Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Nosy Interview: Gina Balibrera

Gina in The Horsehead Nebula in Infrared from Hubble, © NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team

Gina and I have not yet met, but she left a lovely, smell-related comment on a link to V.V. Ganeshananthan's interview and, when I immediately pounced, asking if she'd be willing to write more on fragrant matters, she was gracious enough to accept. (Readers, please remember that I welcome your nominations for potential nosy interviewees!) Gina is currently at work on The Volcano-Daughters, a novel set in El Salvador, Hollywood, and France, during the 1930s and 1940s. While you wait, you can read more of her nonfiction on the Michigan Quarterly Review blog.  

What do you smell like? 
I consulted several close friends to answer this question, and the consensus was nearly unanimous: rose. (My sweetheart, however, said that I smell “nice,” and “like the best.” Outlier). This rosy ruling flattered by vanity. My efforts have been rewarded! I tend to spray myself several times a day with a neon-pink plastic bottle of rosewater that can be found in many health food stores. The mysterious text on the bottle’s label reads: “Recommended in the Edgar Cayce Readings” and “Vor-mag Water (water that has been vortexed and magnetized to raise the energy to a higher vibration that we believe to be more beneficial).” Beneficial for what purpose, I am not sure. But I do find it refreshing, and I am fond of its reviving, rosy scent. I use this magic water in lieu of hairspray, and, often, in lieu of smelling salts. I use a German rose oil in a green glass bottle on my body instead of lotion, and I like rosehip oil on my lips. In a pharmacy in Geneva, I bought two cheap, tiny vials of perfume oil, which I like to dab on my wrists and neck after the shower: one is amber, the other vanilla. I love that amber in a glass bottle looks exactly as it should, honeyed and luminous, and smells just like the color of the veined golden stone. There are no cheap and luminous vials of perfume oil in the pharmacies of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I now live. A dear poet friend of mine, Gala Mukomolova, who smells like sweet milk, told me that in addition to roses, I smell of baking bread. Perhaps this is also true. In the grocery store’s personal care aisle, I like to pick up those expensive handmade bars of soap and hold them to my nose--I usually go home with almond or bee pollen or camomile or red clay with rose, or sometimes, more rarely, cucumber. My very favorite soap is made of sandalwood, but I’ll get to that in the next question. 

What do you like to smell?
I love smelling cardamom and real vanilla, good gin that is particularly rosy, honey, honey, honey, Mysore sandalwood soap that comes in a red cardboard box with pink roses and a tiny elephant, amber oil in the glass bottle, violets, the Redwood forest, the sunwarmed calico head of my favorite cat, Olive, olive oil, truffle oil, creosote, a Sonoran desert plant that smells just like summer monsoons, and fresh rosemary.  Leather guitar cases (and the shiny wood  and inner felt and nylon strings of a classical guitar), a special tea made from bergamot oil and sage. Library books, of course, who doesn’t? Especially in the spring and summer, I love the scent of a golden hour picnic on a wooden porch: rosé, cantaloupe, strawberries. Also, lavender, champagne, fistfuls of mint, purple thai basil, lemongrass, cherries, and ruby-red grapefruits sliced in half. I am pleased that my plan to smell like roses has succeeded in the noses of my friends, because I like the smell of large, velvety roses in surprising colors--violet-streaked, magenta, and cream--best.

I like the smell of a new broom, which I suppose is just straw. My friend, fiction writer, Jide Adebayo-Begun, told me about a Hausa idiom which means the knot at the center of the straw broom, typically referring to a deep and lasting bond of friendship or love between people. There’s also the tinny, winterfresh smell of cheap men's shaving cream, but only on the skin of my sweetheart. A few years ago, I gave him one of those fancy-hippie shaving kits that smells of cedar and pine and the earthiness of some sort of real hair that was collected to make the brush. He didn’t really use it, and his beard smells sometimes like Walgreens shaving cream, when it is neat, and like a dense human forest--rosewood, clean wool sweaters, and river stones--when it is tufty.
 

In childhood, I was fond of a particular marker, a bright, Lisa Frank turquoise, that smelled precisely as that color should, like the Pacific Ocean, juicyfruit gum, and strawberry lipgloss, but was named, curiously, “mango.” Another strange dissonance: as a kid, I used to walk up a hill to eat ice cream, past an auto body shop with oily rainbows on the sidewalk. Then and now, the smell of diesel exhaust makes me crave ice cream, usually cherry.

