Perfume is a story in odor, sometimes a poetry in memory. - Jean Claude Ellena
If only one could smell - If at all the fragrance could yell, this perfume, the one I am wearing today after a real long time has it's own story to tell.
Where from? even I don't know - not a clue! Why? because, this came as a parcel couriered from the unknown - I fetched. A brown card-board rectangular box cello-taped with a chit pasted upon, on to it - had my name & address - with a black marker etched. For a moment I assumed it to be just another online shopped delivery parcels, but no, it wasn't. The momentum of curiosity & excitement in extremes that underwent, unwrapping to check what the box of pandora holded, as I unfolded - who it came from? or was it God scent?
Somethings, sometimes, that come for you-come to you, no matter what & sets you off on your willingness to take chances through the whole exploring & the dwelling into - trying to figure things out. This one came with contact details mentioned of someone unfamiliar I did not knew. Though I had an urge to text or call the person - I just never did. I eventually decided to call it a gift from a secret admirer. Despite all the odds - I had by now already pulled off my thinking hats & done away with. I had kept the perfume & to the sender imaginary goodbye’s I bid.
They say ‘It's nearly impossible to smell yourself’, so if by any chance you are near, please be my guest without a fear - Do come down, so we (each other) could smell.
I have not much often, but at times, put ones on. I prefer more of light, soothing, pleasant ones & not the sorts that give me a headache. But whatever it be' I noticed - this parfum(undisclosed mixture), the one I am wearing right now has a distinctive smell(tacky-funky fragrance-too loud) & certainly has a smiley effect on me'- making me feel good - I wonder they did not had in it poured the laughing gas by any chance or was it a means to hypnotize & tame me to fall in love or fondness with this admirer! WTF' LOL. Nevertheless it's always an awesome feeling - having to burst into fits of giggles or smiles! No, It's only a smiling gas,I think & I ain't laughing out loud! - maybe or may be not! burp! (I m sorry, excuse me for that, I just had friend rice) - too much for my chemo-sensory system to take in at the same time. I’am enjoying this suspiciously mischievous act & feeling wander-fully thoughtful.
I am intoxicated, It has got into me - triggering my sensory neurons.
There are less of times, you are in a state like this. Telling to myself - today, if I had been face to face with unfriendly or enemy if any - he/she shall have been excused for all those less harmed - little petite things, ever convicted or any acts of offending me ever committed. I would consider everything passe and hug thee. Sounds a little cheesy though - I know!" Hilarious - there's something in the air - in love & war, as they say, everything is fair. It’s the sensory cells doing the mischief. I don't know whom to blame - Let there be a blame-less game, & let the sender have no name. Let me rise and shine putting on the perfume every day-every night, i’ll make the perfume my amorous - armour knight. I didn't even realized, I was sitting without the fan for all this while - ranting about this perfume, with a bowl of food in my hand - I’ll hog now to the leftovers & finish - I hopefully might. Mesmerized mind - I seem to have lost my focus & concentration - there is definitely something in this perfume - ‘aroma’ cruel or kind? I need to be cautious next time. Its just once in a blue moon-things like these happen. Its not always, that I get gifts from people I know or I happen to have secret admirers so many but then, you don't want to end up getting hallucinated-hypnotized - tumbling down into rifts if any.
Its not like, that I don't love perfumes or surprises...Oh I absolutely love the good ones pouring in - in abundance, I do! but would have been glad, if I knew or a hint or two -I had. Maybe in days to come, I might figure-out the whereabouts of some. I am sure the receiver & receptors are good in detecting things until they practically shut down after being bombarded with the same for long. Meanwhile I’ll be sniffing around different odors & many of things - good & bad, right or wrong.
‘My nose seems to be sending signals to my brain’ - Anonymous
Greetings all
from a gray Atlanta, where it is slightly cold but without a trace of
the snow and ice nightmare ("Snowpocalypse '011") that had the city in
its grips last week. A cat snoozes to my right, a dog snoozes to my left, and I'm eating Cheez-Its (mmm, TBHQ) to recover from a miserable hangover...ahh, I must be home.
The occasion of my visit is a trip to San Francisco I made in order to
attend a conference and present our work. The conference was fine, but
it was my first time in SF and I was really excited to look around, and
fortunately I scheduled myself a couple of days to do so.
I was
prepared for rotten weather, as I've heard it can be in the winter, but
found a city enjoying sunny 21C/70F temperatures, nothing like the
winter at all. I didn't anticipate wanting to be outside much during
this trip, but SF was just begging to be explored.
I got in to
the city in the early afternoon and checked into my hotel (after walking
about 10 blocks in the wrong direction). Trans-global traveler as I now
am, I've become accustomed to losing all sense of time and having to
quickly adjust to avoid jetlag. The strategy is easy, just a one-step
process:
1) stay awake.
This isn't easy when you're
presented with a clean, empty bed, but once you think about that city
waiting out there, it's a no-brainer. Get out and hit the streets! And
so, a man on a mission, I headed for the Mission.
First thing I did when I got there was, patriotic American as I am, to enjoy our national dish:
Holy moly, look at that chow. That burrito was so damn good I might
print the picture out and eat it. This was placed before me for the
whopping price of US$6 (=AU$6!), world's finest macromicrobrew beer
included! The place was Taqueria Pancho Villa on 16th St between Mission
and Valencia, named as a joke, I was to learn: the owner is named
Francisco Villa, just like the Mexican revolutionary. Unlike his
namesake, though, Francisco doesn't earn the nickname "Pancho", which
roughly translates as "Fatty". But the place was bedecked with images of
El Comandante, including this unbelievable "bronze" bust:
Imagine having that in your house. Your north Mexican landowner dinner
guests would shit their pants and run in fright back to their
latifundias.
