Buddha

Perfume

The following was the first review in a list of seven May-1st perfumes, by John Reasinger, now an editor at Ca Fleure Bon (CFB):

“Lord’s Jester’s Gaia (edc) launched in 2011, is a fitting starting point, since this sabbat was all about the Earth Mother. Created of 100% natural essences, this fragrance captures every aspect of the festival and the May Queen. It begins brightly with citruses and linden blossom and is very green. Tagetes (marigolds) add a spicy dryness that balances the brightness. As it develops, warmer more summery floral notes appear. Rose gallica, mimosa, ylang ylang and orange flower dance (like lovers around a maypole) and create a more sensual aspect. In the final dry down, Gaia is slightly animalic, warmer and more earthy. Labdanum, ambrette, pine needles and Africa stone (hyrax) create the perfect equivalent to a passionate embrace and is just delightful! Equal parts fresh, floral, spicy, woody and musky; this fragrance is a fitting homage to Gaia herself…yet is utterly unisex. Sillage: good (for an EDC). Longevity: above average.”

All perfumes

“A very nice rose, combined well with iris. I’m a fan of rose/oud scents, but do find the oud to be overpowering at times. This offers a nice middle ground of rose and woodiness, where the rose is never overtaken, only mellowed by other notes. Very smooth scent, with no sharp edges. Well done!”
–jane.rome on Fragrantica, regarding Aphelia

Some perfumes

“Aphelia is one of the most beautiful rose scents I have ever tried. It is natural, luscious, sweet and silky. It is a stunning portrait of a crimson rose, alive and beautiful in a simple but elegant frame of other notes. The scent opens with a gorgeous strong rose mixed with a touch of spices and fruits layered on soft and earthy woods. The scent has complexity but the rest of the notes never take the spotlight to take attention away from the rose. The composition is done so well that I perceive the scent as one beautiful, vibrant rose, alive and natural. The scent becomes sweeter and rosier as time progresses. The rose is indeed in full bloom in the heart notes and its aroma is divine. The dry down is cozy amber with a dash of vanilla and iris. I still smell soft echoes of a rose in the dry down. The scent is close to the skin at this stage but the longevity is reasonable (at least 5-6 hours). Aphelia fragrance comes in a form of a concrete (solid) perfume and I have to admit that I was skeptical at first. After trying it, I have no hesitation to recommend it. I love this scent in the form of concrete perfume. I think that solid perfume texture is more close to the pure parfum/perfume oils and it gives this scent its velvety, smooth structure. I love it. Overall score 9.5/10. Smooth, beautiful, silky rose in full bloom–close to perfection for me.”
–icekat, also on Fragrantica

Writing

I just realized recently that if you go to http://www.youtube.com/adamgottschalk/, you will be taken to my so-called “channel,” featuring 42 videos, all by rote (from memory). I will be adding a few more soon. For now, the stuff that’s on there isn’t half bad. I recently added Dear Richard–I can’t believe it took me as long as it did to record this! One of my best, most heartfelt pieces. Speaking to a computer feels nowhere near as good as speaking to an audience. I miss Broken Word! There are a couple of open mics near, but one’s in a Christian coffee shop! Not that I really care Christians will be there; the first piece I would read would be Monks Follow Me. I need to find some way of finding an open mic somewhere in Tampa proper; there used to be several, one in Clearwater too. There used to be a free weekly paper, Weekly Planet, which listed all the open mics (and other things of interest to the literate crowd); they do have on online version now called Creative Loafing (cltampa.com).

youtube

Before I left Bellingham, we had a going-away party just for me. Little did I know this was to be the only party for me before my marriage; I tried to have a 40th birthday party in Manhattan, long after I was abandoned, but none of my old friends came. The going-away party was, in the end, sort of lame, for various reasons. But I met a Swiss pharmaceutical rep; I was talking to him with ease. I asked him what he thought of my spoken word; he was impressed that I able to go on for 45 minutes from memory. I asked what he thought of the poems themselves; he said he couldn’t understand a single sentence. Certain words he knew quite well (after all, I had been speaking with him quite fluently), but the overall gist of what I was saying was way over his head. It was then that I realized this: the best poetry is intimate and, with luck, grounded in its host culture.

You’d have to have grown up in America to really “get” my poems. To that topic my poem Rugby is relatively related:

Typical Americans

Rugby

Rugby, North Dakota is dead center,
smack dab in the middle of North America,
sitting quietly, little known,
with all the states writhing around it,
all the corn fields, the trailer parks,
the mountains, the ghettoes,
the dwindling forests, the endangered
species of the participating citizen,
the poets and beatniks and punks,
the bank robbers and pimps,
the ministers and governors and
their many misguided congregations,
the cities of trash and forgotten lives,
the ghost towns and war zones,
all stretching out, acre upon acre, from its
epicenter, cruising and riding,
lying and stealing for miles and miles and
miles. Occasionally, some tourists stop in
at the main bar at the center of town.
Danny, the bartender in residence
for decades, has a little speech he gives
every once in a while to passers through,
a speech about how being at the very
center of it all means Rugby is the actual
heart of America (and Canada too,
for that matter), how being the heart
means at any given moment you can
catch a whiff, on Rugby’s streets,
of the essence of us all,
can finally really swallow what it’s
always meant to be born and raised,
or to come to your fruition,
in a country of mongrels and dissidents,
of atheists and Bible thumpers,
of militia men and hippie girls,
of skeptics and shamans,
of black, of white, of brown,
of pain, of endless love, of boundless hope.
Very few actually know it, but even just
the idea of Rugby, North Dakota somehow
manages to keep America America,
when she forgets herself who she really is,
when she ignores the fact that she really does
still have a heart, a heart still beating
despite the bastardization of all her dreams,
still pounding in the face of all her shame.

Taiwan

Jong Shan N. Road, Taipei

When I was staying at the Happy Family guesthouse, a bunch of us would often sit at the rickety, fold up card table. I was surrounded by English and Australian folks. Sometimes we’d play cards (there was this one Australian guy who warned us he _always_ had good luck at poker–he was certainly right! I don’t know if it was skill or just dumb luck, but he always won). Anyway, the point of this tidbit is this: English people have radically different accents depending on where exactly they hail from. London blue-bloods have totally different accents from someone say from Wales or Scotland. They literally couldn’t understand each other, and always turned to me, asking, “What did he say?” I learned from this that American accents are typically more neutral, except for the far reaches in the south (Alabama) and the north (Maine). That’s also the reason Taiwanese people at the time, much to the chagrin of the English, wanted American teachers; also because if they were to do business with anyone, it was almost definitely with Americans.

