They're both tea and crushed stone and sun and water and wind. And they both yearn. But they're not the same.
(Warning: Rhapsodizing follows.)
L'Eau Rare Matale is sitting on the gravel bank of a stream fed from melting snow, dabbling your feet in the shock of the water. The light flickers as the leaves move in the breeze, and you're leaning your head back to catch just a little more sun on your face, to dry the splashes and feel your skin warm. There's tea, icy and stern. L'Eau Rare Matale glories in the cold but still yearns for a little more sun, a little more sweetness.
Harmatan Noir is resting in the shadow of a boulder in the desert, the sun shimmering-hot just a few steps away, the sand still warm against you. You sit very still, waiting for the hot wind to cool the sweat from your skin. The only water is a little tea with sugar and mint, still warm from when you brewed it, not as much as you want but all the more precious for its scarcity. Harmatan Noir yearns for coolness and water and brighter air, while still taking pleasure, catlike, in being soaked in heat.
Harmatan Noir yearns for L'Eau Rare Matale's world, if only for a moment, and L'Eau Rare Matale is just as eager to change places. And when I wear one, I want to smell the other.
Review Roundup: For Harmatan Noir, Legerdenez and Perfume Posse and PereDePierre and Perfume-Smellin' Things. For L'Eau Rare Matale, Now Smell This and Perfume-Smellin' Things.
Photo: Flr0002, Wikimedia Commons. Click for details.
this is good stuff... you are intriguing me to get more interested in fragrance. I especially like your provactive question about whether ones sense of scent changes with the season. I would think yes, for me because I'm really tuned in (and turned on) to the sum of all my collective autumnal associations which of course are sensory... autumn color, the crisp chill in the air, the taste of soup, the sound of the leaves beneath my feet and especially the smell of them. It's a shame they don't encourage the burning of leaves like they do back east. But even just a walk amongst the unsinged leaf carpet along my neighborhood is the greatest sensory delight.
ReplyDeletewhen are you coming to autumnal ashland? the leaves are making quite a show, surprising with our strange weather.
I love your images. :) (Or what _do_ you call them when they're all-five-senses images?) I love autumn. I anticipate spring, but fall just drops on me and I discover every year how much I love it.
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