12.12.12 smells

At 11:11, we wish, and on 12/12/12, we list: 

1) Smell of generosity: Perfume-world-mensch Andy Tauer is in the midst of his annual advent calendar giveaway-spree. May each of you win something fragrant! 

2) Smell of paper flowers:  Courtney Mandryk is selling her beautiful conceptual calendar. 'Tis the season!

Smell of stars: My spacesuit arrived! Thanks to those of you who encouraged this purchase via Facebook.

3) Smell of innovation: The Institute for Art and Olfaction is launching soon, and has already taught me that John Milton invented the word fragrance (along with moonstruck, pandemonium, and lovelorn).

4) Smell of superheros: Special Powers and Abilities is Raymond McDaniel's awesome new book of poems for your brain & your heart.

5) Smell of heartswell: Adam rescued Billy from a place that smelled horrific, and, as my friend Hillary put it, we all cried and gave Billy money.  

6) Smell of Wisconsin gone Hollywood: Since we last saw her on Nosy Girl, Emma Straub published her dazzling debut novel, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures. 

7) Smell of cocktail sparkle: Mandy Aftel introduced Aftelier Chef's Essence® Sprays just in time for you to flavor-up your holiday cooking.

8) Smell of sweet music: We're lucky that Nitsuh Abebe has shared his rad list of 50 favorite songs of 2012 (you can listen here via Spotify).

9) Smell of Dancing Girl: Lucy Biederman's wonderful chapbook, The Other World, has gone on sale since she graced us here on Nosy Girl.  

#10's smell, but not one of his library books

10) Smell of library books: My husband, Nosy-Interviewee-to-be & PhD-student extraordinaire, is nearly finished with his toughest semester of graduate school yet, and I admire his work ethic & his restless intelligence more than ever.

11) Smell of new baby: Since her interview posted, Katie Miota Stolzman started a badass blog (and became a mother)!

12) Smell of va-va-voom: Charlotte Boulay (the first-ever Nosy Interviewee) had her gorgeous poem, "Talking to the Dead," in last week's New Yorker. Wowee!

Nosy Interview: Alyssa Harad

 Alyssa in a rotated Clouds in Cygnus,  © Bob Caton, Al Howard, Eric Zbinden, and Rogelio Bernal Andreo

In a dusty corner of my drafts folder, I have a few eager paragraphs responding to Alyssa Harad's "The Perfume Diet," published in the June 2011 issue of O magazine. I never managed to make my response presentable, but in November of that year, Alyssa contacted me to say she was enjoying Nosy Girl. I was so flattered! Hers was one of the very first encouraging e-mails (from someone not obligated in any way to offer one) about this here endeavor, and she has since been a great supporter of the nosy blog. I was thrilled to learn that Alyssa was working on a much bigger project related to the essay: Coming to My Senses, her smart & beautiful memoir, is available now (and it would make a great holiday gift!). Additional Alyssa to tide you over until you get your copy: this super-insightful interview (conducted by Elisa), and Alyssa's blog (I especially loved this post). 

What do you smell like?  
I suspect most of us would be as disconcerted to find out what we smell like to others as we are when we first hear our voices on tape. That said, I probably spend a lot more time sniffing myself than most people do, because I collect and write about perfume and I love to follow along as it unfolds on my skin. On any given day I might smell like an orange grove in full bloom, a New York dowager in diamonds and furs or the inside of a Japanese temple. When I'm not wearing perfume, and perhaps even when I am, I'm guessing I have the rumpled, slightly musty, libraryish smell of someone covered in cat and dog fur who drinks tea all day at home, alone, in front of the computer, surrounded by old books. In the evenings, and on weekend afternoons, I smell of whatever I'm cooking. 

A perfumer I know named Neil Morris--a big friendly bear of a man--once thoroughly snuffled the skin between my inner wrist and the crook of my elbow, up and back and up and back again,and declared that my base scent was milky, sweet and slightly woody. He wanted me to try a perfume of his called "Scrumptious," because he thought it  would meld with my skin. Though I have no doubt he was right, I was smitten by another perfume from his line, one called "Midnight Shadows," a dark, smoky number with just a touch of burnt caramel. Make of this what you will.  

