Somewhere out there

When I was about to hit the track, I wanted to check from the outside of the car at which end my compartment is.Well, the closer end, but the compartment was already inhabited by four guys in various states of drunkenness and undress, several bottles of beer, at least four cartons of Chateau Tetrapak and they had a party going on.
I'm tough but not tough enough for this so I found myself a place elsewhere. Luckily, the train wasn't that packed but admittedly, I'd rather stand in the corridor than socialize with drunks.
Thinking of it,the railways should provide a party car, it's 0538 and some arseholes play loud and bad music.(My father would comment it along the lines of Be glad, they could be singing. True.)
Sunrise at the Alps: pretty. Internet connection: bad. Trains get redirected somehow around Vienna, meaning half an hour of delay or so: not pretty. My shoulders freaking hurt from carrying all my crap around: not pretty either, especially since a part of the problems are abrasions, not only muscle fatigue.
I hope mommy makes me a cake.
While I got connected to something that works, I checked the weather forecast. It says hot and humid - as if I hadn't had enough in Italy. This is simply not fair.

Well, Italy...

...although it possibly may happen anywhere. I hear that people don't go on strikes in Finland and that trains are always on time and at the right place in Japan but those may be legends.
At midday, I wanted to take a bus to Santa Maria Novella to leave my suitcase there, the buses stop across the street, so that I wouldn't have to drag all my bags at once. After half an hour of waiting for the buses which didn't go, some compassionate fellow citizen told us who waited there that there's a bus strike. I brought the suitcase back home and went to take books back to the library and for a lunch with Laura. (The stuffed rabbit at Lo Skipper was excellent.)
I thought about not being caught by a rainstorm out in the wild and walking back barefoot several times this spring, so... exactly this happened today. I was soaked wet, with half-dissolved shoes and adequately pissed.
I finished my packing, went to the Campo di Marte station, the train was announced to be some 15 minutes late. I had a reserve for unscheduled delays and disasters so I was okay, it was still doable.
Alas, I had no reserve for unplanned unscheduled delays. The train for SMN landed not at the first platform but at the second and I wasn't able to catch it with some 50 kilos of luggage. I went to try and catch a taxi. Meantime, some logistic woman from Student Agency called me where the hell I am. In a taxi to Piazza Adua, will be there in a while. She started explaining that the bus is due in a few minutes, when I migt arrive and that she'll call the driver whether they could wait for me. So far so good, excellent service, I thought to myself until the logistic gal called back, saying that they totally aren't able to wait for me for a single minute and that I might take a taxi to catch the bus in Venice, for example. I held back and didn't tell the gal to go kill herself for such ideas - I don't have an oil well at the backyard to go to Venice by taxi, that's it. I guess that neither the logistic gal has.
The bus was due at 1815, I was there 1818.
Three minutes, the hell.
We cursed the ATAF, Italian Railways, bus drivers and just the whole world in unison with the taxi driver, he dropped me off at the train station and I went to buy the ticket for midnight express to Vienna, quietly hoping that there might be a sleeper place available.
The queue was long and slow so meantime I tried to call parents, I needed to whine and to let them know that there'll be no need to pick me at 0730 in the morning. Dad wouldn't pick the phone but mom was there. I summed up the situation and she said You're so chaotic. As always. You should've gone earlier. She's unteachable. When I need to whine, I need to whine and be told that they are all arseholes, whoever I'm whining about. I even explicitly told her to let me whine, promise me a cake and I'd be fine. Nope, she needed to say that so she got a full dose of pointy sarcasm. Well, then she promised cakes. And no, they had only seats for the Vienna night train. So, I dragged my possessions to the waiting room and I'm waiting. I'm high on adrenaline so I'm afraid that the next smartass who will give me useful advice or something might get a bleeding wound or two.
I settled at the waiting room - there's just about time for one lappy battery and one sandwich... and meantime, I invented a revenge.
Student Agency offers free coffee on their buses. A cup of vending machine coffee worth 35 cents. My unused ticket was for 63 euros.... so, let's drink all their coffee. Serves them right because giving false hope is just too evil.

Festa di San Giovanni - dedicated to M.

Bite the Day of the Republic, Easter or whatever, San Giovanni is the most important feast here. The city is shut down, people are in the streets and there're fireworks.
Laura found a spot at ponte delle Grazie - first we were to meet at ponte della Trinita but she decided it was too crowded there.

