I read a great line in Kathleen Tessaro’s book, The Perfume Collector. In the scene, the character has been trying to hold off drinking.

“That doctor understood nothing.
He didn’t know what it was like to live between memory and regret with nothing to numb it.”

Not only is this a very well crafted line, but fascinating in a book with perfume as a key character. It is well accepted that smell is the fastest route to a memory of all the senses.

I’m a bit of a perfume collector myself. I can’t use just one. My favorite perfume of all time is Deneuve, which is no longer made. I used up my hoard of boxed up bottles last year. I got one of my favorite words, chamade, from the name of a Guerlain perfume. The word means “a signal by drum or trumpet inviting an enemy to a parley.” It can also mean the unique trumpet sound made by a band of knights as they came in view of another. This way you would know from a distance, if they were friend or foe. I think the perfume designer meant it to be that when you smelled this, you would think of the woman who wore it. You would be aware of her even before you could see her.

Perhaps a poem about perfume is in the air.

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