Palonera

"Fig!" says my nose and raises irritated the neighboring brows. "Didn't you say something about sandalwood?"
"Actually, yes," I think and critically eye the sprayer.
It says "Santal 33" on it.
It comes from Le Labo like all the other sprayers we've dealt with before, nose, skin and me.
Usually it's what's written on it, at least about.
This time however: "Fig - still. The wood, the leaf, the milk. But no pulp, no sweet juice. And sea air - can it be? Just like that time on the Bréhat Island, remember?"

Yes, I remember it - rough, salty sea air, rugged cliffs, the wind blowing my hair into my face, pulling my clothes, desert and wild.
It seems so peaceful, the island, down in the south, with its thousands of bees and flowers around Saint Michel, the old chapel, with its almost kitschy green meadows, where a cow gave birth to her calf right in front of our eyes.
And the fig trees, the innumerable fig trees with their woody, tart green, which is bitter in its fragrance and yet the juice contracts in the mouth.

"Stop dreaming!" tears my nose out of memories. "Are you wearing the old leather jacket again? "The brown suede one whose sleeves once went in the Indian sauce?"
No, I didn't - but I know exactly what my nose means.
Leather is there, velvety wild leather, a bit stained apparently by spicy dark juice, who knows where from.
And smoke, a little bit woody, a little bit resinous, holy not so much - a little bit but yet, far back, imagined perhaps only.
"Did you say wood?" asks nose, suddenly with light eyes.
Yes, wood is there, for sure - dark, soft, polished wood.
"Sandalwood?!"
"If I wouldn't say so - it's not that soft, balsamic or not at all, much too dark in addition. Cedar...? Yes, but - a bit of pencil would get there, only without a lead," I think, my nose close to my wrist, breathing slowly and gently, "and powder - mauve-coloured smooth powder, very little, very fine. What do you say, nose? Am I right?"
"Did you," let me nod my nose, "and brine is there, sometimes peeking around the corner, playing hide-and-seek. And something from your kitchen that you put in the orient dishes, something with K."
"Cubeb pepper?"
"I don't know - could be. Maybe cardamom or coriander. Ask the tongue, it knows better than that."
But the tongue stays out and remains silent.

"Were you in the sauna?" my nose asks me a few hours later. "You smell like wellness, like essential oils, like camphor, eucalyptus - somehow healthy!"
She's right, I think, and I breathe deeper.
Cool and warm at the same time is what now rises from my skin, surrounds me like an aura, light and dark, leafy woody, smoky and at the same time ether-fresh, grated grain of spices next to a sea of green rocks.
Every day a little different, sometimes green, sometimes brown, always powerfully accompanied by a dull, rich grey.
A little bitter, bitter and brittle - not really tangible and of deep fascination.
Like L'île des fleurs et des rochers roses.


PS: Ergoproxy - thank you!

"Can I have that?" he asked, the man at my side.
"Can I have that when you're done testing?"
That sounded hopeful, that sounded like Habenwill - I had to ask to make sure I had understood him correctly.
"The man, who is rarely enthusiastic about the fragrances I test, which I wear, said "Ferragamo pour Homme", which he liked many years ago, followed sometime by "Tuscan Leather", "Fields of Rubus" - my memory doesn't give much more.
And now this.
"Kokorico," the rooster he wanted.
The. of all people

But it's not that I don't understand him.
Not at all.
The scent with the silly name is beautiful.
Really nice.
Then, if you like fragrances of this kind.
"Kokorico" is a warm, soft, dark, velvety, yet thoroughly masculine fragrance that women can still wear without hesitation.
If she pays a little attention to the dose - less here is decidedly more.
I had to recognize this on the very first day, when the surge from the Apo dropper was too big.
Then it got loud, the cock, very loud - too much ambroxan, too much testosterone rose from the sunny September skin, clouded my senses and pressed a little bit hard on my stomach.
That was a lesson to me, the following days it went more cautiously to work.

Whatever the pyramid may tell us, it is not complete.
Ambroxan is being embezzled, I'm pretty sure, and probably laboratory oud too.
Otherwise I cannot explain the warm spice, the dark dense low, the tender scratching, the "Kokorico" on my woman's skin exudes after an almost two lashes long prelude of watery light green, latent fruit.
That can be fig leaf, no question, but also the leaf on almost every tree that bears fruit in the south as well as in the west.
It is so quickly gone, the freshness, that its function, its sense and purpose is not revealed - perhaps it is the young morning that breaks before the first cock's cry.

After this short hint of freshness, it becomes dark (again) - resins and consecrated smoke combine with pencil cedar and a fine sweet that seems to come from chocolaty rather than gothic patchouli.
I can't recognize cocoa as such, not the bitter-oily one that my nose knows.
But - I already wrote it - a lot of ambroxan, a lot of wood, a lot of oud.
A little sage, maybe.
Not any more.
And certainly not less.

"Kokorico" seems to me to be the forerunner of fragrances like Sentifiques "Testostérone", Diors "Sauvage" and all the powerhouses whose virility often overflows buses, trains, supermarkets.
Here, however, one has taken a back seat, does not yet follow the motto "a lot helps a lot", as long as the spray head is made with caution.
One drop from the Apo was enough to wrap me in a transparent aura, well perceptible even the next morning, but not slaying, not too dense.
And to awaken him, the have-will reflex in the man next door who is tall, dark, masculine.
And certainly not half a rooster.