Well, could've taken pics with fireworks and Ponte Vecchio but one can't have everything. We had a spot... and the bunch of Russian girls had a spot just behind us. They were Russian and loud. Several times, I shouted to shut up but they didn't care so I was bound not only to hear but also to understand sophisticated comments like Look! A red one! Ooooh, a star! And a flower! Now! in high-pitched voices.

I had a tripod - and if I didn't want really much to get pretty pictures, I'd use it as an assault weapon. I'm tall so I got a big tripod and well, three kilos of sturdy and handy aluminium tubes... just saying. Laura and I. had the advantage of not understanding. I said something not very polite about idiots when the crowd dispersed and they were Oh, you understand Russian, and what did they say then? expecting something that would turn the world upside down, some deep philosophical truth that needed to be shouted despite the crowds and fireworks. See, that's a green one! They look like big flowers! I re-enacted, gained some undeserved praise and Laura started telling the rest of the group how I study due mila delle lingue and how she spent the whole day at work reading my blog and how the bits about that failed Japanese course are far the funniest. I knew continuing the course would make excellent blog fodder but I didn't want to risk my sanity.

I had some spare wine and instant coffee so I brought it to Laura - or anyone who'd be around - to use it up, I'd be royally drunk if I had to drink it all. And there's more at home, there was only an amount I could carry.

Hey, a green one! And a blue one!

Aren't these cool!!!

Prettyyyy!

Look! Stars!

And these are red!

The recital

I've probably already mentioned somewhere that I dance. Today, instead of packing, I was painting my nails (green, if you need to know) and photoshopping some pics from the rehearsal.
Erm...


... I never claimed that I'm a particularly good or charismatic dancer.

This week I don't bite

There must be something generally wrong with the world.
On Sunday, I was eating the Ikea meatballs - I'll be moving so I need to eat out the freezer - and in the last one, I felt something hard-ish. I spat it out and it looked like a bit of bone. It's minced meat, I thought to myself, so they minced the whole cow or whatever the meatballs are made of into the mixture.

Two years ago, I was eating mandolato, that sinfully good Greek candy made of nuts glued together with caramel. The nuts in questions were pistacho and I indeed had brains enough not to chew on it, I broke a bit, let it dissolve in my mouth... etc. Then, I felt a sharp bit at my molar. I thought a bit of something stuck to my tooth, tried to scrape it off and then I realized that I chipped my tooth without a reason. It was exam time, I was rather busy and it didn't bleed so I went calmly to bed. Next morning, I called the university clinic, supposing somehow that they would deal with students, after all, it belongs to the university. The secretary insisted that I register there so that they'd be my default care providers. I politely refused because my dentist rocks and good dentists are scarce and explained that I need a bit of cement so that the sensitive bit won't hurt. The secretary changed the attitude and said Oh, it's urgent, then you can come... and gave me an appointment in six weeks time. Next week I went home, dropped at the dentists, she had me open my mouth and exclaimed Woman, you ate your own healthy tooth!, cursed a bit and then proceeded to fix it.

This time, it was meatballs. Not stones but meatballs. Well, I'm going back north on Friday and after some necessary errands on Monday and Tuesday, I'll get the tooth fixed, no big deal, and meantime I'll eat soft stuff. Or not. I need to lose weight anyway.
On Monday, there was something going on at school and then we went for a lunch with our somewhat multi-cultural group. When I grimaced after the pasta poked my achy molar, someone asked what's up, I said Damn broken tooth and M. exclaimed Oh, you too?! She's returning to Japan a month or so earlier because we apparently share the general trust to Italian dentistry.

Recital: Impressions and Reminiscences

While hanging around backstage, people could please avoid:
- shouting. It's not a fish market, it's a theatre.
- running around with a nail gun.
- running backstage, in spaces crowded with dancers, of which good part are barefoot, in 10 cm stilettoes. Ick.

I did screw something up but I don't remember what it was so probably it wasn't that bad.

It was fun.

Dune

On Saturday, we had to get out of the hotel in some reasonable time and the vague decision was to go somewhere and hang around. Someone said Porto Azzuro, because it sounded nice. However, everybody seemed to have the same idea. We couldn't find any parking space within reasonable walking distance from the centre (two streets and a quay, I'd say} so my original idea, let's go to Lacona, there's a dune, you can bathe and I can see the plants, was recalled.