Quotations

1. Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.–Buddha

2. Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is a stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

3. The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.–Bob Marley

4. So many lives are on the line right now. The system is crashing. It’s crashing economically and it’s crashing ecologically. The stakes are too high for us not to make the absolute most of this moment.–Naomi Klein

5. When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.–Chinese proverb

6. I think everybody should like everybody.–Andy Warhol

7. If a man has an apartment stacked to the ceilings with newspaper, we call him crazy. If a woman has a trailer house full of cats, we call her nuts. But when people pathologically hoard so much cash that they impoverish the nation, we put them on the cover of Forbes magazine and pretend that they are role models.–B Lester

8. I’ll tell you this, religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality. And the protections we have for religion–we protect religion! And talk about a lifestyle choice. That is absolutely a choice. Gay people don’t choose to be gay. At what age did you choose not to be gay?–Jon Stewart to Mike Huckabee

9. I watch people and wonder how some of them found their way out of the birth canal.–Daffy Duck (Jewels ?)

10. Re-examine all that you have learned. Dismiss what insults your Soul.–Walt Whitman

11. To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson

Peace, love, and may you live in fragrant delight

George Soros

Perfume

Daytime Show, Tampa

I have a TV interview coming up, on the Daytime Show in Tampa, and if I’m lucky, there will be more. For now I’ll be hoping my business will start to flourish. I have enough perfume bottled or ready to bottle; now it’s just a matter of getting my perfumes to start flying off the shelves, so to speak. I’ve gotten a couple of responses to the Times article, but only a few. I question seriously whether or not they will be repeat customers. Natural perfume is, to the vast majority of people, completely alien; I’m sure most folks don’t know exactly what to do with it. At the fashion show I still had people trying to smell perfumes directly from the bottle, despite strong recommendations to spray them on cotton balls. Recently I created a postcard which reads:

Be it known:

When applying liquid perfume
May it always be on your own skin
[Do not smell it out of the bottle]
Please allow it to dry before smelling

For concrete de parfum [solids]
Slide your finger gently over the balm
Then apply anywhere you want
Do not dig into the perfume

It might help to include that postcard in every package we send out, but then again, people will probably ignore everything I say. Even at the Perfume House in Portland Oregon, the only store of its kind in the country (they sell _only_ perfume), they have cotton balls right at each “station,” or the spots where you come to test perfumes out. They certainly don’t have you smelling out of bottles. They have a huge number of (synthetic) perfumes, and one can easily get lost for hours. I used to, before I learned about natural perfume. People sometimes ask me if I know the smell of Opium or J’Adore, for example, and I can only say, quietly, “No, all I smell is that it’s synthetic.” Why would I want to be up to date with the latest hot synthetic perfumes? I wouldn’t and don’t want to. CDPs might easier for people to understand.

Concrete de Parfum

Hualien, Taiwan

Could be the Teachers' Guesthouse

I fled Taipei due to girlfriend trouble. I had one friend who’d fled also; he was staying at Jiao Shr Hwei Guan (Teachers’ Guesthouse). When I got to Hualien, I was aiming to find work at a bushiban (language center); one day we were looking for one bushiban in particular; Jeremy didn’t speak a word of Chinese, so it was I who stopped a stranger asking for directions (having been in Taiwan only three months, I could already speak Mandarin quite well (I’ve always had a facility for foreign languages)). Anyway this gentleman, Mr. Xie, asked if we would consider tutoring his two boys in exchange for a big apartment and a new Vespa; we said we’d think about it–didn’t even find the bushiban we’d been looking for. Came back to the guesthouse and called Mr. Xie right away to agree to his proposition. Now, Mr. Xie could tell Jeremy was English (and English english was frowned upon at the time) so he wanted me in particular to teach his boys.

The Natural Approach

I quickly found more than enough work; I prided myself on what a good teacher I was, using the Natural Approach (the way any child learns their own language) and having studied latin in grammar school. When I wasn’t teaching, I’d wander around on my Vespa, visiting temples (there were hundreds in this small town!), vegetarian buffets (thanks to the multitude of Buddhists), spending hours in teashops, from which I learned a great deal of colloquial language, traditions, and other things which make Chinese people Chinese. I sought every single place which could be of interest. Now there are Buddhist temples in Hualien, and “creolized” religions which combine buddhism taoism and indigenous beliefs, and Taoist temples. You might find it hard to believe–I think a Taoist temple is over-the-top. I consider myself, however, to be a Taoist.

Taoist temple?

I found a Taoist “center.” I walked in one day and the place was empty; I thought maybe it was supposed to be. Then a man came up front and was surprised to see me. Once he got over the fact I could speak Chinese very well, he asked what exactly I wanted to know. I asked general questions about Taoism. When it became clear I didn’t know myself what I wanted to ask, he said we should meditate; meditation, it turns out, is the main way Taoists practice Taoism. Anyway, this fellow knew I was new to meditation, and he wanted to show me how a _Taoist_ meditates. He said you want your senses distracted; he rang a bell at the beginning to let the cosmos know we were about to meditate, he burned incense, and let the sounds of the world come in through the windows.

Hualien city

He advised me that one should be able to meditate right in the middle of a ruckus. The next part of what he said changed my life forever: he said breathe in and out 10 times (I think it’s the same, in Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, etc.), but he said imagine yourself as a tree and when you breathe in, you breathe to the top leaves touching the sky (the light, yin), and as you breathe out imagine breathing deep into the earth (the dark, yang). Incredible the effect of meditating in this way for a while! Things in your life begin to play out better because, well, because you’re peaceful. Peace comes in ways you can’t imagine before the peace comes. I highly recommend meditation for everyone–I like especially to do this taoist meditation in waiting rooms. If, in a waiting room, you can concentrate, breathing up to the leaves touching the sky and down deep into the earth, you’ll be in excellent shape.

The image I meditate on

Poem

Seattle: bad news compared to Vancouver, BC

Dear Seattle

When I first saw you, I was coming in
from the north with my girlfriend. I was
stunned at the sight of you; my girlfriend
was a little under-whelmed. I haven’t
seen her in years. When I first came
to understand you, or what you would
eventually mean to me, I was sitting
alone in a backyard at your pinnacle,
Cascades distant on one side,
Olympics yet more distant on the other,
having a beer in honor of my brother
who’d just driven off the side of the road.
It’s been almost fifteen years since we
met, and I’m more alone than ever,
more alone even than that one night in
a yard when I cried for want of
any shoulder to cry on, even just a soul
to talk to. I left you long ago, but the sense
of being on my own in this world, a sense
which struck me for the first time fully
in your shadows, is still with me. I
cannot shake it no matter what I do or
how I try. Above all, it’s the depths of
the solitude I knew which burned
themselves deep under my skin.
Though I’d lived many places, I
always felt like a total novice inside
you. Somewhere along the way, I
simply forgot how to love right.
Did you cast a spell on me, twist up
my various destinies to ensure
I’d never really figure it out? At the
moment, you’re the only one I’ve
got to blame, so I’m putting it all
on you. Serves you right, for all
the lonely nights, all the
uninvited parties, all the botched
affairs. The nights out I dressed up
and pretended, at uncomfortable
clubs, that I was waiting for
a lady to arrive. The catching of eyes
with clerks and waitresses and
girls on the street which never
got me one step closer to any
company. The hoping that
in some college class, or some
bar, or at some open mic I
might meet a woman who could
tolerate me forever. That’s still
with me too, the wanting of forevers.
I was beguiled by you at first, but
have long since come to my
senses. If I could change one thing
about our acquaintance, I would
remove from my memory banks
all the wondering I did about
what exactly others seemed to know,
world wise, love wise, friendship wise,
that I didn’t, what exactly
left me outside the barricades
of cliques and buddies and women
I dreamed of while only half wanting,
what kept my hopes up like a hapless
puppy despite years of nothing and no one.
While I’m happy I met you early on
in my Northwest life, I can only conclude
that my life is decent now that I’ve
gotten far enough away from you.
I do wish you well, but only
half-heartedly, only with a wince
of cold recollection.
Half my love, Adam