What do you like to smell?  
As long as I have an escape route, I'm up for a quick whiff of nearly anything, though I do get overwhelmed by too much scent in an enclosed space. I can't go into Abercrombie & Fitch, for example. (That may not be the only reason). 

For some reason, whenever I get this question I think of scents that conjure up beloved places. I went on a trip to Seattle and the San Juan islands this summer, my first visit in many years, and it made me remember how much I love the scent of old pine forests--not just the sharp, turpentine scent of the needles, but the combined scent of living and decaying trees and damp humus underfoot. I love everything about  the smell of a ferry landing, too--the creosote and old wood smell of the dock and the diesel engine of the ferry mixing with the briny salt and seaweed of the harbor. I've written about the dry summer dust, blonde grass and sagebrush scent of the foothills that surround my hometown of Boise, Idaho, and the first time I drove down the coast of California I went crazy for the mixed scents of the ocean and the eucalyptus trees--eventually I just pulled over and piled a bunch of old branches into my rental car. But I think, even more than all those wild, outdoor smells, I love the smell of a crowded city street in New York in the fall--that crazy mixture of car exhaust, road tar, bourbon, concrete, sweat, dying leaves, damp wool, garlic, roasted nuts, hairspray, metal, coffee, cigarettes and a thousand other things appearing and disappearing in rapid succession like bits of overheard conversation. My perfume makes more sense on a New York city street than it does anywhere else.

nosy girl gift guide vol.2

It's that time of year again! When the gift guides multiply like wet mogwai, and my debit card, melty due to overuse, starts to smell like a perm. Gross! Here are some gifts that smell so good you'll forget you were really trying not to buy so much this year: 

1.  Topping my personal wishlist is this tremendous vanilla fragrance from CB I Hate Perfume. Even before reading the story behind 7 Billion Hearts, I thought it smelled like it had a soul. 

2.  For my money, Theo is the best bean-to-bar chocolatier in the country (and if you're in Seattle, a factory tour would make for a fun & fragrant gift to share). Choose their Eastern Congo Initiative Bars for their festive packaging, amazing flavor (The Pili Pili Chili has a real kick!), & support of important work being done in a troubled region.

3. Help fill your friends' kitchens with delicious aromas courtesy of two cookbooks I loved this year: The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman and Jerusalem: A Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. Aftelier’s Chef Essences Food 52 Starter Kit makes a lovely addition for a more experimental chef. (You should probably buy yourself something from this section as well, and bring a homemade treat for your host.)

4. A scented candle in a pretty package is still my go-to hostess gift, and you can find sweet little mercury glass votive holders all over these days. (Some of my favorite candles are discussed at great length here.)

5. If you've deemed Campfire Cologne a safety hazard, or your mountain man is beardless, I recommend Juniper Ride Natural Room Spray, as it's the most forest you can get indoors (all real tree, no Little Tree-rearview-window-dangling tree). If you want to help someone smell irresistibly dapper, go with the grown-up, balls-to-the-wall beauty of Sir by D.S. & Durga.

6. For the nosy writer in your life who still hasn’t finished her novel, why not pair the promise of a fireside celebratory toast from a bottle of this cheeky whiskey with Freedom, a tool to help her spend less time online (and more on her writing). You're such a good friend! 

Bonus ideas: Everything on last year's inaugural gift guide still smells great, and I recommend stuff all the time around these parts, including & especially these amazing books by past Nosy Interviewees. Happy gifting, and may everyone you love enjoy the smell of your hugs. 

Nosy Interview: Gallo Fall

Gallo in Wisps of the Veil Nebula, © Joaquin Ferreiros

Gallo and I met through a dear mutual friend. Others occasionally refer to me as "Nosy Girl" in their interviews, but I think Gallo may be the only one to call me this in person as well, and I always liked how it sounded in his Senegalese accent, "Hello, Nosy Girl. How is Nosy Girl?"  

What do you smell like?  
Yay, it is Nosy time. Well, I smell like Soapwalla Deodorant Cream. I started using it since I moved in with my girlfriend. As my girlfriend has an allergic reaction to any perfumes, I want to save her from sneezing. 

I have been very aware of her fragrance-free world and am using a natural smell neutralizer that works even after a 5k jog. I smell like Soapwalla, kind of lavender-ish and peppermint since this is the only deodorant that am using.  