There's one single dune on Elba. I had my little book on plants of the Tuscan Archipelago National Park so I ranted about it all the time- my parents are not totally in agreement with my hobbies, neither do they appreciate that I can be pretty obsessive about whatever comes to my mind but there was nothing much to do anyway and the argument that where a dune is, there is a beach, worked. Dad parked himself in the beachside bar, mom did a bit more sunbathing - no I don't understand that someone voluntarily stays in the sun and bakes - and I was looking for things in the bushes.

Some sort of Equisetum (horsetail). Looks like science fiction...

Something pointy (damn, I wish I were a botanist)

Malcolmia sp. I knew the name and I forgot but this is another of Elba's endemites, growing only at the dune. It's a very visible plant, with gray-green stem and pale violet flowers and there are damn many of them.

State of matters as of Tuesday, June 9, 2238

At around half past three, I wanted to make bacon and eggs. I recognise a hundred of different perfumes but not rotten meat. The bacon has been around for more than a week and it seemed sickly and pale but to me but it didn't smell. I poked it, peeled off a bit of the topmost slice, it didn't have any taste either. After having swallowed, I saw a goo that was certainly colonies of bacteria. Just in case, I had a big gulp of calvados which I keep around for similar cases.
The girls at the forum said that (a) it's only surface rot and in any decent supermarket, they would wash and sell it without hesitation (b) no worries, that 60% calvados would cure plague. I'm still alive, they had to be right.
At around five, I passed the other exam. Being a studip furriner helped, got a fatherly speech to read more, too. But, speech or not, I passed.
At around five-twenty, I was at Ilaria's for the last s'n'b' before summer, there was a potluck, I ate lots of food, gave out some leftover yarn (admittedly, novelty shiny ones) and fabric dyes... and went home and dropped dead.

State of matters as of Tuesday, June 9, 1543

Paleography: check
Exams remaining: 8 (or so)

Oh! I'm thinking! It hurts!

The other day, I had an interesting discussion with Helg. She published her essay on kitsch and it provoked a storm of thoughts in me, too. I had pondered about the question of kitsch more or less intensively for years and it seems to me that kitsch is similar to true love – undefinable but when I meet it, I will know it.

I live in Florence. I tried to observe the cognitive processes in the minds of my fellow human beings that lead them to adore everything. Apparently, there is a strong association hammered to many people that Florence = The Art City, without any further explanation. It was hammered to me when I started studying art history, without any explaining what is so cool about the whole Florence thing and I developed a strong disgust towards all things Italian – a natural reaction, I guess, to being told that I absolutely have to adore the beauty and quality of this or that artwork without being explained where the beauty and quality lies. Especially when the art works were presented on faded slides made from faded reproductions in old books and when I had certain doubts whether the professors actually saw some of those.
Then, by an evil twist of fate, I found myself in Florence. I found out that the professors lied. That not all Florentine art, Renaissance or otherwise, is so great and lovable, that great chunks of Florentine history need to be known to actually get the point. I had to find my way of perception and son I fell in love. It's a Florentine way of love, deep and irreverent.

The street vendors here in Florence sell reproductions, standardized format A2, of art works or their croppings. My fave are those two little angels that can be seen at the feet of Sistine Madonna. They have a space-defining functionin the painting but their direct background is only clouds, it is thus relatively easy to crop them out. You can get these cute angioletti on fridge magnets, postcards and whatever else as a nice and typical souvenir of Florence. I wonder how many people are actually aware that the Sistine Madonna is kept in Dresden?
The other day I was waiting for something to happen at the piazza of Santa Croce. They wash the streets every morning or so, the church itself stands on a platform seven or eight stairs high. I found me a dry and clean place on the stairs, sat down and was sitting, without noticing that I'm exactly on the axis of the church and that while sitting, my face is around the same height as of those standing under the stairs. I was happily idling and watching the buzz when a bunch of Japanese tourists arrived. Their guide told them something, they made a bajillion of pictures and dashed away. Yours truly in a philosopher pose, chin in my hand, is probably shown around as a typical example of lazy idling native but the question is: what do the people actually see? The facade of Santa Croce is 19th century. It looks pretty and neat, much prettier than the Boboli sandstone as seen on the sides of the church which are not covered in coloured marbles. What do the people see, I wondered? Do they see anything else but stage setting declared beautiful, cultural, worthy seeing? When I hang around the town, and it's not the first very touristy town where I've lived, I sometimes listen to the guides giving long, overcomplicated speeches. “Now at your left, you see an Early Renaissance palace that was built by Master Mason So-and-So on the order of the Lord John of Anywhere and Podunk in 1456, but the top floor was built only after a fire that damaged the building in 1569; the reconstruction and enlargement was conducted when Lord Nathaniel of Anywhere and Podunk, grandson of the earlier mentioned Lord John of Anywhere and Podunk, returned from his voyage to France and Italy from which he apparently brought...,” performed in rather monotonous voice because the guide is retelling it every day. The tourists don't get much, I can say. They weed out indicators of pretty and interesting and forget the names, dates and such pretty fast. The impression of participating in something culturally elevated and important however stays.