Quotations

1. Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.–Abraham Lincoln, 1840

2. Drug prohibition has caused gang warfare and other violent crimes by raising the prices of drugs so much that vicious criminals enter the market to make astronomical profits, and addicts rob and steal to get money to pay the inflated prices for their drugs.–Michael Badnarik

3. Just as the process of repealing national alcohol prohibition began with individual states repealing their own prohibition laws, so individual states must now take the initiative with respect to repealing marijuana prohibition laws.–George Soros

4. Prohibition has made nothing but trouble.–Al Capone

5. Prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into.–Don Marquis

6. The attempt to make the consumption of beer criminal is as silly and as futile as if you passed a law to send a man to jail for eating cucumber salad.–Stephen Leacock

7. A book whose sale is forbidden all men rush to see, and prohibition turns one reader into three.–Italian proverb

8. There is pain in prohibition.–Irish proverb

9. The prohibition law, written for weaklings and derelicts, has divided the nation, like Gaul, into three parts–wets, drys, and hypocrites.–Florence Sabin

10. The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with prohibition.–Einstein, on hemp prohibition

11. I think people need to be educated to the fact that marijuana is not a drug. Marijuana is an herb and a flower. God put it here. If He put it here and He wants it to grow, what gives the government the right to say that God is wrong?–Willie Nelson

Willie Nelson

Peace, love, and may you live in fragrant delight

Aldous Huxley

Perfume

I didn’t set out to make imitations or homages to my favorite synthetic perfumes–but I ended up doing it by accident! Chronos EDP is my homage to Sables, a maple like aroma. It contains immortelle which, I guess in both the natural and the synthetic worlds, smells like maple candy–not like the syrup, like the candy you sometimes see. Apparently Annick Goutal and her husband often walked on the beaches in France; immortelle is found quite commonly on French beaches, hence the original inspiration. Ares EDP is better than Serge Lutens Ambre Sultan, or so my friend and #1 fan, John Reasinger, says (John is now writing for Ca Fleure Bon, a popular perfume blog (I think it’s #3 of all perfume blogs) and he wrote all the copy for my website, descriptions, myths, details, etc.–he didn’t ask me to pay him, but I probably must). Come to think of it. It’s a huge amount of copy. He thinks I’m going to get it free? Not a chance.

Chronos EDP

I didn’t set out to make imitations, doppelgangers, or sameness; it just turned out that way. I happen to think both are better than the synthetics to which they are given homage simply because they are both 100% natural–naturals, to me, always smell warm. I think of synthetics as smelling “cold,” for lack of a better adjective. What I mean is the opposite of warm–I guess you’d call that cold. Naturals = warm; synthetics = cold. One woman said a while ago that my perfumes in general would be great for men, and for those ladies who appreciate deeper tones like those of a bass or cello. I know that base notes are my favorite part of every perfume I make. Sometimes the heart can be of importance (boronia in Heracles for example). Least of all the top. Usually I think of certain parts of the top as being virtually required. I base my perfumes on a specific base chord, but always based on the base.

Ares EDP

I have a TV interview coming up. This will be nationally syndicated, so hundreds of channels across the country will get it. I happen to think a natural perfumer with MS will automatically make for interest; it’s just plain an interesting story, how I got into it (thanks go mostly to Mandy Aftel), how though I’m not physically able to blend anymore, my imagination for natural perfume knows no bounds, how determined I am to see my business succeed. I think it might be highly intriguing to the masses. Of course we _must_ emphasize how much I love making custom perfume–I think custom natural-perfume making may be one of my true fortes. I think they (Nancy and Holly) have me lined up for at least one more TV interview. With luck, these interviews will drive business to the point I’m breaking even.

Poem

This is the very first poem written in my “one true voice,” about 1992

Polish immigrants

One Night Out

I have third generation lips that suck up
the really salty ocean, spit out the blood
of Germans and Poles. These national borders
course methodically, blue and red, through
my white body, through my bowels, bladder,
and lungs, and wedged at the top, speared
on the sharp tip of my spine, I have an airy,
lofty space to fill. Inside that space I have
a hateful pride, these lions that roam from
gate to gate. They lick their chops for me,
leave their traces in the dirt but never show
themselves in truth. Wherever I go, the pride
follows, confines my days, even in motion,
to the veal-calf-strangle-pen when no one
throws a keen or wanting eye my way,
when none of you here, nameless but
in this dark bar, this withering crowd,
bestows on me or envisions in me any part
of yourself. We found each other here
and we all reek of fleshy shell, sound out
to theme tunes of grand delusions. We
separately crossed the crowded doorway,
stand apart at the bar with this familiar
buzz of hope she or he will be here this night,
The One, or maybe they’ll appear between
here and home. But my own best apparitions
last only an instant, slip again through
my numb fingers. For years, twenty four
before, one hundred, ten thousand, I’ve
missed the quick plum blossoms, cherry.
I’ve slept through the northern lights. Still
I have risen again, day in and day out, risen
and set out to warm the stubborn cold seats
and stone tables of my own deserted
parthenons inside, my coliseums. But the tincture
bottle of my historical essence is really dry.
My family tree has been sawed into
insignificant figurines that line my walls
and hindsight, just as the shadows of you
around me fade into yesterday’s envelope.
And each night is this one night, standing at
the window, the open, lonesome window
high up inside every crowd.

Low Life:
Lures and snares of old New York
© 1991 Luc Sante

Bear pit

“Rat-baiting was the premier betting sport of the 1800s. Its prestige can be gauged in economic terms, circa 1875: admission to a then illegal prizefight between humans cost fifty cents [!!!], to dogfights and cockfights $2, While pitting a dog against rats ran any where from $1.50 if the dog faced five rats or fewer, up to $5, in proportion to the number of rats. In the 1700s the biggest draw had been bearbaiting, but the sport gradually dissipated as the number of available bears decreased, although matches continued to be held up to the Civil War, notably in McLaughlin’s bear pit at First Avenue and Tenth Street. For a while, dog-vs.-raccoon contests were popular, but rats were so readily available that they came to dominate the scene; boys were paid to catch them, at a rate of five to twelve cents a head.

