More scents, sounds and sights of Home

From my room with a view

I've been in Papua New Guinea for four days.  Every day is a roller-coaster, and while I've been on this ride many times, it's still exhausting.  I'm alternately disconcerted by what is new - huge buildings! mad traffic! - and comforted by what remains as it ever was: the open smiles of people on the street; old friends who greet me as if I have merely returned from a long vacation; the way things never happen as planned (no matter how carefully you plan).

Olfactory memories have returned with particular force.  On the flight from Brisbane, I smelled Rid, the Australian insect repellent that my mother used to favour for its cheerful, fruity fragrance.  Walking into a shop in Port Moresby, the nostril-singeing tang of sweaty bodies struck me like a hand across the face, announcing the place more vividly and definitively than any visa stamp.  I kept breathing, and bought a local SIM card while children looked on with that mixture of frank curiosity and longing that always gets me in the gut, the guilty bite of privilege.

Later, as afternoon dissolved into equatorial night, a soft veil of acrid, sweet smoke drifted from garden- and cooking fires through the louvred windows my friend K--'s house.  The house itself moved me deeply: older, slightly decrepit, still floating modestly on its stilts above the hibiscus hedges and the crumbling street.  I watched K-- make coffee in the kitchen, each fluid gesture familiar as a childhood song.  The coffee, one of Papua New Guinea's top exports, was rich and strong and tasted of chocolate.  I slept a few hours; awoke, and was lulled to sleep again by women and children speaking softly in Tok Pisin, somewhere nearby.

Slowly, Tok Pisin is coming back to me, like fluid trickling back along aged veins.  Yesterday, J--, the hausmeri where I am staying, told me a story about someone I used to know, who unexpectedly passed away.  Halfway through she looked at me:

"Yu harim?"  (You understand what I'm saying?)

"Ah, mi harim.  Mi sori tasol." (I understand.  I'm just sad.)

This morning J-- arrived with her bilum brimming with fruit and vegetables from the market.  Long beans, aibika, bok choy, paw paw, muli, tiny red tomatoes, green bananas.  I wanted to bury my nose in the aromatic juxtaposition of the sharp greens with the sensuous, floral scent of the paw paw.  (Some perfumer should do a fragrance with a paw paw focus, if that hasn't been done already.)

If experience becomes memory as soon as we apprehend it, then I am experiencing sensorial memories within memories, moments from both the deep and the immediate past.  Port Moresby has changed drastically in the last ten years, yet at every turn, something absorbed, then long forgotten, resurfaces and surprises me.

Tonight I inhaled the scent of frangipanis from a tree overhanging the balcony where I'm writing now, and realized immediately what OJ Frangipani Absolute lacks: the fresh, lemony top notes that lift the spirits at first breath.  I wonder, now, whether anyone who has not grown up with that smell can evoke it accurately.  It's like a friend said, when we first met in Port Moresby over ten years ago:

"You grew up here, so you'll understand how things are."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the way things are...not the way other people think they should be."

"Oh!  Yeah."

Desert Roses

Key:  
Tok Pisin - Papua New Guinean pidgin
hausmeri - housekeeper
bilum - a string bag
aibika - a kind of local spinach with a strong, iron-rich flavour
paw paw - papaya
muli - citrus

The Scent of Home

If you travel a lot, answering the question "where are you from?" becomes a challenge.  How much time have you got?  Do you want the long or the short answer?

I've been on the move, more or less, all my life.  My parents were in the midst of building an ocean-going yacht when I was born.  My first memories are of living on the boat.   We sailed for years, first along the coast of British Columbia, and eventually down to Mexico and out across the South Pacific.  Traveling was, and still is, the most comforting and normal way for me to be.

Since life has been unusually sedentary lately, scent has provided another way to travel.  Especially through the winter months, perfume has taken me to complex sensorial lands of memory, to scent-worlds of more-than-oriental-splendour, oh my!

But for the next little while I'm going to shift focus, from journey-through-scent to scented journey.  Today I'll be boarding a series of flights to a place that commands, more than any other, a special power over me.  This will be my first trip back in ten years.  I'm a little tearful from excitement.  If this is a perfume, the top notes are stratospherically euphoric, scudding above a heart of hold-nothing-back red, balanced on a base of anxiety tinged with a dark substance which, upon examination, warns of storms ahead.  It is quite possible that this trip will involve heartache.

There are certain places that matter more than others - places that leave their mark, love affairs from which the traveller never quite recovers.  I've been through this a few times now: struggling to adapt to a place and then suffering deep loss at parting is how I know when I've acquired another 'home'.  Home is the place just left.