Why would people want to take part in a feast of art and architecture when they are not interested in it? I don't know. Some vaguely perceive it as a cultural activity and cultural is positive and they want to be perceived positively, too. Some do it because the others do. In fact, I don't find these motives absolutely negative; after all, I read many a book just because it was fashionable among my high school friends (and we wanted to be big girls and very intellectual ones) and I found many of them actually interesting. With books, it is maybe easier because people are used to handling language more than dealing with visual images; words are usually more straightforward, too, while visual images tend to be more metaphorical. In one of his essays, Erwin Panofsky states in his Studies in iconology that there are three levels of meaning:
At Level 1, one sees a painting of a woman holding a child. In a sense, it's the pure form only perceived.
At Level 2, the person puts it into an adequate cultural and historical context and understands that since the figures have haloes and maybe other defining paraphernalia and features, it's not a woman and a child but Madonna with Baby Jesus – it's the conventional meaning of the subject.
At Level 3, one is able to find out, based on deeper analysis, why the Madonna with Child is depicted this way and not another, or, as I'd say, What the hell this means, because according to Panofsky, art works do not exist in vacuum.
I would personally add Level 0: Oh! Pretty! Shiny! Pink!, especially created for tourists and snobs. And no, Real Art doesn't mean that at L1 you see a cat, at L2 you see it is a little tabby kitten chasing a fly and that L3 is a cognitive awakening of Oh, kitten makes me happy. This is a mental process defined for L0, sorry.

It is the appeal to primary brain circuits (somewhat metaphorically speaking, I'm not a neurobiologist but should some be around, feel free to elucidate) while pretending to be something elevated that constitutes kitsch, and it's done using pop-cultural references. Sentiment comes on its own while the viewer perceives. Angels are cute and do not need any further interpretation (even if there can be one), it's Raffael, for dog's sake, it's Culture, everybody knows that angiolini plague art work since forever (not totally true but for an ordinary viewer, it may well be) and they are oh-so-sweet.. Now it needs the pretty shiny to be dangly to get a cat toy and the whole family may content.
There is a strong urge to create and to decorate in every human being. Nowadays, this urge is suppressed by entertainment neatly packaged and delivered in perfect form – who would bother to sing when one can download all the music of the world and play it?, who would bother to draw when there are picture books? who would bother to dance when one can watch TV and see things moving? Authenticity of expression gets lost in this process, the idea of authenticity disappears too... and soon enough, the originals get kitschified. I remember seeing Caravaggio's Fruit basket. It was bland. I expected it to be bigger, more colourful, shinier. I bet that many people get disappointed because they expected Florence and anything in there to be bigger, more colourful and shinier. The 19th century facades are the most colourful ones and less worn, many a painting is smaller than imagined and doesn't have any pretty and decent frame and being a tourist is so tiresome! so one has to cling to the imaginary.

Five minutes younger twin brother of kitsch is intellectual snobbery. After the first person, and it might well be a caveman, became aware that whatever he likes is also liked by others and more to that, kitschy, he decided to refuse it and be different.
Being different is another strong force in each individual's psyche. As in many other aspects of human thinking, there is a duality between being different and fitting in – what would be the point of being different when the rest of the crowd wouldn't understand it? Understanding, of course, need not be deep, fair enough when the rest of the crowd applauses the audacity... and at a certain point, even this stance turns to kitsch.

How to escape the circulus vitiosus of kitsch changing to snobbery and back? It's in one's mind. I'm aware why Sta. Croce looks better to general crowd from the front. I know what's behind those angels. Now, why then I indulge in plaguing the house with blown glass birds every Christmas? Why I wear that many silk flowers in my hair on kitschy hair days? I know that it's kitsch but I enjoy it. After all, life is short and generally miserable so why not afford oneself something plainly likeable, be it pretty shiny dangly?

