Written Friday afternoon, 8/17: This afternoon when I ran it
was the first time in ages that I’ve really sweat. The temperature was over 90F
(32C) and the humidity was relatively high (65% - I looked it up), just pushing
over the threshold for really getting soaked in sweat when exercising. The sun
was shining and there was heat radiating up from the asphalt. As I sit here
writing this, the sweat is running down every part of my body like rivers. My
shorts and tank top are soaked. I love it! Of course I’m looking forward to a
nice shower at some point, but right now I’m just loving the feel of it being
summer. We have so little warm weather here that it’s a novelty, just like fog and rain
in the desert.
Before I went running I was working on a new floral accord
for a fragrance in progress. It’s going to have a very earthy base with a
floral heart, but no roses, carnations, or standard “white flowers”. I wanted
the new accord to be a hybrid between a generic orchid base and osmanthus, so
I’d been poring over chemical analyses of weird orchid species’ headspaces and
osmanthus flowers fresh, picked, in concrete, and in absolute, trying to
identify the main players common to all of them. I had a basic orchid-ish
accord already, the sort of just-at-the-corner-of-your consciousness scent that
would belong to one of those legions of non-showy orchids like the one in the
photo. This afternoon I added the first osmanthus framework. When I put a dab of
the mix on my skin it was way too strong and “unmelded” at first, but as it
dried down, I smelled the possibilities. About an hour into the drydown I went
for my run. By that point I was thrilled because I could smell the peachy note
that’s in osmanthus, with no peachy stuff having been added. It blew my mind to
think that there are so many pathways to the same olfactory experience. After
sweating enough to wash away just about anything, the scent is still on my skin. So far so good! …
Written today, 8/18: Later on that evening when I went up to my “lab”, the room
was full of the flowery, peachy sillage of my experiment. I still have a lot of
tweaking to do, but I think I have basically what I want. I applied some more this morning, and it's mellower than it was yesterday. It still starts out way too strong, but it's a concentrate, after all. It's back to the usual cool and cloudy weather, so I'll get to experience it in a very different context.
[Desert dunes photo from Wikimedia. The Dactylorrhiza fuchsii grows in my garden.]
Osmanthus and orchid? Oooh, I'm interested.
ReplyDeleteAnd I wanted to thank you for something you did in this post. It's a very small thing, but I noticed and appreciated the little gesture - including the Celsius in the description of your story. I don't think in Fahrenheit at all, and it was a welcome surprise to find the conversion listed.
Dionne, I am at a loss to try to understand why the US keeps on using archaic systems of weights and measures when the metric system makes so much more sense and is used worldwide. Last time I checked, the US was one of only 3 countries that don't use the metric system. By now, it may be the only one.
ReplyDeleteWhen buying perfumery materials or bottles from suppliers who do not use the metric system, I always have to do a mental conversion of odd measures like ounces, pints, quarts, pounds, gallons, drams (!), etc. to the metric system in order to really understand what the quantity is.