My first experience of this kind of emplacement happened when I was a teenager.   My parents found jobs in a small town on the coast of a great, equatorial island.  I was a relatively seasoned traveller by then, our family having spent a couple of years sailing from island to island in the South Pacific; and while the places we visited during that period undoubtedly had an impact on us all, my memories of that period lack the clarity and depth of those of our arrival and subsequent life in Papua New Guinea.

I hated PNG for the first year or so.  Remote; unlike anywhere else you can imagine; not particularly safe; Papua New Guinea wasn't - isn't - an easy place.  But I have come to believe that the harder you have to work to live somewhere, the deeper it insinuates itself into your heart.  Almost without realizing it, your self changes to fit its new landscape; you become part of that place.  If, then, you suddenly have to leave, departure is intensely painful, an exile from part of yourself.  I think it's worse for children, who have little choice about when and where to move.

My parents and I had lived in Papua New Guinea for five years when, rather suddenly, we had to move back to North America.  But PNG never relinquished its hold.  The succeeding years became a holding pattern, distractions and schemes to get back to where my heart wanted to be.   I managed to go back for two years as a young adult, long enough to realize that I could not stay, and to go through the trauma of leaving a second time.

So I'm going to Papua New Guinea.  I've been putting this trip off for months, not because I don't want to go, but because I want it a little too much.  I've deliberately made this a short trip, and have planned a full schedule to fall into afterwards.  But already, I can smell the hot earth of the coast, the sweltering, betel nut-fueled crowds at Jackson's Airport, the languid frangipanis, the pungent green-licorice air of the Highlands, and the seaweed on Ela Beach.  It's already got me, hook line and sinker.

Words from a song in the main language of Papua New Guinea, Tok Pisin:

Mi laik kam tasol em i hat (I want to come back but it's difficult)

Mauntan ya antap tumas (The mountains are so high)

Solwara em i pasim rot bilong mi ya (The ocean bars my way)

- O-shen

Agent Provocateur: unresolved scent memories

Once in a while, when I'm on my own and in a pensive mood, a memory asserts itself with breathtaking force.  Colour, light, sound, emotion, smell - all so appallingly vivid that I react physically, squirming and even gasping aloud, "Oh, God."

No, I'm not talking about great sex.  Rather, these are embarrassing moments from the deep past, a category of unresolved memory that usually is accompanied by self-recrimination ("WHY did I say / do that?" and "I should have said / done ___!") and an inward shiver.

I know I'm not alone in this, because I once witnessed my cousin go through the same process.  We were on a road trip, and she must have thought I had fallen asleep.  I turned to see her eyes widen and her hands lift from the steering wheel to clap her cheeks, flushed with consternation.   Afterwards she confirmed that she'd been remembering an embarrassing situation.

Anyway, reading Bonkers About Perfume's review of an Agent Provocateur flanker brought on one of these rueful moments today.  

Towards the beginning of my interest in perfume, I went through a phase of smelling-everything-at-every-opportunity, which extended to the cosmetics section of a local supermarket.  Every time I went there, I'd head first to the perfume display case and work my way through the stock, usually three or four testers at a time, before pulling out my grocery list.  

One evening, I sprayed Agent Provocateur (the original) on my forearm.  I had read about it, and knew it had been described as a 'dirty rose.'  While I had some idea of what this meant, I wasn't prepared for the dark, overtly bodily fragrance that vaulted ahead of me as I pushed my cart through frozen foods towards the produce section.  The supermarket wasn't busy, but there were a number of customers with carts or baskets circling the islands of tropical fruit and broccoli like solitary ships, strategically oblivious of each other.  

Usually I'm barely conscious of fitting into the stream and finding a clear route to the citrus, avocados, snow peas.  This time I started out normally enough, but soon began to notice a shift in the shipping pattern, as a few women shot uneasy, disapproving glances in my direction and moved away.  I attempted to shelter in the lee of a pile of ripening pineapples; nevertheless, several (mostly older) men raised their heads and focused on me with disconcerting frankness, like dogs sniffing a carcass on the breeze.  

I would have filed this away as an "interesting experience" in the power of perfume, had I not then had to drop off the groceries at my mother's place.  Her reaction - visible disgust, followed by, "I can smell you from here" - ensured that ever since, I have been barely able to look at a bottle of Agent Provocateur, let alone smell its juice properly.  

Based on reviews (for example Katie Puckrick and Bois de Jasmin), Agent Provocateur is good stuff, so one day when I'm in a completely different context, I will try to build a new, hopefully less cringe-inducing, scent association with it.

Photo 1 from ereads.com; photo 2 from fragrantica.com.

Scents for Mum

You may think this post belated, but in fact I'm trying to prepare ahead.  Mother's Day has passed, and that means that just two months remain until my mother's birthday.

