Scent-sibilities (sabihin nyo nang mababaw, pero mahilig ako sa mabango)

1. I love smelling things: shampoos, newsprint, pencils, books. When I bought my Norton anthology of theory and criticism, Larry and I smelled the thin yellow pages and had a conversation that went something like this:

"It smells like another country."
"It smells like India."
"No, it smells like the memory of India."
"No, like the memory of shared afternoon tea on a porch in India."

2. Once I've smelled a perfume, I can recognize it on friends and strangers. Last sem, at the end of a class, I sniffed and asked "Did someone just spray on Gap Heaven?" A girl at the back of the room raised her hand.

3. The strangest smell-related compliment I ever received was at around 2 a.m. on a ledge in front of my old house: "You smell like my mother on a good day." Meaning, on a good day I smell like his mother, or I smell like his mother does on a good day? Either way, there are Oedipal issues there...

4. Between a guy who smells of nothing and a guy whose cologne smells light and heavenly, I'd choose the person who smells better. :p

* * *
After taking my TOEFL and running Summit errands, I walked around Galleria and fell in love with this fairly new (one-month old) stall on the second floor called Scents Per Cent. Bottles of perfume are lined up per row, with glass cylinders in front of each that you can lift and sniff. If, like me, you get intimidated by department store perfume counters (and annoyed at the salespeople's pushiness), here you can sample and sniff to your nose's content without committing to buying anything.

There were the usual suspects: Clinique Happy, Estee Lauder Pleasures, CK Eternity and Obsession, Davidoff Cool Water (which I can't stand...let's just say there was this girl in high school...), the entire Lacoste line, most of them for both men and women. There were scents I'd been curious about: Issey Miyake, J. Lo Glow, and Curious by Britney Spears---which, by the way, reeks. And plenty of others. If not for this stall, I wouldn't have discovered 2 scents that I liked: Dolce & Gabbana's Light Blue, which smells like a breezy, blue-sky day at the end of summer; and Hugo Deep Red, which is subtly seductive, like dark velvet and stolen kisses behind a backstage curtain.

Anyway, the best part is, you can buy scents per ml (anywhere from P35-45/ml, though most I saw were P38/ml). The salesladies pour the perfume into a graduated cylinder and into a 5 or 10 ml spray bottle that could fit into your pocket---not that you'd want to be carrying perfume around in your pocket anyway.

But there are benefits to having pocket-sized scents.
1. I'm all for having a signature scent (I've been using Elizabeth Arden Green Tea since 2001, and it's never failed me---sistah, my pheromones!---but sometimes I get tired of it. Recently my real sister gave me the Spiced Green Tea variant, which I find too spicy, too clove-y and cardamom-y for my taste). But having alternatives in smaller sizes relieves the monotony and allows you to tailor your scent to the occasion, time of day or time of year.

2. Even if you like a scent on its own, there's no telling how it'll react to your body chemistry. Which explains why my sister's floral Anais Anais smells great on her but terrible on me. By buying a 5ml version of a scent, you can wear it for several weeks---enough time to gauge your own and other people's reactions to it, and to decide whether it's worth investing in a bigger bottle.

So, back to the stall. Both Light Blue and Deep red were P38/ml. If I got 5ml of a scent plus a 5ml spray bottle, it would cost me P225. I had enough money for one. Deciding between a scent that evoked innocence on edge and another that suggested experience (arbitrary extremes, of course, that date back to the first poetry book I ever bought when I was 14: Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience, but that's another story), I chose ... (cue Enigma's early 90's hit) innocence. Haha. Save the seduction for another day.

* * *
Since the entry above reads suspiciously like things I used to write for Preview, here's a fluff-y sidebar-worthy list:

Top 5 friends who smell good:
1. Anina, Happy Heart
2. BJ, Grey Flannel
3. Larry, Allure
4. Elmo, Desire Blue
5. Ruey, Liz Claiborne

* * *
From Diane Ackerman: "One of the real tests of writers, especially poets, is how well they write about smells. If they can't describe the scent of sanctity in a church, can you trust them to describe the suburbs of the heart?"

* * *
One of the better "smell" poems I've read:

The Cinammon Peeler's Wife
Michael Ondaatje

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under the rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in the water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume

and knew

what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.