When I was a bad teen, I would go to bonfires on Ocean or Baker Beach, and return home smelling exactly like a Honeybaked Ham. What did you do tonight? My parents would ask. Nothing, I would say. Once or twice I smoked those clove cigarettes, to which many sensitive, melancholy teenagers find themselves drawn for a quick moment of cliché, and which are terrible, but which attempt to smell, via crude, poisonous, chemical shorthand, mystical and leathery and like a good autumn cake. These days, when my nose desires such fiery warmth, I prefer the scent of lapsung souchang tea, which is campfire smoke and spice, or the scent of actual autumn cakes baked in my oven with real cloves and cinnamon and cardamom.
 

Two old chestnuts most everyone enjoys smelling: chestnuts roasting beneath beaten-up pans on chilly city street corners and hot coffee. Right now, I’m working on a novel in which coffee plays an important role. Coffee is magic and nose-magnetic in the cup, but in the fields of El Salvador, just after the harvest, the rotting berries smell truly terrible, in a bodily sense. I was on a train there a few years ago, and the ticket-collector arrived beside my seat, a gust of something truly foul blew in through the window, and for a moment I thought that the ticket-collector was ill. But that foul gust was the coffee outside, those soft, red berries. 

11 comments:

Unknown said...

20150608meiqing
ralph lauren outlet
michael kors outlet
cheap beats by dre
michael kors
ralph lauren outlet
ray ban glasses
lebron james shoes
ralph lauren uk
true religion
discount christian louboutin
kate spade outlet
louis vuitton
red christian louboutin
gucci outlet
christian louboutin sale
christian louboutin shoes
abercrombie store
coach outlet
chanel handbags
abercrombie
true religion sale
coach factorty outlet
hogan shoes
chanel handbags
coach outlet store online
louis vuitton handbags
tory burch outlet
oakley sunglass
coach handags
ray ban sungalsses

Unknown said...

kate spade handbags
louboutin shoes
air jordan shoes
calvin klein outlet
salvatore ferragamo
monster beats
washington redskins jerseys
puma sneakers
beats headphones
jordan 4
ugg boots, http://www.uggbootsclearance.in.net
asics running shoes
oakley sunglasses
pandora jewelry
karen millen dresses
christian louboutin uk
michael kors outlet store, http://www.michaelkorsoutletonlinstore.us.com
air jordan 4
burberry outlet online, http://www.burberryoutletonlinestore.com.co
nba jerseys
baltimore ravens jerseys
oakley sunglasses, http://www.oakleysunglassescanada.com
oakley sunglasses
oakley sunglasses
michael kors factory online, http://www.michaelkorsfactoryoutletonline.com
ray ban
calvin klein underwear
hollister pas cher
roshe run men
replica watches
tory burch outlet online
ralph lauren uk
giuseppe zanotti
cheap jordans
canada goose outlet
lacoste outlet
achang 0814

Unknown said...

michael kors
los angeles lakers
louis vuitton outlet stores
oakley sunglasses
herve leger outlet
ugg outlet
louis vuitton outlet
coach outlet
reebok trainers
north face jackets
chanyuan2017.01.14

Unknown said...

oakley sunglasses
cheap ray ban sunglasses
moncler sale
michael kors outlet
coach outlet online
kate spade handbags
canada goose jackets clearance
fitflops sandals
gucci handbags
calvin klein outlet
2017.1.19chenlixiang

Unknown said...

cheap oakley sunglasses
cleveland cavaliers jerseys
ray ban sunglasses
ray ban sunglasses
cheap oakley sunglasses
fitflops
michael kors outlet clearance
louis vuitton
louis vuitton handbags
michael kors outlet clearance
20170121lck

xumeiqing said...

adidas super color
pandora jewelry
timberland boots
hermes handbags
louboutin
michael kors outlet
yeezy boost 350
ray ban sunglasses
adidas uk
michael kors handbags
20170316huazhen

Unknown said...

tory burch outlet online
thomas sabo charms
ferragamo outlet
adidas nmd runner
michael kors outlet stores
rolex uk
michael kors handbags
ralph lauren outlet stores
asics
coach outlet store online
20170402lck

Unknown said...

cheap soccer jerseys
hermes birkin bag
mulberry bags
ralph lauren outlet
tory burch outlet online
cartier outlet
nike store uk
polo ralph lauren
mulberry uk
rolex watches
chanyuan2017.06.08

Unknown said...

michael kors outlet
louboutin shoes
curry shoes
michael kors outlet
retro jordans
louboutin shoes uk
michael kors outlet
adidas nmd
nike air huarache
nike dunks shoes

qqqqqqqqqqqq said...

lacoste outlet
air jordan 4
yeezy boost
golden goose outlet
bape hoodie
converse outlet store
moncler jacket
air jordan 13
yeezy boost 350 v2

chenlili said...

michael kors outlet
christian louboutin shoes
michael kors outlet online
longchamp outlet online
michael kors outlet online
adidas yeezy
giuseppe zanotti sneakers
christian louboutin
pandora charms
supreme
chenqiuying20180720

Post a Comment