Rare and Precious

Scent is one of the most powerful identifiers that there is. It serves us as a way to establish personal identity, attract a mate, mark territory, communicate abstract concepts like 'fresh', 'medicinal', 'poison' etc. We are not the only animal that does this- consider the dogg who identifies with a combination of butt-sniffing, urine marking and rolling in dead things in order to create their personal doggy odor. (which is nice for doggs, not so nice for humans....)

As humans, we tend not to like to smell like humans. We mask our personal odors and communicate through a complex system of assigned scents. Peppermint = fresh, Citrus and Pine = clean, Vanilla = sweet, feminine, delicious, Spicy = males etc. (generalizations!) Doesn't matter if you are talking toothpaste or cleaning products, medicine or shampoo- we like to smell like other things.

Mother smells like roses. Not only the rose perfume, but the association with her are rose-based associations. Her name, the flowers Daddy would bring, the blue lamps that used to be in her bedroom that are now in mine. Daddy always smelt like a combination of certs (wintergreen) with faint undertones of beer, tobacco and coffee. Or like whatever he was cooking. One of my ex-boyfriends always smelt like Listerine, another- a surfer from long ago- smelt like blistex (ew). Grendel smells like tea. Max (the dogg) doesn't smell like a dogg, but like fresh grass and hay- he smells great! Ursula smells not-so-great.... but she is obsessed with the smell of coffee and will go to great lengths to 'acquire' coffee beans or try to steal sips from my mug (ew).

I don't know what my sisters smell like exactly, though if you blindfolded me and brought them into a room I bet I could tell they were there. I know Barbie has a favorite perfume - but the name of it escapes me right now- I'm sure Sue has a signature scent also. Melissa has a base of coffee and tobacco with overlying spicy nutmeg- but she changes her 'top note' often.

As for me, I don't like commercial perfumes at all- I pick up on the chemical odors, the alcohol base. I like oils, and it changes with time- but basically herbal clean odors. I love bergamont and eucalyptus, verbina, rosemary, sage, fresh ginger...my house smells like peppermint though that is mainly for the mice. When I lived on the island I used clarey sage, when I first moved here it was Irish heather, now I am obsessed with pink pepper- which smells lovely but is incredibly expensive and hard to acquire. I finally talked the down-to-earth lady into selling me a scant 1/8 oz yesterday... it smells sharp and spicy and clean all at once. The flowers of the pink pepper from Kenya ... a different type of smell altogether, exotic and familiar all at once, unforgettable.