So much I found in Amber pour Homme - so much, so much.
Tangerines, watery fresh from the tree.
The Neroli Sting, very gentle only, soon over.
The shower from a moment ago, a touch of gel still hangs in the room.
Silky smooth skin, powdered and creamed.
The old "Zino" even on some hot days.
Lavender violet blue, maybe just dreamed.
"Infusion d'Homme, the Prada DNA.
The barbershop, the hammam too.
Lots of light, lots of air, lots of come to rest.
Cotton wool soft warmth, not dense, very soft and light.
Then again points, edges, sun-bleached wood.
Found man, found woman, found a lot in between.
But the amber - I never found the amber.
Not in the sun and not in wind and rain, not in spring, summer or autumn.
Maybe he's saving up for dark winters, for freezing cold ice - who knows?!

I'm probably a philistine.
One who has no idea.
Not by cats and not by the moon anyway.
Mea culpa - okay.
And yet, I don't bring them together, the moon, the cats and Lune Féline.
Cats love valerian, at least I know that, the cats I know also know that.
But "Lune Féline" doesn't contain any valerian or anything else that affects my neighbour's cat, which I chose as a test object.
She avoided me, the cat, for the whole 14 days, eyeing me from afar, suspicious, as it seemed to me.
At some point I gave up trying to impress her with "Lune Féline", left my treats behind - and found a dead mouse in her place.
I suppose she was trying to tell me something, the cat.
If I'm lucky, something good.
I can't know.

Even now I can't know what's going on with the cats and the moon.
And with "Lune Féline" in the alleged triumvirate.
Nevertheless: We had a good time, "Lune Féline" and I, for the whole two weeks.
Then the sample was empty, there was nothing more to share.
But what she shared with me, shared with me, was more than enough.
It was, one word only, beautiful.

Dark, tropical, deeply mature vanilla opens on my skin, warm and dense and wonderful, not shearing the bean around all those to which it should leave the way it wants the pyramid.
She doesn't want it, she doesn't do it, not on any of these days.
Soon, it seems to me, she marries Lapsang Souchong, that very smoky tea that evokes memories of Black Forest ham, and - yes! - incense, warm, unsacral incense that I find again and again, although it is not listed.
But "Lune Féline" doesn't care, not on my skin.
He does what he wants, the scent, and is similar to the cats in it, perhaps even in the smoothness, which does not hide fine sharpness, sharp edges like that of Lapsang tea.

It may be due to the warm summer that "Lune Féline", as a winter fragrance, does not give a hint of anything bright or green on my skin, that the base already appears in my head and competes with the outside warmth.
If it's also humid and humid, even vanilla gives way a step back and clears the stage for deep dark, spicy, highly virile Ambroxan - and I'm only happy about that one spray, which is potent enough for the whole long day.
More would simply be too much for my nose and for me.
Perhaps not in winter, but very well in August.
And maybe that's what the neighbor's cat thought.
What am I gonna do with this mouse?

August didn't seem to be August, not this year.
Not these days, these weeks.
He made the sky grey, browned the trees before time, lengthened the sleeves and rolled down the trouser legs to the ankles.
He called himself August by the calendar, but it seemed as if he had been wrong, as if I had been wrong, as if I had fallen into a wormhole in the night, somehow, sleepwalking perhaps, in my dream, and woke up again in October, shivering, disoriented, confused.

It may be due to confusion, disorientation, that I reached for "Lilia Bella" that first morning, still ignorant of what was in that pink tube.
Semi-blind was the grip on the shelf, on the overflowing, in which carnation teases itself with incense, roses bloom next to cold ashes, Neroli leans against Amber's strong shoulders.
A constant coming reigns there and a going, seldom stands in place what I once placed there.
Rosa it is.
These could be roses and sharp thorns, dark wood and grass and baby powder too.
Half-blind the handle, half-blind also the spray.

May.
Green.
Bright.
Blue-grey silver, the sun warm on winter pale skin.
Bells, white and blue and green.
Lancet leaves, like wild garlic, rich in toxins.
Wild meadows, speckled with colours, damp.
Streams ripple close to the edge of the forest, the young trees leafy in black and white.
Lemon cream cake, fluffy, foamy, light.
The soul, it seems, is dieting, floating weightlessly and freely.
Girls' dress, sky blue, vanilla yellow, grass green.
Lots of green, lots of white, lots of blue blue.
Hope blue, freedom blue, awakening blue on life green and innocent white.
Spring makes a fragrant ribbon, not just the blue one.

Young is "Lilia Bella", carefree and hopeful.
Very green, very white, very blue - and very loud with a sprayer only too much.
Then she wraps herself around my forehead and presses on my stomach.
But with a sprayer only she is tolerable, confidential, friendly, feminine.
She lets the sun shine through the thickest cloud bank, lifts my mouth corners and curls fine wrinkles around my pair of eyes.
Again and again, many days again.
Until I came back from October, came back in August, the heaty-golden one who throws his rays at my feet, who knows no bells.
Until the finger lowers - once again, once only it will be May today in August.