Making perfume

 

Here is the long awaited story of how we went to Grasse, France, perfume capital of the world, and made our own signature scents!

What's that? 

"Who was awaiting this?" You want to know?

A PERSON CAN WAIT FOR SOMETHING EVEN IF THEY DON'T KNOW THAT THEY ARE!

Let me set the scene:

Back before our France adventure, when it was still just a glimmering dream in our eyes, we were watching the Japanese dating show I recently told you about, Offline Love, where young Japanese people go to the city I live in now and let fate and a few contrivences of the production staff guide them to each other. In this show each person got sent on one special little trip and was able to invite one of the other "contestants" to come with them. One of these adventures was a trip to Grasse, where they would make their own personal scents!

This very much captured my wife's imagination. So after we were in this area of the Cote D'Azur for a few months we booked our own perfume experience!

Grasse is a beautiful old hill town that we were even able to glimpse a bit of from our first apartment here in Theoule Sur Mer, though it was farther up towards the mountains than it looked. I find that pretty much everything around here is farther than it looks, but maybe that's because we walk so much. We took a very handy train to Grasse from what amounts to the backyard of where we live now. The train follows the coast into Cannes, where we have been many times, but then deviates from the main coastal train route up into the hills, wandering through the countryside and a couple of small cities. We had never been on this train route and it was mildly pretty and interesting. The famous mimosa bloom, already started then and still going now, was showing off with some glimpses of amazing floods of yellow flowers. After a little over an hour our train ended its route in the medium sized town of Grasse.

Hmm, well maybe not in the town of Grasse.

It was more like a place surrounded by roads. And then all around that was something a bit like suburbs, semi rural suburbs I guess, or maybe like Bloomington, MN, or the San Fernando Valley. Up the hill, way up the hill, was what turns out to be a richly historic and pretty large ancient city and modern tourist attraction known as Grasse. We did go there later, but only briefly because we had to go home at that point and it was rainy. It was not particularly walkable from the train and required a slow bus on a winding road.

But never mind that, our perfumery was not located in the tourist wonder and charming hilltown of Grasse, even if surely, dating back as it did to the 1700's, it started out there. It was located out in the general and not historic or particularly nice sprawling remainder of Grasse. We walked there without much joy along sidewalks next to large roads. We looked for a place to lunch and failed utterly.

But I am not here to rain on your lovely story of us making our own perfumes! Or on my story for that matter. So let's just move on from our wandering the roads futilely looking for food and leave us waiting in the parking lot of our perfume showroom. 

They were closed for lunch. Perhaps the staff went out to eat at the local McDonalds? 

But we were not alone waiting for our exciting perfume experience! Other people waited with us.

Most of them were Japanese. Offline Love was very popular!

But fear not, the worst part of the whole perfume experience is over now, thank god, because the perfume making was pretty neat. 

We had a sceduled appointment and it cost, well, a lot; a bit over 100 euros each! There were probably about 12 people doing this perfume thing, and each person got their own special mad scientist carol in the perfume laboratory.

I think I even have a picture!

Yes, yes, this is in the main room:

 And here is my work space:

See all those little bottles everywhere? Those were the scents we worked with. We each got the same 120, in three rows of 40. These were the base scents, which were the strong undertones of the pyramid of scent we were building. This would be the most lasting and powerful scent. The next row of 40 was the midtones, and they rounded out the base scent and were more floral I think. And then the top row of 40 were the top notes of the perfume, mostly fruit and some flower, fresher, lighter smells, what you smelled most of initially with a final perfume, but which were also more ephemeral and didn't last so long.

We were shown how best to smell the bottles (take it easy and don't overwhelm the nose. It is a lot of smelling) and set to work testing out the bottom row of 40 scents. Our job was to choose five or so that we liked, just going on our immediate preference, and then rank those five. When we were done the perfume people came around to us individually and gave us the portions we should use of our five base notes, based on harmonious blending and our preferences. We poured them out porportionately into our beakers.

You can see my full perfume beaker in front of some scents, below:

We went through the same process more or less with each of the next two rows of scents, though we were to test those scents against the base we started with to make sure we liked how they worked together. I picked a lot of woods smells in my base notes with a bit of rose and ocean in my midtones, and all the citrus I could in the topnotes.

They took our beakers away when we were done, and our recipes, to keep on file in case we want to order more of it later. We had to name our scent as well. I called mine "Underwood". Then, shortly, we got our bespoke perfume back very prettily packaged in our own perfume bottle with its name on it and everything.

So do I positively reek of "underwood" now? You wonder.

No! 

Now it has to mature for three weeks!