What do you like to smell? 
Great question! Well, Nosy Girl, I miss the smell of my family’s house in Senegal. Growing up, the scent of thiouraye (pronounced “choo-rye”) was the most prominent smell in our household. The smell was very distinct, heavenly good and magical.  

Thiouraye is made from diguidja (pronounced “dee- gui-jah) which is bits of wood and seeds soaked in a mixture of perfumes such as musk or other types of oil and spices and usually kept sealed in an old jar for a period of time. The way my mother makes it is very different from others as there isn’t any particular formula. After the thiouraye is fermented, my mother would sniff it to ensure it passed the smell test— her quality assurance, so to speak. The incense is burned on an “ande” (pronounced “ah-nde”), which is a handmade clay bowl filled with ashes. Then burning charcoal is buried under the ashes. Once sprinkled on the ande-thiouraye, the scent of thiouraye wafts through corridors and fills the house.

Occasionally, I pass by someone on the street and can recognize them as a fellow Senegalese—their clothes, hair, and belongings are all infused with thiouraye.

smellgiving & thanksmelling

I baked (& ate) this for you.

Are you still eating Thanksgiving leftovers? I have leftover thanks to give, too, that I meant to offer last week. Thank you for reading! I'm so grateful to you, and to the nosy interviewees, who have indulged my curiosity over so many weeks, and who make me think about smell in sharper, better, weirder ways with each passing day. Thank you for reading, for lurking, for sharing, for commenting, for sending me smelly links, and for supporting me as I use this space to think out loud about smell in my sustained and scattered way. I go through the days more attuned to my sense of smell than ever before--more appreciative of pecans caramelizing in bourbon and brown sugar, more alert to the way that smells poke out like loud noises or beautiful faces, and still more fascinated by what we say about how we smell--and I have all of you, in no small part, to thank for that. 

Nosy Interview: Letha Myers

Letha in NGC 6357: Cathedral to Massive Stars, © NASA, ESA, & Jesús Maíz Apellániz (IAA, Spain) 

Letha and I met when we both lived in the Biltmore, a former hotel with The Shining-esque hallways and a primo location in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. Get a glimpse of the world through Letha's beauty-hungry eyes by peeking at her Instagram feed, visiting her Etsy shop, or perusing the archives of her blog. 

What do you smell like? 

I think I primarily smell of baking soda and apple cider vinegar because that’s what I wash my (hippie, sustainable, cheap ass) hair with. I probably also smell like the ‘Yes to…’ brand of products. I like and use their cucumber body butter a lot (it smells better than the straight up lotion of the same cucumber persuasion.) Also Tokyo Milk’s ‘Sencha Bleu’ solid perfume. According to their web site ‘Sencha’ smells like “Hyacinth, Iris, Citrus Zest and Crisp Greens.”

What do you like to smell? 

Fresh ginger, avocados, tomatoes from the farmers market, pickles, cheese,  bread, olives….oh, olives! Spices; dill weed, rosemary, peppercorns before they're ground, cardamom. Gin, a super hoppy beer (Pliny the Younger!), just-pressed and poured coffee. Tea before it’s brewed, how promising it is, how potent. Mexican hot chocolate. Olive oil in a hot pan before anything joins it. The dusty smell of uncooked rice. And again, cheese. (Always cheese.) Also: antique/thrift stores, memories wafting out of inanimate objects from all directions. Such a smelly clamor. Cracking open a book and inhaling the headiness of paper with ink on it-- escapism before I even get to the story. Slowly becoming a bona fide bicycler and finding lots of neat byproducts about commuting via two wheels…one being that there are lots of smells involved. And each day’s ride smells radically different. The first day of public school here in Seattle (I kid you not) smelled like fruit loops. Other times it's apricots or cashews or just grass and growing things. Often this summer I’ve smelled lavender so hard I choke. Particular spots, late at night as I roll by, smell like whiskey just poured into a glass. Today it smelled as if someone had dumped fresh wood chips over everything in creation and then stirred in some velvety moss. Heaven. Pressing my cheek against my twin niece and nephew’s 6 month-old faces and breathing in new life. How a just-made bed smells of both cleanliness and of dust (dusty smells, a running theme with my nose it seems). The way the person I love to curl up with often smells--ever so faintly-- of the smoking he’s constantly trying to reign in, but doesn’t, not really. The few times a year I catch a whiff of the odor of really hot sand in summer. The complex, deep smell of wet earth after rain. Earth smells are far and away my favorite. Dust. Pines. Decaying leaves. Clay. Earth smells tell me that--despite the chaotic rhythm of we and the planet--“this has all happened before, will all happen again.”

snowcake season

My neighborhood is not messing around, sunset-wise.

