If I told you that all the color was bleeding out of my life, you might respond in any number of ways. A common response would be to recommend that I see a shrink and ask for some SSRI's.
You should totally get some Paxil. Or maybe some Zoloft. I have a friend that took Zoloft and it turned her totally around. Go to that shrink I mentioned and ask for some of that.But somehow I'm thinking that's not the answer.
You know what I think? I think our minds and bodies respond in any number of ways when there's something wrong in our lives, when there's some imbalance. I don't think it's a coincidence that diagnoses of depression continued to increase over the course of the twentieth century as our world became more urbanized. Don't get me wrong, I love cities and I couldn't live without all the luxuries they allow for. But it's been my own personal experience that most cities feel dead spiritually. Urbanization and technology, wonderful as they are, seem to me to have a way of draining the essence and the life right out of an area...and out of me. In most cities, there aren't that many places to go reconnect with nature, and if there are, they simply don't feel the same for some reason.
Regardless, Tampa is about the worst there is. It's not just a city; it's a haven for filth and decay. It's miles and miles of dirty little streets, lined with dilapidated houses in shades of pink and yellow and sky blue, peeling and rotting into the hot, cracked pavement. It's swamp conifers and those miserable, depressing-looking trees with the dark green tendrils that droop miserably in search of humid swampland. It's unkillable hordes of roaches, ants, and other vermin that spawn like bacteria. It's all of Cuba's poverty and squalor, imported and copied meticulously, down to the last obscene sticker on the clunker of the van waiting at the stoplight. I've been known to be a bit of a city girl and I'm usually the first to point out a town's good qualities. Tampa has none.
From where I live now, I would have to drive forty five minutes to get out of town and reach someplace pristine, like the beach. That's forty five minutes in any direction. When Lindsay and I did go to the beach this past spring, it was easy to feel the essence of the sea, the wild, untamed feeling you get when you're near a natural body of water. But the spritual richness I was looking for...I simply didn't find it. Was it there? Maybe. But if it was, it didn't do the trick for me. I went home feeling numb in much the same way I would have after rubbing local anesthetic on my skin.
So where would I have to go to have that feeling of spiritual fulfillment again?
Well, I'd probably have to go home.
One of my recent ideas is that seasons and circadian rhythms have a profound effect on our well-being and the myriad nuances that make up a functioning person. I'm used to nice, clean-cut, definable seasons. Summer is brutally hot, fall gets cooler and colorful, winter is bitter and buried in snowdrifts, spring is colorful. No such definitions exist here. Regardless of what Florida natives say - and they tend to get defensive and highly offended - there are no seasons here. Florida is year-round summer, without remorse. I once heard that in Sub-Saharan Africa, there are only two seasons - the dry season, and the rainy season, and they come in extremes. This describes Florida perfectly. For a northern girl like me, used to chilly fall mornings, bundled up with a hot mug of cider, or snowy, frostbitten winter nights, this is hell. Not waking up to the year's first frost or to brightly-colored leaves in late October has made me depressed, I think. I sleep less. I eat less. Nothing brings me enjoyment anymore and I'm desperately unhappy with life outside of my relationship. (My relationship still brings me joy. But that's about it.)
But everything is a metaphor for something else, isn't it? This feeling of misery in this foul, unfamiliar climate, this growing sense of isolation and loneliness, has made me ponder other things. I've found myself thinking about my connection to my Nordic ancestral faith again, a religion that has brought me a lot of serenity and contentment but also a lot of conflict and unhappiness, too. But I think what comes into our lives is based on the energy we allow into it, plain and simple. If I find my heart coming home to where it belongs (even if my body can't), it's far more personal, far more private. I used to be open about deeply personal things like faith, inner philosophical questions, whatever. I'm not anymore. I think keeping things like this private keeps them sacred.