But that's more like two weeks now from when I'm writing this, and I am very much looking forward to trying it out.

And as soon as the AI can figure out how to share scents online you can smell it too!

So many people

 

It was fine when I stayed put in Minnesota for the most part. The world seemed large, but Minnesota sort of spoke to the rest of the world. It acted as a microcosm. And even the travel we took from there hearkened back to that place as a kind of knowable reference point. Minnesota was an analogy.

Then we tore up all the flimsy roots and flung ourselves off once again into the wide world. And there are so many people. Japan was crammed, absolutely crammed, and not afraid to go out and show it. It's not much different here. People are everywhere!

You will not understand how many people there are and neither will I. Yesterday I was talking about all the people taking pictures of the beach here. Everyday ten thousand new people come here and they take a picture of the beach.

I ask you:

Where do all these pictures go?

I follow ten stories, a hundred stories every day, I have a thousand, and I write just one. But do you know how many stories there are?

534,565,109,336,298,004,288,776,364,987,303,219,997,136,399,001,002,697,142,314,688,887,410,014,879,523,659,823,226,444,112,970,003,660,985,321,658,017.

And those are just the good ones.

Fox and Skunk visit the enchanting village of Riquewihr, France

 

Today I'd like to tell you a little story about when Fox and Skunk went to the beautiful village of Riquewihr, which is in the eastern part of France, not very far from Colmar. But I'm sick! So I can't tell you very much about anything simply because I am too tired.

Riquewihr sounds like it is too hard to say to be a real town, but there it is on the map! And it's just the sort of town Fox and Skunk would like to visit. So they did. I can't tell you the story of how it all happened, but I can say that while they were there they found some crates with pineapples in them, which Skunk ate a lot of! And they found some turtles at a fountain, who were very interesting, but were made all out of bronze! So no one ate them.

Fox and Skunk visited the canals of Riquewihr, which don't exist in the real world village of Riquewihr. But they did exist in the fantasy world of Riquewihr, which is the only one that Fox and Skunk can visit anyway. It's the one with extra flowers, in case you ever wonder which one you're at, if you ever go there.

Fox was sure Fox saw a fish in the Riquewihr canals. Fox loves fishes. But Fox didn't catch the fish.

Fox ate a little of the pineapple too, even though it burned in Fox's mouth!

The Turtle Fountain:

The Canals:

Where they found the pineapples:

The story of fox and skunk

 

As you will be aware, I have been obsessed with putting Fox and Skunk into picture after picture around here. I felt like there was an old-fashioned fable somewhere deep inside of them, waiting to come out of their inscrutable relationship.

It came out.

The Story of Fox and Skunk

Once upon a time, in the days when Fox was young, Fox was hungry. And Fox walked around for a long time not finding anything to eat. This made Fox even hungrier. Fox wandered for miles, getting hungrier and hungrier.

Until Fox came upon a hopeful little valley with a waterfall and a deep stream. On the banks of the stream were some flowers, and some mushrooms, and there was a skunk.

Fox knew about mushrooms. Fox knew about flowers. But Fox did not know yet about skunks. 

Fox thought Foxes could eat skunks.

Fox tried to eat the skunk.

The skunk did not want to get eaten. And when Skunk does not want to get eaten, Skunk does not get eaten!

Skunks make a special liquid they can spray from under their tail. It is a powerful liquid. Skunk sprayed Fox with this liquid.

The liquid that Skunk sprayed did not smell so terribly bad. Maybe you have smelled the smell of skunk from a distance? But it did not smell so terribly good either. But the most important thing about Skunk's smell was that it smelled a lot.

It smelled too much!

It smelled so much that Fox couldn't think about anything other than the smell.

And that is how Fox decided to not eat Skunk.

Fox was now very hungry and everything smelled too much of Skunk, especially Fox!

Fox was sad.

Fox was so smelly that everyone ran away from Fox, which made it even harder for Fox to catch anything to eat. Fox rubbed on the trees to get rid of the smell. It did not work. Fox rubbed on the flowers to get rid of the smell. It did not work. Fox rubbed on the mushrooms to get rid of the smell. It did not work. So even though Fox did not like baths, Fox decided to jump in the stream to get rid of the smell.

Fox plunged into the clear blue water.

Fox was surrounded by fishes!

Fox thought maybe Foxes could eat fishes.

Fox was right!

Fox ate many fishes, until Fox's belly was full.

Fox climbed out of the stream. Fox climbed up on the bank. Skunk was there. 

Skunk was eating mushrooms and grasshoppers and flowers and beetles. Skunk did not worry about Fox. Fox, having had a bad time of it before, kept a respectful distance from Skunk. But Fox did not run away. Fox looked around.

