Palonera

...on my skin as the jet makes its puddle from the small sample sprayer at 32 degrees outside temperature.
It's August, it's hot, it's not my first test of "Limette 37" - and I still don't know what limes smell like, freshly cut, peel, zest, juice.
I don't know.
Actually I had wanted to buy limes, for safety and comparison.
But then there were none in the shops where I could think of what I wanted to buy - and in the others, I forgot them.
Now it must go without, without limes, without direct comparison - the rest in the tube is threateningly coming to an end, I cannot test much longer, especially since it always runs the same, the test, always to the same end.

Bright and radiant opens a citrus note that could come from almost any fruit I know: I would nod to lemons, limes, pomelos and grapefruits. Even petitgrain is possible, given the lack of prickly spines on the note that wafts around my nose.
No sweetness, not a grain only.
It is almost garish, the freshness, white and green, yellow not so much.
After a good quarter of an hour, threads of flowers weave their way in gently, soft, bright, which I cannot define, making it softer, the scent without taking away its freshness, its coolness, which is pleasantly refreshing on days like today and generally when it is lazy, my head when it thinks slowly and listless and needs a push to remember that it is the boss of the big whole called body.
Then "Limette 37" helps - but then other pick-me-ups also help the colognigen family, which is large, colourful and varied, which I only need to reach into the shelf to meet, perhaps even climb into the cellar to get them out of the cool darkness.
I don't have to travel to San Francisco, even though I'd love to, at some point in time when there's plenty of time and no pandemic.
That would be nice

"Lime 37" lasts a long, really long time on my skin - and it manages to do this without smelling at any time, without reminding me of detergents or anything else I don't like or smell that much.
Well, with time it runs out of puff a little, the freshness, also the brightness - then it nestles even closer, becomes quieter, softer still, a little creamy, a little powdery.
Here and there the sun flashes through the canopy of leaves in the tree in front of my house, it smells in the heat of this afternoon, its green and brown very fine speckles scatter on the creamy white and march grass green, the fine spice of my skin.
Summer hot, summer damp, cotton smooth on white linen.
Fresh laundry on the line, a gust of wind brings a little coolness.
Slowly the sun sets, the heat gives way and the light too - only close, very close is "Limette 37", the nose has to tilt close to the skin, the already dry, cooler, almost shivering in the moisture rising from the grasses.
One last remnant, one last breath accompanies me in Morpheus' arms - those of the beloved stay away, because as a cologne-cost despiser he doesn't like "Limette 37" very much either.
I'll survive.
And San Francisco, that's for sure, too

PS: Ergoproxy, once again - thanks!

The other day under 'm almond tree
a cashmere dream floats down
finely spun, quiet,

magical and light as a feather,
calibrated for sunlight,
sends me on a journey

Year by year it goes back,
lighter becomes the time luggage,
my worries disappear,

to hardly a handful of years',
no more silver thread in hair,
i'm standing on the morning of my life

In grandma's kitchen it's warm,
even warmer on grandpa's arm:
"Well, are you awake, my darling?

I know the stove cracked
and you woke up from that
But now we're having almond biscuits!"

A blink of an eye, a moment -
i'm sixteen now. First happiness,
the belly full of butterflies -

"Heliotrope" on the skin,
you smell strange and yet familiar
like all the new things,

that you teach me this year,
the exciting and wonderful
shaped me for my life.

You awakened my sensuality
and taught me tenderness,
the taking and the giving.

Sweetened tobacco, soft smoke,
the dancer's decorated belly -
La Danse Bacchanale.

The dream passed, and with it the feast.
On my skin a last rest
"Tonka Impériale".

The first impression and also the second one:
a men's fragrance like too many today,
freshly showered and free from all stink.
I smelled him almost every hour
and daily it is discussed here and there,
never rates too high and never too low.

Then it becomes harsher, herbaceous and clear,
very slightly aniseed, today, wonderful
like wild land under the sun's glare.
I smell pepper, laurel, dry wood
i see an old man, stooped, proud
A donkey carries the old man's heavy load

through the macchia, over hill and dale.
Soon dusk will fall,
covers over land and light a hazy' cloth.
I'm in the house, in front of me the old table
The pencil lead is sharpened very fresh,
fills page after page with me in the book

There's a fire crackling in the fireplace over there
Its smoke mixes with the rosemary
and all those bundles of herbs in the beams
My gaze goes out the windows into the night
A touch of incense. A candle is awake
The hand in mine is a little wilted

And so the scent stays on my skin,
i'm getting more and more trusted by the hour
stays the day and also the evening.
I find him to be masculine,
peppery, woody, little feminine
and for men suitable for everyday use - but!


PS: Aava - thanks!

He was regarded as the enfant terrible of Italian haute couture and shared this title for years with the Frenchman Jean Paul Gaultier - Franco Moschino, exceptional talent and revolutionary, self-ironic "court jester" and ambassador at the same time, who with his extraordinary, provocative yet always wearable creations defied the establishment.

