I had been thinking about getting more BPAL when mousekinn had a sale of her BPAL fragrances to finance medicine for her sick kitty. It was a perfect opportunity to try new scents out!

( talking about the scents I got )

In the past I have rarely worn perfume but I often use scented lotions or shower gel or candles or bath salts. In actually wearing a scent I worry about overwhelming the senses of people around me. But I really like when you are putting on a lotion and big clouds of the scent waft up, and if you use it before bed a few times then you will get into bed and faintly smell whatever it was. I am actually considering mixing some of my own body oil and scenting it with some of the perfumes that don't last long on me. The best ingredients for body oil are really cheap, and it would be fun to do. I saved a glass bottle which used to have body oil in it just for this purpose.

Getting more into perfume and smell is a little like exploring painting for the first time, looking at works of art in a medium I have been taking for granted. But concoctions of scent, like foods where different flavors have been carefully balanced, are strange as works of art. Visual media is constant, real, tangible, and we can close our eyes and view it again in our mind's eye. Music is real in the sense that it does have a physical existence, but a necessarily fleeting one. However, if you know a musical piece well, you can replay it for yourself countless times and hear it almost the same as hearing it in person, so in some sense you can carry a musical piece with you using only your mind. But while scent and food have a corporeal existence, we cannot remember them accurately. You can recognize the taste of orange or rosemary or milk, but if you imagine them, you cannot re-taste or re-smell them in your mind. To me, that gives them a poignancy and immediacy different from other media.