The Mission is also home to some famous graffiti walls:
Lovely stuff, especially when you're full on Mexican food, giddy about
being in a Spanish-speaking country again, delirious from 20 hours of
flying, and many dollars poorer after visiting Mission Workshop (coming
soon to Australia, they told me).
After browsing the rest of
the things on offer in the Mission---826 Valencia, bookstores and coffee
shops---I wound my way back to the Tenderloin, where I was staying, and
managed to keep myself awake until a respectable 10PM.
The
conference nominally started the next day---Saturday---but when I went
down to the Convention Center (the Moscone Center, named after the SF
Mayor that was killed with Harvey Milk) I realized that there wasn't
much going on, so I picked up my conference materials and walked toward
the Bay. Along Market St, I came across these excellent examples of
public art outside an office building:
These fantastic, Tim
Burton-esque pieces, called "Moonrise", are by Ugo Rondinone. Much more
dramatic and competent photos of these pieces can be seen here.
My stroll took me out to the Ferry Terminal, a perfect spot to enjoy
what was turning into a glorious morning. Looking east from the
Terminal, the Bay Bridge was a delight to behold: and, behind me, lay
the Financial District, looking prim and proper:
A bunch of
stereotypes with legs, the natives joined me en masse at the Ferry
Terminal that morning for a farmer's market. There they were, wearing
their fleece vests, sampling artisan cheeses and gasping at the sight of
organic parsnips. I was truly in the thick of westcoastness. And yes, I
made it out alive, sallying forth along the Embarcadero toward
Fisherman's Wharf, where flocks of tourists are greeted by an overgrown,
grown-over crab-friend-and then get to feast their eyes (and abuse
their noses) on these guys:
These chunky customers have taken
over Pier 39 and while away the days howling, barking, and sleeping in a
real pile when they're not shoving each other off the platform. I
missed videotaping that but here are some placid moments:
In the distance lay The Rock, القطرس*:
*Note: wanna get stuck into a mind-bending Wikipedia wormhole? Try doing the etymology on "Alcatraz" and "albatross".
That self-same day, I managed to climb the hills to Lombard St, "The
Steepest Street in America", then down again, then up again to the San
Francisco Art Institute, where in 1931 Diego Rivera left a hell of a
calling card:
This painting-within-a-painting features Diego
and his artist friends, and several anonymous workers, painting and
sculpting images of a giant worker/engineer, depicting him as the person
on whom society depends. In those heady days of epic struggle, Rivera
and his sympathizers had invested their hopes for a better world in the
international working class and left this as a clear message: even our
monuments should be seen as the outcome of a collaborative process of
production.
The Art Institute (built around an old convent) features another spectacular attraction, the vista from its roof:
There, in the center of the photo, you see Telegraph Hill, topped by
the famous fire-nozzle of Coit Tower. It was my next destination:
Wasn't that quick? Actually, I stopped on the way to grab some famous
focaccia from Liguria in North Beach and scarfed it when I reached the
top of the hill.
The tower was commissioned at the bequest of
Lillie Hitchcock Coit (talk about your tongue-twister names) and built
in 1933 to honor the city's firefighters. The New Deal Public Works of
Art Project also commissioned fresco murals in the lobby of the tower
from San Francisco artists. Deemed "communistic" at the time, the murals
depict the daily life of toilers across the state, from fruit-pickers
to slaughterhouse workers to city-dwellers, and address contemporary
issues such as the stock market crash and increasing social
polarization. Two of the murals were actually considered too provocative
to show to the public and so were destroyed before the Tower could be
opened. Most of the murals are clearly in the style of Rivera, though
some tend more toward romantic visions of the American countryside (and
are therefore pretty boring). In one scene, people read newspapers in a
library; the headlines spell financial crisis, industrial struggle, and
dark news from Europe. In response, a man reaches for a tome:
And that was one of the murals that was saved from destruction! Overall
the murals are amazing and worth the climb to the Tower. They really
give you a sense of the city's radical history long before the 60s. The
Tower itself was closed, unfortunately, so I couldn't go up. My camera
also died at this point so I couldn't take more mural photos, but more
can be found with a little Googling.
I wound my way back town
the hill and through North Beach, stopping at City Lights bookstore for a
stickybeak and Vesuvio for a pint. Walking out of the bar and turning
the next corner, the scenery changed abruptly:
That's right, San Francisco has a Little Sydney!
Actually, they call it "Chinatown". All kidding aside, this might be
the prototype Chinatown (with the exception of China itself, of course)
and still claims to be the biggest one in the West. I'm not sure how
these things are judged, because Sydney claims to have, I believe, the
second biggest Chinatown in the West, but the Chinatown in New York
seems bigger than the SF one to me in terms of area and population, so
that would put Sydney at #3 at best. I also doubt that Sydney is even
that high. Regardless, this one presented streets as bustling as any I'd
seen in the city and the familiar sights and smells of China-Towns
everywhere.
I definitely took the opportunity to grab some
steamed veg dumplings as a little pre-dinner snack and simply strode
around, a gleeful smirk on my face, my feet aching from two massive days
of rambling. My belly a veritable culinary UN, I sauntered off to my
hotel, delighted to have a week of San Francisco's cosmopolitan
offerings yet to come. - Anonymous