Some more on Kypre

I need to add a few thoughts to the wonderful article Helg published some days ago. And a few pictures, too.

After the bottle of Kypre gave way to Time, I kept the perfume in various containers that were at hand, such as a bottle that had held a topical antibiotic for my acne and a few more.
Yet, sometimes a plain irritation with something changes to Urge and Urge metamorphoses into Obsession.
I'm not a collector of perfume bottles and if all gods existing stand by me, I will never be, I have crap enough to store already but I allow myself some exceptions, one being for example the wonderful Vol de Nuit propeller bottle... and when I bumped into another Kypre bottle, I just decided I needed it so that I could put the perfume to its original home. It came with a different box which was rather damaged by mold and it's presented on the famous red scarf that was soaked in the perfume in that nasty accident.

I also love that scarf, it's lightweight silk, I got it in a secondhand store which meantime turned rather awful. It was beige and I dyed it burgundy to match a dress I wanted to wear for my cousin's wedding (and nope, there are no pics of yours truly re-enacting Anita Ekberg in the fountain in La dolce Vita but it's my fave party trick so maybe next time... well, if anyone invites me anywhere) and I've worn it for years since it can be crumpled into a small ball at the bottom of my bag, it's long enough to tie around the waist (useful in cold reading rooms, try that and your kidneys will thank you) and it's just pretty.
In fact, it wasn't the first perfume accident, many years ago, a bottle of Le Male leaked onto the very same scarf when I packed it with me for yet another holiday on Cyprus. I washed it during the weekend, wondered how it still retained some smell after those years and several baths in detergent... and then I poured it over with Kypre.
After the steps necessary to save whatever remained of theperfume, I tossed it over the drying rack... and the apartment filled with iris scent slowly, changing my place into iris swamp for days and weeks. Now, a few months after, it smells of exquisite aldehydes and roses.
I'm quite sure that both the boxes were created by the same designer, whoever he or she may be, at the picture of both, there's a drawing of doe that seems to be by the same hand.

When digging through the internets, I found a picture of Magie in the same box as my first Kypre at Laura Palanga's website, among auction results....

Now, the next step is up to Lancome folks, what if they brought Kypre back in La Collection, for example?

Eau Libre on the Day of the Republic

Eau libre is a long, long discontinued fragrance by Yves Saint Laurent. Launched in 1975, suffering a general lack of success, it was soon discontinued and as such, it's not easy to find.
For some reason, I was obsessed with this fragrance. It slipped under my fingers several times so when I got a miniature for more than I was actually willing to pay, I thought myself that it should rather be damn good. I sniffed it then, thought to myself Okay, works, I'll test it someday later.
I never did.
I'm in the middle of a move. Most of my stuff is somewhere far away in the cartons, including a good part of my
Today I wanted to go to I Tatti to do some work. The day started cloudy and windy, I got up to the hill to find out that it's public holiday, library is closed and I'm left to do whatever I want. Or, to be exact, that I'm free to study whatever else I want and where I want so I went home. I remembered that I got the small bottle of Eau Libre to try so I splashed it over my arm and...

... and there was the initial warmth and then some herbal bitterness that reminded me of being out in the wild. I searched the internetz to find the notes but I failed. My guesswork is thus: artemisia, juniper, rosemary, maybe sage, lavender, a touch of lemon... and then I don't know. I did however find that the fragrance was created by Michael Hy who also made Calandre for Paco Rabanne - and now I feel an urge to find and try that one.
I understand why Eau Libre was a marketing fail. It has character, lots of it. It reminds me slightly of Yatagan by the initial bitterness but Eau Libre doesn't have the celery undertone (one guy I know described Yatagan as Eau du Bouillon and I can quite understand it), instead, it's warm and comfortingly herbal but not herbal in the dusty pharmacy sense of Knize Ten.
It struck me. It didn't dig up any forgotten memories nor anything specific, I only got an Urge. One of the emotions that are better danced than ranted about; it was Urge to do something which was underlined by the melancholic weather - cloudy, windy but with patches of blue sky, great visibility and bright cold light. Imagine Piero della Francesca's landscapes. I thought I may go out in the woods and take a few pics of plants but before I arrived home to toss the laptop on the table and take my camera, the sun started to shine and ruined the atmosphere.