Rat pit

“The dogs were always fox terriers, and they were trained for six months before being sent out at a year and a half, retaining the status of novice until they reached two years of age. The pits, at Kit Burns’s and elsewhere, were unscreened boxes, with zinc-lined wooden walls eight feet long and four and a half feet high. Matches typically drew no fewer than a hundred betting spectators, from all walks of the life, with purses starting at $125. A good rat dog could kill a hundred rats in half an hour to forty-five minutes, although the modern record was set by Jack Underhill, a terrier belonging to one Billy Fagan, who slew his hundred in eleven and a half minutes at Secaucus, NJ in 1885. Late in the century it briefly became popular to pit rats against men wearing heavy boots. The ASPCA finally drove the game out of the city in the early 1890s.”

Human vs. rat

Quotations

1. People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason the world is in chaos is because things are being loved and people are being used.–Anon.

2. I say homosexuality is not a form of sex, it is a form of love, and it deserves our respect for that reason.–Christopher Hitchens

3. It’s better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you’re not.–Kurt Cobain

4. Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.–Aldous Huxley

5. The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.–Einstein

6. Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.–Samuel Clemens

7. Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.–Oscar Wilde

8. There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.–Maya Angelou

9. What has religion to do with facts? Nothing.–Robert Green Ingersoll

10. I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge, myth is more potent than history, dreams are more powerful than facts, hope always triumphs over experience, laughter is the cure for grief, love is stronger than death.–Robert Fulghum

11. I am driven by two main philosophies: learn more about the world than I did yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.–Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Peace, love, and may you live in fragrant delight

Bertolt Brecht

Perfume

When I was growing up in Manhattan, the smell of the subway was a great pleasure for me. On the street, I always chose to walk over the gratings above the subway; my friends thought I was insane. It’s a massive and unmistakeable smell. Somehow I could make sense of it all, from sweaty workers, to perfumed ladies, to businessmen with hair gel, to homeless folks, to rats, etc. I was, and still am, in love with that aroma, though it’s been years since I walked over NYC subway gratings. I walked over the many gratings so many times, it’s almost at the tip of my nose. I thought about taking Grenouille’s idea of taking a roll of canvas covered in solid fat (lard?), sticking it in a vent somewhere in the city, and repeat that a few times. In this way I can wash away the fat with 190-proof alcohol, (distill it?), and grab the absolute of New-York-City subways. My idea is that it would basically be a pheromone type scent, which could be used, synergistically, along with more pleasant aromatics. What sort of perfume this would make is anybody’s guess.

Subway gratings in Manhattan

That sort of attention to smells is part of what made me believe I could be a successful natural perfumer. Also the way certain smells totally overwhelm me with joy, orange blossoms, lilacs blooming, osmanthus, made me sure I could do it. Overwhelming I’m pretty sure in ways those smells aren’t for most people. I literally want to double over with joy when I smell blossoming orange flowers; I need to bend over to get out of the way of that enormous and glorious fragrance. There was an osmanthus tree outside the Chinese Garden in Portland; when, it bloomed I would go there late at night, and park right underneath the tree just to soak in the fantastic fragrance. Outside the first house I had in Portland was a lilac tree; when it bloomed the whole house would be soaked in the sublime lilac aroma. I couldn’t wait for it to bloom, though I only lived in the house a couple of years. I placed so much importance on the blooming lilacs, what else could I be but a natural perfumer

Lilac tree

I’ve got plenty of perfume ready to be bottled, and I think I’ll just keep that stuff ready to go. If I ever get my business going–like really going, not just occasional samples. I really believe I’m one the best natural perfumers the modern world has yet known; it will take more time for people to trust me and my perfume. I can wait, but not much longer. I’ll be trying my hand at becoming a “real writer” in the meantime. That might end up being the backup of my life. I also believe (and I’m not alone) that I’m one of the best writers of my generation. I’ll be having a Skype workshop with Gigi Rosenberg in about another month or two. With luck, she can give me pointers on getting my work published. I’m a poet and spoken-word artist, playwright, and soon to be novelist. It’s harder for me to understand prose as well I can get into poetry; I should start with short stories. I’ve got two really good things going for me (being a natural perfumer and being an author); the only trouble is getting to the point where I’m actually making money. Wish me luck.

Poem

Liang was a pretty lady

Pillow Talk

I learned more Japanese from
a girlfriend I had in Taipei
than I ever learned in Japan.
We couldn’t really
talk to each other,
Ms Liang and I, at the start,
except in gesticulations
and mime; she taught me
Mandarin without trying,
though it wasn’t her first
language. And so I also
learned bits and pieces of
insignificant Japanese,
pillow talk.
I quickly learned that,
“Ee-yeh,”
means,
“No, thank you,”
for example, and is one of
the most frequently used
phrases by proper and polite
Japanese ladies.
Eventually it became clear
that I was risking my life,
quite literally,
to be with Ms Liang.
Others close to her
couldn’t bear to see her
with me, and looking back
I don’t blame them.
I myself wouldn’t
have wanted to see her
with me, irreverent,
disrespectful, godless man
that I was then.
And still am of course,
irreverent and godless
to the end, but
disrespect looks better on
a 40-year-old codger than
it did on an 18-year-old.
When I finally spent some time
in Japan, I half expected
an entire nation of people
as pretty as Ms Liang.
Imagine my disappointment.
At first I felt badly
for having learned Mandarin
but not ever bothering to speak
Japanese, at least not beyond
pillow talk.
I never have been able
to come up with a reason
one might choose to learn
a language which has
no speakers that strike
one’s fancy.
What more fundamental
reason could there be?
And hasn’t this penchant
always made the world
go ’round?

History

“Hemp Growing Was Once Required By Law in the US

“Before you start growing your own hemp plants it is worthwhile to read up on the history of hemp growing in the US. At one time it was legal. Not only was it legal, the law required the growing of it. According to the book Healthy Oils, hemp is another word for the plant Cannabis sativa L. Marijuana comes from this same plant genus – as does cauliflower and broccoli. However, the strains used in consumer and industrial products contain only a negligible amount of the intoxicating substance delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. Thus industrial grade hemp is not marijuana. Yet, since the 1950’s the growing of hemp has been effectively prohibited.

Hemp used to be industrial

“But this has not always been the case. Going back to 1619 America’s first marijuana law was enacted at Jamestown Colony, VA. All farmers were ordered to grow Indian hemp seed. Mandatory cultivation laws were enacted in MA in 1631, in CT in 1632, and in the Chesapeake colonies in the 1700’s. Cannabis hemp was even used as legal tender in most of the Americas from 1631 until the early 1800’s. The reason for making it legal tender was to encourage farmers to grow more. You could then pay your taxes with cannabis hemp throughout America for over 200 years. If you did not grow hemp during periods of shortages, you could be jailed.