It felt like home.

Another invasion

 

It's hard for me to believe that just a couple of days ago I was clearing out my files here of failed photoshop experiments. Almost none of them were any good. Had I hit a photoshop dead end? I was starting to think I might have to write all my blog posts for awhile.

"Wait." you interject. "Don't you already write all your blog posts?"

This question arrests me. 

It puts me in handcuffs. And it locks me in a local cell for awhile to cool off and think about things.

Why, yes I do actually write all my blog posts!

It's just when I put in a picture I somehow trick myself into believing I'm not writing at all!

But I would never just plop three pictures of alien spacecraft into a blog post and have no text!

I am shaken to the core by this realization.

The guard comes and unlocks my cell.

"You're free to go." He says not unkindly.

I stumble out into the bright afternoon sun.Dazed I make my way to my library to finish my shift.

But when I get there...

Alien space ships have crash landed everywhere!

Unphotographed mayhem

 

I might have left you hanging the other day when I suggested there was a newsworthy event at my library. And it wasn't the story about people who stole three, unsecured public computers. 

It was something HUGE.

At least that's what I suggested.

But then I had to complain about novelty drinks at an amusement park I've never been to because of...

priorities.

So how about this:

The excitement at my library was that 

THERE WAS A FIRE BREATHING DRAGON IN THE KIDS' ROOM!

And I know that doesn't look that bad. 

But the smell of sulfur from the dragon's fire irritated the sensitive noses of our elephants, causing them to walk out of the children's room.

Which was fine.

And not a problem at all.

Until the elephants saw the mouse!

Which was bad enough. But the crashing and trumpeting upset the dragon.

And his mum!

And well...

I didn't get any pictures of any of that.

Honestly, I'm just lucky to be alive!

Puzzle madness

 

A bunch of puzzles started showing up at our library so we started a puzzle swap. This confused a lot of people who thought they had to bring in a puzzle to take a puzzle. This was an understandable misunderstanding, and we probably should have called it something other than a "swap". The first puzzle is on us, at the very least. 

I think a lot of people out there have a ton of puzzles, but they've never had a place they could get rid of them. So we now have many, many puzzles.

I brought a 1500 piece puzzle of an English Manor House with its fronting gardens into the library break room for the staff to work on at their leisure. Everyone was very curious about how long it would take us all to put together this rather large puzzle.

So we put together a pool where people guessed when the puzzle would be finished. Soon my co-workers all got kind of obsessed with this pool. 

The people who guessed a fairly quick and early time for the puzzle to finish started working on the puzzle with great intensity, sacrificing their lunch to try to get it done on schedule. But soon the people who guessed a later time started freaking out and sneaking into the breakroom to take apart sections of the puzzle to slow it down. Mildly barbed words were exchanged. A tussle almost broke out.

Only one of my colleagues remained calm in this whole, heated ordeal. And curiously he had in the pool the latest possible time for the completion of the puzzle. So I said to him "I admire how you alone haven't gotten caught up in all these puzzle fights. What's your secret?"

He looked around and, saying nothing, reached into his pocket, pulled out, and held up before me one, single piece of the puzzle. 

Then he smiled a slight, devilish smile, retuned the last puzzle piece to his pocket once again, and walked away.

Going down like dominos

 

 

 

 

In the ongoing excitement and chaos of early voting at the library one of the elderly patrons went down, and they went down hard.

I think maybe people are out of practice for being in public and managing themselves in crowds. By all accounts this person was agreeably vertical, waiting to vote, and then, poof, she was horizontal.

There was a lot of blood. Tons of blood. Gallons of blood. So much blood that Vampires a thousand miles away sleepily sat up in their coffins and said "Wuzzat?"

Sharks' noses twitched curiously in the far away oceans.

"I'm fine." Burbled the woman through the gouts of blood pouring from her. "I'm fine!"

And she was. She just hit her nose, which then spurted several pints of blood onto our floors.

But enough about all the blood already!

We cleaned it all up, and where it was wet from the cleaning an A-framed "Caution" sign was placed.

Almost immediately a weary patron leaned on the caution sign for respite and then crashed to the ground as it gave out under them. There was no blood. The patron seemed fine.

"Aarrgh!" The patron cried. "Call an ambulance!"

So we did, and the ambulance came and wheeled the patron away.

At that point I was expecting a whole grimly madcap day of patrons collapsing to our tiled and concrete floors in a copious series of bloody and technicolor disasters, but it didn't happen. Which I suppose is just as well really.

Later in the day I may have seen a couple sharks mooning about curiously outside, but I can't be certain. Sometimes my imagination runs away with me.