I was struck by how disconnected the Mother's Day displays of the past weeks seemed from my ideas about maternal figures and scent.  The classics were cleared away in favour of newer releases, mostly flankers.  The only Chanels left in sight were gift sets of Chance Eau Tendre, and Estee Lauder slimmed down to Sensuous Noir and yet more versions of Pleasure.

Lolitas, Coaches, D&Gs: none of these really said "mother" to me.  Well, perhaps Cashmere Mist - which I would like more if the bottle wasn't so mediocre.

The ways I know and think of my mother encompass strong olfactory associations.  Surely then, the ideal perfume for her is one I already know she loves and will wear, or a classic that has a known pedigree.  Or am I off-track?

If I am, then so are a lot of other people.  In the week preceding Mother's Day, men and women of all ages approached the counters to ask for Youth Dew, Gucci by Gucci, Tresor, Dune, old Zen, the original Sung, Coco.  When told her mother's perfume "only comes out at Christmas", a potential customer turned away.

"But can I help you with anything else?"

"No.  I just know she likes that one.  Thanks anyway."

Why do perfume counters promote ephemeral releases to customers seeking classic signature fragrances?  Perfumes are released and withdrawn with bewildering frequency, and when I pose this question to SA's, they seem as frustrated as their customers.  It can't be much fun for the women behind the counter at my local Bay, all of whom are in their 40s and 50s, to promote endless fruit punch.

Back to the challenge at hand.

My mother is notoriously difficult when it comes to gifts.  She has impeccable taste and is a perfectionist.  She used to wear L'Air du Temps, which suited her amazingly well; unfortunately, the current reformulation is a dreadful, soapy travesty.  The only option is to make her a custom sampler.  The trick will be what to include.  One thing's sure: I'll include a lot of classics.

Photo 1 is my own; photo 2 from www.perfumeprojects.com

Perfume heresy: my encounter with Shalimar

Of classics that set the standard for almost every perfume forum, blog, book, review, shop counter - usually cosseted in literal or metaphorical velvet, I don't suppose any is cited more often than Shalimar.  Chanel No. 5 and Joy may share the same podium...and then there are the less-well-known-yet-esteemed-club-members like Fracas, Mitsouko, Chanel Nos. 19 and 22, Coco, Private Collection, Apres l'Ondee, l'Heure Bleue, etc.

I recognize the beauty of the great Chanels, even if I cannot (yet) wear all of them.  Fracas and Joy are somewhat more difficult, but I appreciate them as creations.  I would have said the same of Shalimar, based on what I had smelled on blotters.  I could certainly see why Turin and Sanchez call it the "reference Oriental."

Three weeks ago I finally tested Shalimar on my skin.  From the initially bright, promisingly bright opening of lemon and vanilla, my silent thoughts ran:

Ah!  Yes, I see.  Ok...

Ok...

Oh!  Um...hum!  Um...

Oh my.

Oh my.  No.  Hmm.

Supposing that 'difficult' stage might be temporary - this being Shalimar - I persisted for some hours, hoping for the kind of miraculous transformation that sometimes happens, especially in the greats.

[sniff]  Not yet...

[sniff]  Not yet...

[sniff]...

But no.

Alas.

This being Shalimar, I tried to restrain myself from scrambling for faucet and soap.  I did at least appreciate its tenacity - repeated scrubbing and sluicing only slightly subdued the wafts of fermented-pee-bandaid-vanilla-wood emanating from my forearm.

I have gone through this exercise three times, with different samples and strengths.  It's no good.  The conflagration of olfactory references has established itself so powerfully that there can be no further testing.  I can't let the stately memory of Shalimar-on-paper drown forever in the wake of its evil skin sister.

I'm so sorry, Shalimar.  It's me, not you.   It's heartbreaking when a Dear One - set aside in anticipation, to savour and adore - turns at close quarters into ape scent gloriola.   But love's like that sometimes, isn't it?  Like the woman says,

And you don't have to die of humiliation, you know
You are a strong person
and this is a learning experience...

Bouquet for Mother's Day

All photos are mine; all tulips are my aunt's.  In honour of her, my mother, my grandmother, and mothers everywhere, Happy Mother's Day!

Seeking Frangipani fragrance, fresh or best offer

I have always loved fresh, fragrant flowers.  In childhood this led to thievery and some dire consequences - a spanking from Grampa for uprooting his peonies, and a humiliating scene with a neighbour after I picked her single - irresistibly perfect - water lily blossom.  It was probably fortunate for me that soon after those incidents we moved to the tropics, where flowers literally grew everywhere, all the time.  In these new surroundings, I fell in love with the showy, seductive, intoxicating Frangipani.  I grew to covet leis the way other kids longed for Barbies.  My ideal were the thick, rope-style floral collars given on special occasions.  These would be layered on the special person - a birthday celebrant or a Tahitian beauty queen (Vive Mademoiselle Pamplemousse!) - until they formed a dense mass, nearly obscuring the wearer's face.