Even if I might not have verbalized it all very well, I think my point with this entry was this: Sometimes you have to go far away to find your way back home. And taking a pill can't cure a ton of other imbalances, which are in turn the symptom of one big problem. Finding out what that problem is and doing your best to solve it is your only salvation.
I always thought
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab was the only authority when it came to indie fragrances.
Then, today, I met
Arcana face to face for the first time, and I'm crushing really hard.
It's hard for a fantasy fan or a student of history not to be turned on by the bottles, packaging, and themes. The labels all look the same worn shade of sepia, but all written with different fonts, all illustrated with the same creepy woodcut images and haunting artwork. They have names like "1816" and "Filthy Viking", whose descriptions let you know that someone studied history. But you can't judge a book by its cover, can you? And unless you have an unlimited budget - and who has one of those? - you can't just order these on a whim. When you're in a position to get yummy perfume, and that may not be very often - you have to choose wisely. Usually, I go with what I know...I don't like gambling on perfume that may or may not be good. I'd wanted to try Arcana for months, especially a scent of theirs called "Frilly Underpinnings", but I was never brave enough to ask Lindsay to get me a whole bottle. I'd be devastated with guilt if it wasn't absolutely excellent.
Then I stumbled on The Soap Box Company, probably one of Arcana's biggest vendors. And they, my friends...THEY sold SAMPLES. We had to try a couple.
Lindsay ordered "
The Huntress" - "Sweet clove, black pepper, aromatic mint, blood orange, and a whiff of [Artemis's] sacred oak groves." She was drawn in by the woodland theme, by the image of an independent feminist goddess of old.
I got a sample of "
Frilly Underpinnings", a fragrance I'd been dying to try for so long - "Pink, white, and black pepper lace delicately through sweet cream, bourbon vanilla, caramel amber, white musk, two sugars, spice, and everything nice." Lindsay had cautioned me many months ago that this scent sounded almost disgustingly gourmand and would turn sweet, cloying, and nauseating on my skin, especially since I amplify cream and vanilla notes so well. I'm ecstatic to tell you that our fears were totally ungrounded. It's sweet, bright, and cheerful, not nearly as cloying as I expected. White musk is an automatic win on my skin; it always turns sweet and lovely on me, and the white musk in Frilly Underpinnings lent the fragrance a quiet, pleasant gravity that kept it from getting out of control. Immediately on touching my skin, Frilly reminded me of a snowy winter day, cuddled up on a cozy window bench with a book and a thick, soft blanket. It took me home, back to chilly northern winters, which I miss terribly here in Florida with its year-round summers.
Sadly, Lindsay didn't like Huntress nearly as well. She was hoping for something more arboreal, I think. I told her that I'd happily take it off her hands. The orange and clove come out in this one and it reminds me of tart and tangy holiday punch, hot in a steaming mug after coming in out of a bitter northern winter. I love that one, too.
Since Lindsay rocks the pine and woodsy notes, I convinced her to get a bottle of "
Filthy Viking", which is a far more piney, frigid scent. She's skeptical, convinced that it will smell terrible. If she doesn't like it, I'll take it. We're two for two. If all of Arcana's smells are as good as the samples we got, even a smell like that will be delightful on me.
For BPAL fans, the main difference we noticed between BPAL and Arcana is that BPAL'S smells tend to be a lot darker, and I think this suits their gothic theme and the sensibilities of their creators. Arcana seems to be smell a little more bright and cheerful, and I think this suits me and certainly my partner a lot better. It's a good illustration as to how, even when a designer makes two completely different fragrances, they put enough of themselves into those fragrances to give them some sense of common mood to tie them together.
I like Arcana's mood a lot. Smelling their stuff makes me genuinely happy, and that's exactly what I like art to do for me.
I think this could be love. <3
The Soap Box Company sells most of Arcana's scents in 5 ml glass bottles for $13.95. Samples of their year-round smells are $3.00 (worth every penny, trust me). Some smells are sold in 3.7 ml glass bottles, and prices may vary.