 

 

 

 

 

An adventure

Often when I am on one of my photography walks I am struck by a sense of adventure. The strange purpose of going around looking for photographs, the weird thrills of finding both expected and unexpected things to photograph, and the rare successes that feel like magic give me a heightened sense, an adventure novel's sense of what is really just a short walk around my neighborhood.

Maybe I've always felt a little bit like this about any walks I've taken. This blog is full of little stories straight from the past seven or eight year of walks, but now, with my camera, and without destination, the whole idea of it is exaggerated and feels both more real and more fictional. And regularly at the end of those photo walks I feel an impulse to write about it here.

But I don't.

I mean, until today.

These adventures aren't necessarily good stories. And though they might work as a kind of photojournalism, the pictures that might work for that kind of essay aren't the ones that most interest me to take. But the other day I decided to try anyway. I had a more open period of time for my walk. I figured I could go down to the river and try and take a wider collection of photographs, ones that might still lean heavily into the detail I favor, and that will still drift off towards abstractions at the least opportunity, and that still don't tell a story, but ones that might nevertheless be comprehensive enough to give a sense of what it feels like, what this walk of discovery looks like.

So without too much more comment ahead of time here is my trail of photographs in the basic order they happened. The only minor omission is from a few leaf pictures that recently appeared on this blog and so I am loathe to show them again. 

And one last caveat:

I take a lot of pictures and usually manage to limit myself to posting my favorite ones here- say my 4 star pictures with a few three star ones as well. (I sometimes wish I limited it more since worse pictures seem to take something away from the better ones.) But the nature of today's walk means a lot more two and three star pictures than you'll be used to seeing. I'll just have to live with opening up that door...

So to temper your expectations from the start of just how particular some of these pictures might be, we start with the chickens. Some of our neighbors, on my way to the river, have chickens. They are behind a fence and I only rarely see them. Last time I did they were strange, fuzzy, giant chicks. Now they are resplendent chickens (mostly, you'll see). 

I took these pictures through a wood slat fence. The chickens were not shy thus I could get close enough for these details of their feathers.

And their beautiful eyes and strange, dramatic faces.

And I guess this one is still a chick, sort of? Yes, somewhere in there is a chicken, or maybe an 80's heavy metal rocker! Follow the beak.

When I got down to the river, but before ducking off the more popular road and bike paths, I came across an old tape deck that appeared to have been hurled out of someone's car window. It gave me a touch of 80's/90's nostalgia. I did what any sensible person would do: I took a few random close-ups of it.

And then I ducked down into the wood and the river paths.

Here is the river that always seems to look better in person.

I try to give a sense for it in a different color key below. Both pictures are curiously true enough to the look of it in late Summer, despite all their differences.

All Summer I have been seeing a grasshopper with pretty wings that only open when it sort of flies. It is hopeless for me to photograph it as it is relatively shy and too quick for me. Nevertheless this was a small triumph to get a picture, out on the dirt path at the top of the river bluffs, of the grasshopper itself, even if there are no wings to see and only a hint of the color within.

And then we come to the creek that I followed back up into St. Paul, away from the river. I have taken many unsuccessful pictures of the creek this summer. The water is very clear and comes up out of the ground two thirds up the ravine that is ducked below the busy city. The river bed is all mud and stone.

I do best at this point to bring color in through the reflections in the water.

This looks a little radioactive to me, or fake?, but it really is just reflections of an intensely green forest canopy above.

A little moss sometimes seems like the only thing growing in or near the creek. Maybe the creek is radioactive after all.

More reflections. Okay, I'll admit I maybe turned up the color saturation on this a bit more than is... proper. But other than that it is just leaves reflected in a pool in the stream.

A fallen tree is the usual way to cross the stream back and forth, as I am wont to do with abandon.

Lots of trees around.

So on this walk I did collect quite a few leaves and would sometimes sit on a log taking pictures of them with a light panel I have. I think these two pictures didn't show up on my recent leaf post so we have examples.

This is what the path looks like (and maybe where I sat for the above pictures).

Here is where the path rises out of the dark woods into the blinding light of the neighborhood above.

At this point I'm on my way home and thinking about turning off my camera and putting the lens cap on, but the curious way this tree spilled onto a concrete wall caught my attention.

And as I was almost done in the last alley, I heard a blue jay. I've never gotten a proper picture of one and didn't feel a lot of hope when I poked my head into a copse of evergreen shrubs and trees. This jay, with enormous attitude, was surprisingly tolerant of my photographing, and though not beautiful exactly (the deep shade didn't help), it was full of personality.

And with that the ring of power was delivered to the cracks of doom in Mordor.

So I went home.