There is nothing quite like the smell of a lagoon, copra, greenery, sweat, steamed fish, and masses of white flowers at a Polynesian celebration.  There is nothing, for that matter, like searching for a perfect frangipani blossom amongst windfalls beneath the trees, pressing one's nose to the velvety yellow heart, and inhaling its cool, salty, sharp, almost dangerous liqueur.

I would dearly love to find a good frangipani perfume for those times when there's no fresh supply handy.   I have only just started my search - findings so far:

Songes (Annick Goutal) - If this is a frangipani flower, it has been glazed with pink sugar and packed in mothballs.  Oh dear!  My apologies to Songes fans.  This wasn't what I was expecting...

Mahora (Guerlain) - Cacaphonic, as if there are too many competing notes.  The 'mothball' scent (synthetic amber and sandalwood?) is present here too, along with something fruity and powdery, reminiscent of Flintstone chewable vitamins.  No living flower here: Mahora is loud yet thin, and lacks dimension.  Perhaps it has been reformulated.

Frangipane (Chantecaille) - Far too sweet for me to truly enjoy, but interesting.  It reminds me of the fruit cordials that used to be served at the aforementioned Polynesian celebrations, to wash down one's fish in coconut cream.   The cordial hinted at a chemical approximation of mango, but tasted mostly like sugar (no wonder diabetes has become epidemic in the South Pacific).  At any rate, Frangipane is a sugar-water-wrapped floral.  Notes listed on Fragrantica include ylang-ylang, water hyacinth, amber and jasmine, all of which are detectable.  If you like your tropical florals sweet, Chantecaille Frangipane may be for you.

Frangipani (Ormond Jayne) - Ah...now here is a flower, damply alive and about to fall from the branch, its waxy petals brushing coolly against the skin.  There is a sharpness that seems at first a little too blue-cheesy, but this quickly balances out.  This is a good evocation, and one that I can imagine wearing with a white dress and fuschia-polished toes on a humid summer night.  It's sexy stuff, and yet knows how to be proper too...indeed I think my mother would like Frangipani.

OJ Frangipani wins this round, no question.  I'll be taking it on my next trip, when I shall be able to compare it to the real flower.

In the meantime, I welcome further suggestions!

Photo 1 from frangipanihouse.com.au; photo 2 from e-how.com.  For a more serious review of Ormond Jayne Frangipani, read Olfactoria's recent review.

Grandmother as style icon

Once a week, I give my grandmother a manicure.  One of our shared pleasures is polished nails. Whatever may be happening to the rest of one's body, well-groomed hands give a measure of confidence.

Growing up, I was fortunate to spend a lot of time with Nanna.  It is probably from her that I inherited this love for gemstones, dramatic outfits, fresh flowers, makeup, perfume.  If only I had also absorbed her talent for making perfect pastry!  Oh, well...

 Nanna and her eldest boy, 1941

When they and all other Japanese Canadians were ejected from Vancouver during WW2, my grandparents moved to a small community in the interior of British Columbia.  The government had labelled them 'enemy aliens' and they were raising five children, but Nanna refused to give quarter.  She was the best-dressed woman in town (and its best dressmaker, which helped).  Photographs of her from this period show a petite, but absolute, Lady: heart-shaped red lips, arched brows, Veronica Lake hair, perfectly tailored suit, elegant heels.  Nanna dressed up even to go to the town's one grocery store.  I love to imagine the impression she must have made, clicking along the main street.

I don't know what perfume she wore back then, but since I've known her, Nanna has worn Evening in Paris, Chanel No. 5, Lauren, Kenzo and Anais Anais.   In my mind, these fragrances belong to her.  I especially remember No. 5 wafting from the fur collar that framed her 1970s pixie cut.  When I was a little girl, Nanna was my idea of chic.

These days Nanna is too frail to dress up or go out, so we try to bring interesting things to her.  Lately I've been taking her perfume samples.  Her favourite is Acqua di Parma Colonia.  Smelling it for the first time, she brightened, "Mmm! Yokatta, kore" (this one was good).  Colonia does indeed smell great - of citrus and herbs of the highest quality, of careful tradition and sunny well-being.

She also likes Alien EDP - ultra-feminine yet unabashedly cosmetic...and it goes with this week's nail colour: super-shiny, chromed pink.