George Washington was just one of many of our forebears to grow hemp.

“In fact George Washington and Thomas Jefferson used enslaved African labor to grow this crop on their plantations. Hemp has been grown for over 12,000 years for textiles, fiber, and food. There are established hemp growers in China, Romania, Hungary, and France. It is also now grown in Australia, Canada, Britain and Germany where for decades there had been none. The US has an experimental crop being grown in Hawaii under a government license.

For 1000s of years, the most durable rope was made from hemp.

“Hemp is beginning to make a comeback in the US. Fashion designers and mass producers use it. It is also added to personal care products such as soap, shampoo and skin care products. Hemp seed oil naturally replenishes skin moisture and helps with the skin‘s elasticity. The omega-6 fatty acids are said to be helpful for sufferers of eczema, and psoriasis and other dry skin conditions. Hemp seed oil is also used for cooking and is extremely high in polyunsaturated content (at least 80%). Because it is a very good source of omega fatty acids, adding it to your diet helps to substantially improve the skin’s natural elasticity and appearance.”
–from the Hub Pages

Quotations

1. We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others to work on ourselves.–Pema Chödrön

2. Opportunity is missed by most people because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.–Thomas Edison

3. You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul.–Gandhi

4. When you live in complete acceptance of what is, that is the end of all drama in your life.–Eckhart Tolle

5. If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.–Robert Green Ingersoll

6. No man ever believes the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means.–GB Shaw

7. The worst illiterate is the political illiterate…He doesn’t know, the imbecile, that from his political non-participation comes the prostitute, the abandoned child, the robber, and worst of all, corrupt officials, the lackeys of exploitative multinational corporations.–Bertolt Brecht

8. The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.–RW Emerson

9. Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.–Einstein

10. It is not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make then successful human beings.–Ann Landers

11. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.–Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt

Peace, love, and may you live in fragrant delight

Nikola Tesla

Perfume

The Eye on Fashion show was something of a disappointment. Folks were selling mostly costume jewelry–not even made by themselves; strictly “retail.” Nancy had warned me, “We don’t want your perfumes to appear ‘cheap;’” alongside a bunch of cheap costume-jewelry retailers, my perfumes did appear cheap. I should have asked Lacey who else would be at the various tables–if I’d have known it was to be mostly costume jewelry, no way I would’ve agreed to come. Maybe just sponsoring it by giving bags of perfumes to the participating models; I know Lacey appreciated the fact I was there. I was in misery actually being there though, hoping to sell even just one item. Folks refused to heed my warnings to spray the perfume on a cotton ball or scent strip–we put the cotton balls right at the front of the table and there was sign saying to spray the perfume on a cotton ball. I still had people trying to smell the perfume through the the sprayer! I’m glad the models did get to sample my perfumes.

Tampa Bay Times photo

We did have one lady who was tempted to buy a small tin of one of my CDPs–for a mere $25 no less–who simply walked away when she heard the price. $25! That’s nothing. My perfume is worth considerably more than I charge for it–especially compared to the other natural perfumers I know. The one good thing that came from actually being at the show–apparently Holly (may the cosmos bless my PR reps, Holly and Nancy) got my perfumes into a boutique in Hyde Park (a hip part of Tampa), and one woman who’d smelled my perfumes already at that boutique came to me wondering if I could make her a custom perfume. I told her I love making custom perfumes. I hope she doesn’t balk at what I charge for a basic custom–$350, which is a LOT less than every other natural perfumer I’m aware of. One person tried to convince me I should charge more than I’m charging; I can only suspect that because I’m new on the scene, it will take some time for folks to trust me and my perfumes.

Jester pseudo-crown

I realized, if, in some absurd universe, one could distill me, I would come out either as Ares EDP or Chronos EDP, depending on the day of distillation; Ares when I’m feeling a little in-your-face, Chronos when I’m feeling sweeter. Others I can relate to: Anthea and Ares EDCs, Daphne, Demeter, and Heracles EDTs, Hermes EDP, Daphne EXT, Anthea, Aphelia, and Selene CDPs. We just made an extrait version of Hemera; Mary told me she greatly prefers EXTs because they last a long time on the skin (last time she was here, she couldn’t stop wearing Anthea EXT). I’m at a crossroads: I can choose to add more perfumes to my line, or I can sit back and hope that being in business for only three years means I have to wait a couple of more years to see if there is in fact money to be made in this art. I’ve recently checked out the perfumes of other natural perfumers (at first I didn’t want to smell too many others’ perfumes, for fear their style might influence mine), and am pleased to say my natural perfumes are among the best out there. Easy for me to say; I’ll have to wait for others to figure it out.

Low Life:
Lures and snares of old New York
© 1991 Luc Sante

“Sporting Life/Saloon Culture:

Bowery below the raised train which used to run along it

“The low-class Bowery dives just emerging featured a novelty: no glasses. Drinks at three cents per, were served from barrels stacked behind the bar via thin rubber tubes, the stipulation being that the customer could drink all he wanted until ha had to stop for breath. Needless to say, there were many who developed deep lung capacity and tricks of circular respiration in order to outwit the system. In the decades before the Civil War the worst dives were located on the waterfront, and they traded with a highly elastic clientele of sailors. Sailors were free spenders, rootless, and halfway untraceable; they were marks of the first order.

John Allen's saloon and brothel

“The street most overrun by sailors was Water Street, and there some of the tenements managed to boast a saloon, brothel, or dance hall on every floor. Notable were John Allen’s saloon-cum-whorehouse and Kit Burns’s Sportsmen’s Hall, which was an entire three-story building in which every variety of vice was pursued, but none so famously as the matches to the death between terriers and rats, held in a pit in its first-floor amphitheater, hence the resort’s more common name, the Rat Pit. Commerce was aided by the fact, whether through fluke or graft, Kit Burns’s was the terminus for one of the early stage transit lines.”

Rat pit

Poem

Treading water

Great Revelations

My life operates by way of
Great Revelations. I tread
water wherever I am and
constantly await the wave
of my next inspiration.
Usually, it comes as a tidal
wave, and everything
about me finds itself
changing, for the desperate
want of somewhere dry
to stand, somewhere safe
from future upheavals,
a place to weather all
the storms. I find my new
home each time for a little
while, but then, that’s not
really home, is it? A little
while? What kind of lame
excuse for a life is that,
forever fleeing from one
safe harbor to another,
narrowly evading flood
waters, wondering if
the storms did finally take
me, would that be such
a bad thing? For now,
the awaiting of floods
and enormous realizations
continues. I even keep
my cuffs rolled up,
so certain am I that
the flood water will
one day carry me home.

Quotations

1. My brain is only a receiver. In the universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength, inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.–Nikola Tesla
[If there is any man bright enough to see the truth in things, it's Tesla.]

