say. Even if I never get round to reading a few of them, I still like having them on my shelves. That's how I go about things, there is neither plan nor objective, there's only the mysterious phenomenon of intuition. And it hardly ever betrays me.
As I write these lines, the next olfactive creations are already waiting, somewhere, to eventually find their way to me. What they will be, what they will smell like, I have no way of knowing yet. That is, to sum things up, the beauty of it.