i wish you could smell what i'm smellin'

Chelsea Peretti's hilarious Twitter feed introduced me to the delightful Daym Drops, and Julie Klausner's feed to the fact that his Five Guys Burgers & Fries review had been Auto-tuned, beautifully showcasing a favorite line:  "I wish you could smell what I'm smellin'." Speaking of Julie Klausner, I trust that, if you enjoy laughing, you're already subscribed to her podcast, How Was Your Week. It's the best! (She's also the guest on today's episode of WTF with Marc Maron; I'm headed out for a walk and a listen now).

This weekend I wore L'Air du Desert Morocain, a scent so dry it's almost scratchy. In the bottle it seems too sweet and thick for this heat and humidity, but spray and almost immediately it becomes resinous and reassuring, smoke and wood rising beautiful up off my arm, making me smell like a person alive long before Twitter, podcasts, or Auto-tune existed, lasting on the skin even through a shower, it seems, stray tendrils of that out-of-time smell reaching me even as I sit staring at this screen now.

recollected weekend smells

It was a super-fragrant weekend! Some highlights:

Elisa let me come over and sniff her impressive perfume collection. I was introduced to the number-one fragrance for off-duty cowboys, eau d'Haribo, and a whole bunch of beautiful perfumes to add to my already obscenely long wishlist.

(last spring in Seattle)

Violets were everywhere! I had to access deep reserves of self-control to not yank them up by the fistfuls and macerate them in my mouth. Here's Diane Ackerman on smelling violets:

Violets smell like burnt sugar cubes that have been dipped in lemon and velvet, I might offer, doing what we always do: defining one smell by another smell or another sense...The thing about violets, which many people find cloying to the point of nausea, is that no response to them lasts long; as Shakespeare put it, they're: Forward, not permanent, sweet not lasting, /The perfume and suppliance of a minute

Violets contain ionone, which short-circuits our sense of smell. The flower continues to exude its fragrance, but we lose the ability to smell it. Wait a minute or two, and its smell will blare again. Then it will fade again, and so on.

The smell of popcorn is an all-time favorite, and I also have a great deal of fondness for the smell of a good hardware store. So imagine the devotion I feel for my local Tags/Ace hardware shop, where they occasionally roll out a popcorn machine and give you a little Ace-logo-emblazoned bag of popcorn just for wandering in off the street. 

(last summer at the hardware store)

I was at the hardware store to buy a 9" springform cake pan (this hardware store keeps getting better and better, no?) so I could try this almond cake recipe, recommended by my friend Rebecca, who makes the best pineapple upside down cake in the world. On Sunday afternoon, the whole house smelled like almond paste and spring breeze and library books.

Yesterday was May Day. Did you play ding-dong-ditch and leave a paper cone of tulips on a friend's porch? It's probably not too late.

anticipated weekend smells:

• the return of the halloumi cheese grilling outside of formaggio kitchen
• the inside of leavitt & peirce, a local cigar shop i know my dad will want to visit 
• the smell of snow, melting all at once, and for the last time this year