I love fragrances and I love many of them. Most evoke something, be it a specific detail or just general atmosphere, splash of colour, a piece of dance. Yet, most don't hit me as a ton of those rectangular things of which houses are built. I can think of one more only, the sadly discontinued Basala.... sigh. If life generally sucks and we'll all get old, arthritic and then die, why the hell can't we bathe in scents we like?

Back to Elba: on the top of the mountain

I love mountain tops. I can see far away and feel the winds bringing distances to me.

Moreover, there tend to be pretty flowers on the mountaintops. Genista desolea created a landscape of golden cushions on the granite (I suppose) rocks, changing the barren edges into stylish space. Moreover, it gave out bittersweet scent I would want to have in a bottle. Tesla bottle, for that matter, so that I could bathe in it.

Isolated places have their endemites. I'm not sure about genista but Viola corsica ssp. ilvensis is one of them. This little and pretty violet grows on the mountaintop only. Viola corsica is an aggregate or superspecies that has a range of variants and subspecies, almost every island of the Tuscan archipelago has its own.
There were a few albino exemplars, too:

And, no, don't go there. It's a boring place and you'd only step on flowers and damage fragile ecosystems. Stay at the sea and sunbathe:D

Shopping spree

On which I bought nothing, basically.

For some reason, when the new Dior fragrance, Escale a Pondichery, was announced, I became obsessed with that. It sometimes happens. I became equally obsessed with the Hermes eaux, Gentiane blanche and Pamplemouse rose. Gentian is one of my iconic flowers for some rather complicated and personal reasons (It'll be elaborated and re-elaborated in some of the upcoming botany rants, no worries). I expected a lot from the fragrance: sky turned a blazing copper bowl, cold wind on the top of the mountain, spruce resin and something bitterish in the air and then, an accord of the tiny and extremely cuteGentiana verna growing in the little stream. Or otherwise, the stately plant of Gentiana punctuata in the middle of the festuca grassland.
All I got was sand pushed down my throat and some adstringent roots.

Eau de Pamplemouse rose was better but still not my cup of tea. I simply don't like grapefruits.
The other stop was Sisley's. I tried all the three Eaux de Sisley and I remained unimpressed. No.1 is another citrusy splashy thing I wouldn't be offended with but I wouldn't buy either, No. 3 should be more citrusy with ginger for extra fun but oddly enough, I don't like citruses and detect them pretty well... and I can't find any. Sweet flowers, I read osmanthus as honey and violets, but, no ginger, no citruses. Weird. No. 2 however... hit something dormant. Grass and spruce resin! Our old summer house where I spent half of my childhood, with the half-neglected garden with the largest pear tree ever.... but somehow, in Eau de Sisley 2, there was the initial spruce and grass accord that didn't continue to the pear three and the best apricots ever and clematis pergola. Pity.
Then I discovered that they don't have Pondichery but that there's the older version of Miss Dior in the shelf, the one in pink box. In vain attempt No. Bajillion-and-twenty, I tried it. There's more lily of the valley than in the newest version (white box, dating described nicely by Helg, my information comes from her) but it's not the nice lovable one as in the miniature, undated, I snatched from my mom, nor is it what I remember from the huge bottle of Diorissimo I gave mom for her birthday many years ago. I want lily of the valley fragrance, damn, that will be so nice and sweet as the old Miss Dior.

I went to the department store to check for Pondichéry. Just in case. The Dior woman said that next week (they told me 'next week' last week, too, liars) and offered me the J`adore L`eau Cologne Florale, hot new summer thingy. I tested it some time ago and it didn't really impress me. Because it was on paper, I can add now. I already ranted about it somewhere or somewhere else because it's a good story but... citruses and white flowers not rarely react with my skin to cat piss. I thought the fragrance a benign summer splash, let the Dior lady spray it on my hand... and only then she told me that it's bergamot and whatever else and magnolia. Even before she finished, I smelled the stench of three days uncleaned litter box.
I needed some antidote so I went to try Nahéma again. I couldn't decide whether I liked it and I finally decided I didn't. I'm not a big fan of Guerlain, there's something that just doesn't appeal to me in their classics. Nahéma is a heavy floral with a touch of aldehydes - but forget the aldehydes of, say, Chanel No. 22 or Rive Gauche, these are decadent aldehydes that would smell like soap in a bathroom equipped with gold watertaps. But, too many heavy flowers, the citrus/white blossom combo that results in Eau du Chat effect is there, too, and after a few hours there come some weird roots or woods. I decided to sell off the one I have and pass on to somewhere else.

And it rained almost all day long, too.