2. A basic principle of modern state capitalism is that costs and risks are socialized to the extent possible, while profit is privatized.–Noam Chomsky

3. 300 years after the enlightenment and we still have to rally for the fucking obvious.–Tim Minchin, at the Reason Rally

4. As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion.–Butterfly McQueen

5. The truth is that male religious have had–and still have–an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation and justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world.–Jimmy Carter

6. The one who follows the crowd usually gets no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.–Einstein

7. Oh beautiful, for smoggy skies, insecticided grain,
For strip-mined mountain’s majesty above the asphalt plain.
America, America, man sheds his waste on thee,
And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.
–George Carlin

8. Prayer has no place in public schools, just like the facts have no place in organized religion.–Superintendent Chalmers

9. The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.–Bruce Lee

10. A warrior thinks of death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit.–Carlos Castaneda

11. Generally speaking, the way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.–Miyamoto Musashi

Miyamoto Musashi

Peace, love, and may you live in fragrant delight

John Wayne

Perfume

I will be sponsoring and attending Eye on Fashion this Friday from 7-midnight. At the Florida Museum of Photography Arts, downtown Tampa. Please come check us out! In addition to my humble table, with all my perfumes to test, there will be five stylists competing with three models each; at the end, judges will determine which model looked best in which style (I think there are three styles). It’s $25 in advance, more at the door.

Eye on Fashion

* Fashion Stylists Competition
* Live musical performance: Marlon Boone
* Photography display: Leandro Gongora
* Designers collection preview: TallyReNee, Mystic Creationz
* Exhibitor’s Boutique
* Make-up and hair exhibit: Irina Bilka – Salon Lofts.
* Complimentary beer
* Complimentary wine
* Complimentary tasting

In the past week or so I’ve highlighted three perfumes by three different natural perfumers. These were labeled “Natural SOTD.” Everyone does it with synthetics; I think it’s spot on for me to highlight naturals:

Epione

1. Epione, Jane Cate, A Wing and a Prayer Perfumes
2. Skin Deep, Christi Meshell, House of Matriarch
3. Fig, Mandy Aftel, Aftelier

Fig

The first one I gave to my baby Mary; she said it smelled like Chanel something, and insisted there must be something synthetic in it. I promised it was 100% natural. The second two I could see myself wearing. My PR reps have me lined up for a TV-show interview; the show will end up airing on stations nation wide! Talk about good for business. I wouldn’t be able to get this kind of thing if I were still in NYC. Happier than ever to be right where I am.

Skin Deep

Poem

Last Lick from the East

I found myself in Seattle in
the mid ’90s. Just like
a fish out of water I was,
searching for the right
cliques, the right bars,
or even just a friend or two.
And my quest for an apartment
was without end. I lived in
every sort of place you can
imagine. Some places you can’t.
During the last quest I was
destined to make, I got
a little kick in the pants
from all the way home.
I found a room in what
appeared to be a building
filled to the brim with
hip kids, beautiful people
veritably oozing from
the walls. I really wanted
to count myself among those
“in” ranks, with a room there, seedy
as it was. I met with the landlord;
she liked me, and everything
seemed like a go. But then
a routine credit check turned up
a report of bad credit
from a creditor in New York,
a utility I believe. The landlord
was very gracious when she
explained that her hands were
tied. I ended up living in
the ‘hood until I left Seattle.
And I never did become any kind of
hip kid. So far as I know.

Credit check

Quotations

Oscar Wilde

1. What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.–Oscar Wilde

2. Life is hard. It’s harder if you’re stupid.–John Wayne

3. Good moms have sticky floors, messy kitchens, laundry piles, dirty ovens, and happy kids.–Anon.

4. My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.–Lincoln, to Judge JS Wakefield, 1862

5. The legitimate powers of government extend to only such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty gods, or no God.–Thomas Jefferson

6. The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief–call it what you will–than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counter-attractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course.–AA Milne

7. A thorough reading and understanding of the Bible is the surest path to atheism.–Thomas Morgan

8. I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.–Nietzsche

9. It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so.–Ernestine Rose

10. There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.–Robert Green Ingersoll

11. I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.–George Carlin

Peace, love, and may you live in fragrant delight

The code is NMSA2012.

Please enjoy!

All my perfumes

Howard Zinn

Perfume

Selene

On my baby, Marycarmen’s, suggestion, I now put on perfume right before bed. At first I tried Heracles, but from now on I think I’ll use Selene CDP. It’s just the right sort of gentle aroma I need to help me sleep well; it also feels to me nocturnal. It’s like aromatherapy for bedtime. Also, lately I’ve been inclined, for the first time to highlight some of the work of my fellow professional perfumers. Folks do it with synthetics all the time; for example SOTD stands for scent of the day. I’ve started doing “Natural SOTD.” I’ve received a number of perfumes from my fellow perfumers. I think I’ll end up doing “Natural scent of the week;” I’ve already seen SOTN (of the night).

Osmanthus

I’m torn about additions to my line. Hestia is for sure; Artemis and Persephone aren’t quite perfect. I think I preferred the second-to-last version of Persephone (the one I sent John) to this latest one; and Artemis seems to get further away from what I’d like it to be each time we make it. And I thought we were on a roll! Maybe not so much. I do still have them at a higher concentration, for each EXT, which is what makes them profound just in their intensity. As I said, both Artemis and Persephone may be very good as is, if I can figure which formula is which!

Jonquil, something I added to soften Phoebe up a bit.

I’ve revamped Phoebe. I think of that perfume as osmanthus with a little stink underneath; I don’t like that stink, but people seem to like Phoebe as is, so it might not be wise to up and change the formula suddenly just because _I_ want to. We’ll give this revamped one a try. If I like it, I will replace all the old bottles of Phoebe, and give them away to folks I know that like the stuff. My assistant, one of my nieces, and #1 fan and copywriter John, etc. I’m just not happy with Phoebe as it is now; I want very much for it to please me.

Low Life:
Lures and snares of old New York
© 1991 Luc Sante

“The Sporting Life: Saloon culture

“…On the Bowery itself, where the fashion of the time was heavily influenced if not actually dictated by the prominent German contingent, beer gardens predominated. Among these were the Volksgarten, which in one form or another lasted more than half a century, and the Atlantic Garden, next to the Old Bowery Theater. The Atlantic Garden seated over a thousand on two floors, and consumption by its patrons was such that two four-hose drays were kept in constant rotation to the brewery and back for ten hours a day.

The Atlantic Garden

“It was a familial sort of place, where burghers could come in with their entire broods, and be entertained by the music of pianos, harps, violins, drums, and brasses, and where men could play cards, dominoes, or dice, or even engage in the occasional target shoot with rifles, all while nursing large mugs that went for a nickel apiece. In the early days, before the Civil War, the owner went so far as to hire barmaids, aged between 12 and 16, clad in short dresses and red boots with bells that dangled from tassels, a uniform which would shortly be taken up by waterfront prostitutes. These barmaids were the first and last female help to be seen in drinking establishments in the environs that were not themselves offered for sale.”