The week before last, Boston got a foot of snow. It all melted, and I was in Atlanta at the time, but the chill is still here, even as some fire-colored fall leaves keep hanging on, too. It seems I'm constantly talking about how fall is my favorite season, so it will surprise no one that I'm in no rush for winter to arrive. There are, though, a few winter-is-coming olfactory pleasures that help assuage any anticipatory angst: the smell of our ancient free-standing radiators when they clang into action after a long rest is so beautiful, and still surprises me most mornings; the smell of cold weather clinging to people's clothes, that almost-visible mix of static electricity and thin fresh air that makes those come-in, come-in hugs all the more essential; and the smell of Snowcake, my favorite Lush soap (described in last year's gift guide as the sudsy equivalent of a comforting embrace), which is back in season, and back in my regular shower rotation (used in conjunction with Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Liquid Soap, it's as Chrismassy as tinsel and twinkly lights). Stay gold forever, fall; I miss you even when you're around.

fired up

[photo via And I Am Not Lying]

My friend Funlayo spotted incense like the Barack Obama Type (pictured above) in the Harvard Square T-stop and I knew I had to smell it (and maybe pick some up to burn today for luck). But incense-man has been out of the office every time I've popped into the station, and I suppose I'll have to wait until after President Obama is re-elected (knock on all the wood) to burn this in celebration rather than to mask the smells of full-court stress. American readers, don't forget to sniff your fellow progressive citizens at the polls today & VOTE!

nosy's smelloween

My friend Lauren in her jellyfish getup, with one of my fragrant petals creeping into the frame.

This year I was a BOOquet for Halloween (glamour-shot below). I weighed down a flimsy green dress with a dozen hot glue sticks worth of fake flowers, tied a florist's bow around a cellophane skirt, and topped it off with a flower headband so gigantic I'll need a royal wedding-invite to have occasion to wear it again. In the interest of verisimilitude, I coated myself with Rossy de Palma Eau de Protection. Though my costume didn't feature any roses, the scent matched the bright green and iridescent gloss of the dress, and seemed tough enough, somehow, to stand up to the chaos of Halloween. Maybe it's the bloody knife note that Chandler Burr describes in an article about The Art of Scent: 1889-2012, his upcoming show at the Museum of Arts and Design:  

The fragrance is called Eau de protection, Burr explains, and it is “one of the most fascinating works ever created, in any art form.” It was designed as “a portrait of a woman who is so beautiful that rose runs in her blood. And a man comes with a metal knife, and plunges it into her heart. And it is the smell of her blood, running down the blade.”

It was interesting to wear so much perfume (the dress hangs like a giant sachet on the closet door, scenting my whole bedroom even days later), especially since I'm usually a pretty restrained sprayer, perhaps in part due to my love of big ol' overpowering fragrances. But I went bananas spraying this costume, and this meant a lot more reaction to my smell than I typically get, ranging from the positive: "I just want to keep hugging you to breathe you in!" to the not-so-hot: "You smell like that one women's deodorant, you know, the famous one." Okay! 

Boo! Highly-filtered selfies are the Glamour Shots of our time. 

Another guest at the Halloween party, lanky and in all black, was dubbed Vanilla Bean due to her lack of costume and the serious waft of lovely vanilla she was projecting. She told me it was Jo Malone's Vanilla & Anise, a perfume I'd never sniffed before, but will definitely try when I next have the chance, even though I think part of its appeal might have been the ease with which she wore it, and the way its homey tonka bean comforts contrasted slightly with her sharp wit, luminous North London accent, and "nihilist's wardrobe." I'm on a serious "non-yicky vanilla" (term courtesy of Katie Puckrik) kick at the moment, though, having fallen in love recently with the smokey, soulful vanilla in the gorgeous CB I Hate Perfume's 7 Billion Hearts (so like me to fall for priciest car on the lot) and the woody beauty of Le Labo's Vanille 44. Maybe my nose knows that winter is coming and wants the warmth of rich, real vanilla, worn by humans huddled together around a fire.