Moschino, who had learned and worked for Versace, resisted following the laws of the fashion industry throughout his short life - he accused it of decadence and grotesqueness, unconditional greed for profit and roped parties, and yet the more he scolded it, the more fervently he was loved, praised and roared with celebration.
And in rare sincerity deeply mourned when he, only 44 years old, died in September 1994 from the consequences of HIV infection.

Among those who mourned was I.
I had liked him, this wild boy, who could have been Freddy Mercury's sibling, so strikingly their resemblance seemed to me in some pictures.
I liked the casual non-seriousness of his clothes, the winking rascal grin, the denim jacket printed with peace symbols and hearts, for which I had to spend more money than I could actually afford.
I liked the belt with the golden letters, which bore his name, which a handful of friends had given me for my birthday and which still lies in my cupboard today, although it hasn't fitted me for a long time.
And what I liked best, what I liked most of all, was his fragrance, the first, the only one that was ever something like a signature, which I bought again and again over the years.

I was 19 when we met, "Moschino" and me.
It was the time in my life when almost everything was green-white-red, a coffee was only good if it was called espresso or cappuccino, the biscuits were called cantuccini, amarettini maybe still.
Pizza and pasta were staple foods, a fragrance per se noteworthy if it only came out of the boot.
My style icon was a head shorter, native Venetian with a penchant for high heels in which I could not even stand, let alone walk at her pace.
One day she brought him to Giuseppe's tiny trattoria, where we often met, put him on the table in front of me and said: "That's you!"

And she seemed to be right about that.
Never before and seldom afterwards was I so often spoken to about a fragrance, I was associated with it as much as on the countless days I wore "Moschino" afterwards.
"When I reached my desk after a thirty-minute walk in the morning, dishevelled by the wind and coiffed by the weather, I was told two open office doors away.
"Moschino" was, although not a sledgehammer, powerful and durable, it remained from early morning until late at night.
He wrapped me in warm glow, in old dark gold, in velvet, brocade and terracotta.
He straightened my back and shoulders, set my feet firmly on any surface.
A fragrance like a palazzo, timeless, noble, of morbid elegance - crumbling frescoes, flaking plaster, an old Michelangelo on the ceiling.

"Moschino" snuggles up, but doesn't cuddle, doesn't cuddle - the warmth it radiates is never deceptive about corners, points, edges, about resistance and obstinacy.
It bears the signature of its creator, its namesake - despite all the owlish mirroring and all the capers, Franco Moschino always placed great value on true value, not only the monetary value, be it in his clothes or in this fragrance.
And perhaps now, a good three decades later, it is time for flacon number six.

November grey was outside the windows - the sky was cloudy, the windows were richly beeped.
All day long he had been crying, the sky, had frozen my skin, my soul finally too.
Looking for a little warmth, for light and comfort I found soft wool, cuddly socks, quite unexpectedly finally also you: a small, flat bottle, untouched, filled, it seemed to me, with sun gold.
"L'Instant de Guerlain", 16 years old

It was the hottest summer in living memory, in the memory of a pigeon - never before, as far as I could remember, were values measured in the Ruhr area as those in the summer of 2003.
They left the 30 degree mark unimpressed, danced around the 40, turned the drop of sweat upside down and killed the air conditioning in the ICE that brought me to him, to him, the unknown and yet so close to me, to Berlin

We had met each other four months before, met in some chat, strange or new, had said "Hello!" and "How are you?", what they say at the beginning of time.
I was not looking for more than a little pastime, a chat here and there.
And now, that morning, I was on my way to see him - his image in my head, the heart in my left shoe.

His eyes were blue, turquoise blue like the sky over Lusatia, like the water in the quarry pond.
We lay hand in hand there on our backs, our skin glued together by sun milk, breaded by the sand.
We fed each other with candied fruit, with apricot jam, then we spiffed and kissed them away.
He buried his nose in Coco's "Mademoiselle", my head lay on the sun gold of his skin.
We watched the sun set in amber and apricot, wrapped ourselves in the black velvet of the night, told each other about the stars and the stones of our time.
We shared hours, days, weeks - for two whole years.
When he left, I wore "Allure".

"L'Instant de Guerlain" beams me back to this year, this summer, to this man.
Sixteen years have passed since then - the scent lets me bridge them with just one breath.
It carries the sun of those days, its fragrance and warmth, carefree and sensual and decidedly feminine.
A fragrance, twinned with the Chanels, marked by the dawning of a new era - not unknown with its sun-warm fruits, with its bouquet of dense, rich flowers, with its honey resin, but no longer loud, not as powerfully opulent as "Roma" and "Venezia", or "Laguna" for that matter.
"L'Instant de Guerlain" is softer, quieter, softer too, spotted at least, not sprayed on my winter skin.
And comforting.
As much comforting as the girlfriend warm arm.
Not just the day the last rose broke.