Poem

Law and Order

Law and Order

Some days, weeks maybe, limp along
aimlessly, painfully,
dull and achey filler
between episodes of Law and Order.
Some days I do what I do to be a doing
entirely, because simply being
with myself is unbearable.
Never can there be a silent moment.
My lifeblood is the CD changer,
the jukebox, the monologues to be honed,
arrangements to be learned.
Often it all feels half real
compared to the television,
covered for fear of being found out.
Uncovered only for crimes, and deaths,
and missing persons.
Only when it’s late enough
no one will notice.
With transparent detectives and
implausible district attorneys on the brain,
the bar is home to reminders
of what life is actually like,
somehow, underneath the smoke and stench,
the jabber and patter of momentary numbness.
I wait for the new girl, the new paralegal,
the new snitch, the new cadet.
I wait for my heart to stop
at the sight of her,
just for that instant her face is new
and mysterious and disarming. I wait.
My heart does stop for a moment or two.
I head out with some spring in my step
still with that childish, foolish hope
there will be a face in the haze and fumes
who gives to me the same sense of
momentary death I got from TNT,
even if for only as long as a commercial break
and only the price of a PBR.

Quotations

1. Why not become fresh from the gentleness of the heart-spring? Why not laugh like a rose? Why not spread perfume?–Rumi

2. And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.–Lincoln

3. Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.–Howard Zinn

4. A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.–Thomas Jefferson

5. What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?–Gandhi

6. The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.–JFK

7. The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.–Voltaire

8. Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.–Churchill

9. Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear.–Alan Coren

10. Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.–George Bernard Shaw

11. It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting.–Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard

Citizen Mix

Bahamas

March Madness

1. Caught Me Thinkin’, Bahamas
2. Rain Comes Down. Eastmountainsouth
3. She’s Got a Way (Billy Joel), Jade Leonard
4. Hey Na Na, Katie Herzig
5. Near Death Experience Experience, Andrew Bird
6. Heavy Rains, Alex Andreas Duncan
7. La Llorona, Beirut
8. Eight Line Poem, David Bowie
9. Can’t Find My Way Home, Blind Faith
10. Winter, Eastmountainsouth
11. Millions Times, Jade Leonard
12. Give It Away, Andrew Bird
13. Lost in the Light, Bahamas
14. The Ballad of Young Alban and Amandy, Eastmountainsouth
15, Breaking Down, Alex Andreas Duncan
16. Between the World and You, The Hawk in Paris
17. Andy Warhol, David Bowie
18. Do You See, Jade Leonard
19. Hole in the Ocean Floor, Andrew Bird
20. The Akara, Beirut

Peace, love, and may you live in fragrant delight

Victor Hugo

Perfume

Henri Bendel

Having done two interviews in the last month or so, the next step will be getting my perfumes into boutiques and shops. Holly and Nancy, my PR reps of the White Book Agency, are working hard to get me into boutiques; they were also responsible for the gorgeous and practical renovation of my website. I never really thought about the fact I might find myself selling my perfumes in boutiques; it sounds too good to be true, but I’ve set my mind to it, so I must make it happen. If I could get myself into Henri Bendel (their main branch is in New York, but they just opened a new branch here in Tampa!) I would be overwhelmed; Mandy Aftel sells her perfumes at Bendel’s.

Some of Aftel's products

On my website I write, “he learned that perfume had been all natural until the release of Chanel No. 5 in 1921, the _first successful_ synthetic perfume.” Simple enough statement; I know there were attempts at synthetics in the 1880s and 90s. Chanel No. 5 was in fact the first successful synthetic fragrance; people still wear it today. The first version of Chanel No. 5 included both naturals and synthetics, a pretty radical notion at the time. Chanel No. 5 is 100% synthetic now. Meanwhile, I’m waiting to see how my Artemis and Persephone EXTs will turn out. I have hopes for each.

Chanel No. 5

Recently this fact became clear to me: if it weren’t for Mandy Aftel, her books, her workshops, her botanicals, etc. I would never have gotten into natural perfume in the first place. Her work made me believe I could achieve some of the great things she has achieved. I am indebted to Aftel. Nothing will ever shake my affiliation. She carved out a place for us in niche perfume. Aftel is the one who will go down in the history books as one of the best natural perfumers the modern world has yet known. She offered me the opportunity of a lifetime; my life wouldn’t be as potentially great as it might be otherwise. Now if I can just get my writing in front of the right people, I’ll be cooking with gas.

The Perfume House; they sell only perfume

Low Life:
Lures and snares of old New York
© 1991 Luc Sante

The Sporting Life: Saloon Culture

A groggery

“…Saloon culture naturally gravitated around the people’s delirium, the Republic of the Bowery. Things began slowly enough there. The first Bowery tavern was probably Cornelis Aertzan’s inn at Bowery Village, established in 1665. During the street’s century or so of relative respectability, a number of institutions arose mostly in the form of travelers’ relays, most notably the Bull’s Head Tavern at Bowery and Broome, which opened sometime in the mid-18th century and prospered uninterruptedly until the 1820s, when its formerly rural site was suddenly in the way of the wedge of urban construction. The saloon, as it came to be known, loved, and reviled, was born several blocks to the east, in the area of the Five Points.

Bull's Head Tavern

“Here unlicensed grogshops grew up in the back rooms of grocery stores, which in turn appeared on every corner, four to an intersection. The demand for groceries was not so great as to warrant such a boom in shops; in fact, the groceries were so closely associated in everyone’s mind with the groggeries for which they fronted that for a time “grocery” became a popular euphemism for groggery. The first, or at least the most celebrated of these, around 1825, was Rosetta Peer’s, on Centre Street near Anthony (later Worth), and it doubled–or tripled–as the headquarters of New York’s first recorded armed gang, the Forty Thieves. An ordinance of 1841 legalized the grocery saloons blanket-fashion, and, not long after, the greengrocers themselves removed to the middle of blocks, leaving the corners in undisputed possession of their former sub-tenants.”

The Forty Thieves

Poem

A vacant life on loan

A Life on Loan

Everything in my life is second-hand.
I’ve learned about politics
from Saturday Night Live.
I’ve never heard a single song
unless or until my favorite musicians
did it, wrote it for others, or covered it.
The lovers I’ve had have all been
someone else’s lovers first.
Most of what I know of the world
I learned from books–
and that’s even with being
right up in her face every single day.
My dreams must belong to someone else,
so far are they from what could
ever be real in my life.
My life itself, my life’s breath,
has been leveraged many times,
from the Reaper, from the Devil, from Gabriel.
I’ve woken up in pools of my own, red blood,
stared The End in the face as a matter of course,
walked without fear in places from which
I should never, fairly speaking, have returned.
I often wonder how much longer
the accountants will let me go
on credit, how much
the angels will demand in exchange
for loaning me a life I’ve squandered.
What’s a squandered life worth, anyway?
The borrowed and stolen elements
which embody me were taken with
steep interest, and I wonder how much
of my flesh they’ll ask for,
how much of my lifeblood they’ll need to
drink in order to forgive me for
all the borrowed time I’ve blown.

Quotations

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

1. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.–Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

2. Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.–Gore Vidal

3. The greatest happiness of life it the conviction that we are loved–loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.–Victor Hugo

4. It’s man’s sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man.–Albert Schweitzer

5. And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.–Walt Whitman

6. Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.–Robert Browning

7. Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.–Jesse Jackson

8. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.–Kahlil Gibran

9. Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.–Henri Frederic Amiel

10. The greatest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.–Thornton Wilder

11. The world has no sympathy with any but positive griefs. It will pity you for what you lose; never for what you lack.–Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine

Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine

Citizen Mix

The Hawk in Paris

Sweet February

1. The New Hello (Hers), The Hawk in Paris
2. Hard Times, Eastmountainsouth
3. Canaan, Black Dub
4. Call Me, Me’shell NdegeOcello
5. Hold Me Down, Jann Klose
6. Oh the Joy, Trixie Whitley
7. So are You to Me, Eastmountainsouth
8. My Wife Lost in the Wild, Beirut
9. Put Your Arms Around Me, The Hawk in Paris
10. All These Rivers, Jann Klose
11. Can This Be, The Autumn Film
12. Last Time (Rolling Stones), Black Dub
13. You Dance, Eastmountainsouth
14. Dred Loc, Me’shell NdegeOcello
15. Ships on the Ocean Floor, The Autumn Film
16. Mother Said Father Said, Jann Klose
17. The New Hello (His), The Hawk in Paris
18. Too soon, Eastmountainsouth
19. Nomad, Black Dub

Peace, love, and may you live in fragrant delight

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.–Einstein

Perfume

Dried osmanthus flowers

Artemis EXT is indeed a powdery lavender scent, but there’s something too sharp at the beginning. It needs work, but I’m just happy I finally have a lavender perfume! The tonka, as Jane Cate advised, is definitely causing the powdery effect; it starts out smelling like lavender (as I mentioned, I think there’s something too sharp at first, in the top or heart), and ends up smelling like lavender talcum powder. It’s a little simple, as is; I’m one who thinks, with natural perfume, the more complex the better. I realized I think of osmanthus as a powdery-like scent, “fuzzy,” for lack of a better word. That with tonka (base) and frangipani (heart) should make for a powdery effect. The linchpin in the whole formula is linden-blossom EO.

Another two perfumes I’m thinking of releasing are Persephone EXT and Hestia CDP. Persephone EXT was made at the behest of my dear friend and my #1 fan, John Reasinger. John told me that “Persephone is everything I had hoped for and more.” I happened to send a .4oz bottle of the second-to-last version in time for his birthday, and he said, “Best birthday present EVER.” All I really want in natural perfume is to make people profoundly, sublimely, synergistically pleased with my perfumes; I want to go to sleep knowing that people all over the world are wearing and _loving_ my perfume. That fact alone helps me sleep better. Really, honestly. There’s something profoundly satisfying just contemplating this idea.

Hestia

I now keep all my aromatics in a refrigerator designated only for them (a small, cube fridge), except for resins, as Jeanne Rose on Facebook suggested. I realized regular absolutes and essential oils are precious, simply because some are expensive and rarefied. I need to start saving money instead of spending every last cent on aromatics. What can I do about the fact that I love natural perfume–but it costs too much money! I do love being an author, have had some success with poetry and plays, but nothing recently. I’ve been quite busy with perfume stuff, doing two interviews within the last month, trying to perfect a couple of perfumes, getting ready for the Eye on Fashion show (on March 30), etc. My friend Lacey Smith asked to participate, has me listed as a sponsor, and he will allow me to set up a table at which to sell my wares.

Eye on Fashion

Poem

Bettina

What Bettina might have looked like, but older of course.

I was on a student-travel trip
the summer of my freshman year in
high school. In the first few days
of the trip, I had made intimate
overtures toward the girl I deemed
to be the most beautiful on the trip;
happily, they were reciprocated.
My very first love affair ensued,
complete with the romance of Paris
and the freedom of parents on the other
side of the world. We did a stint
in Holland and I had to be separated
from my pretty girlfriend. On the first
night of our separation, I got really
drunk with my best friend, and ended up
making out with a Dutch girl named
Bettina who was also staying at our
hostel. I don’t remember much; the fact
that I can remember her name is
an anomaly. I do remember that our
chaperone came out into the hallway,
where four of us were necking, and,
shaking his head, said it was time
for bed. We didn’t speak of the matter
the next day as we rode our bikes to
some other town. Here is my confession:
I cheated on my first girlfriend with
a Dutch girl named Bettina. It wasn’t
so much the making out as it was
the adulterous thoughts. Adultery!
It was youthful, starry-eyed love, but,
truth be told, I’ve always tended toward
all or nothing, and twenty-five years later,
though I have never cheated on a woman
again, the shame is still with me.

Quotations

1. Change is never easy. You fight to hold on. You fight to let go.–Daniel Stern

2. If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.–Einstein

3. The more I practice, the luckier I get.–Gary Player

4. Put your heart, mind, and soul into even your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.-—Swami Sivananda

5. Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.–Jung

6. Children want the same things we want. To laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained and delighted.–Theodor Seuss Geisel

7. Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.–Confucius

8. There are no better cosmetics than a severe temperance and purity, modesty and humility, a gracious temper and calmness of spirit; and there is no true beauty without the signatures of these graces in the very countenance.–Arthur Helps

9. There is in true beauty, as in courage, something which narrow souls cannot dare to admire.–William Congreve

10. Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on Simplicity.–Plato

11. Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.–Sophia Loren

Citizen Mix

MyNameisJohnMichael

Mid-Winter Nights Dream 01/12

1. A Sunday Smile, Beirut
2. Roll Over Me, The Autumn Film
3. Love You Strongly, Amy Stroup
4. The People That Come and Go, MyNameisJohnMichael
5. Emily’s Rain, Peter Bradley Adams
6. Forget Me Not, The Civil Wars
7. Anti-Pioneer, Feist
8. Mount Wroclai (Idle Days), Beirut
9. Long Hard Times to Come (theme from Justified), Gangstagrass feat. T.O.N.E-Z
10. I Shall be Released (Dylan), Joe Cocker
11. Daydreams, Breanne Düren
12. Katy, Peter Bradley Adams
13. Sarah, Ray LeMontagne
14. Stepping Stones, Brianna Gaither
15. Happenstance, The Autumn Film
16. The One, MyNameisJohnMichael
17. The Penalty, Beirut
18. The Gymnast High Above the Ground, The Decemberists
19. London Bridge is Falling Down, Peter Bradley Adams

Peace, love, and may you live in fragrant delight