A few weeks ago I started reading Sartre's take on Baudelaire. It was mostly sparked by an obsession I have with scents. How scents intoxicate us. Impact us.
The Dandies and the Decandents knew the power of this. Here, I have to share a string of the sexiest sentences I read within my research. It is from the preview of a chapter in the book Scents and Sensibility that is written by Catherine Maxwell. I'll underline the part of it that got me most flustered in the best of ways. It reads:
This chapter examines the decadent olfactif as represented by Oscar Wilde and the poet and critic Arthur Symons, who understood how perfume helped shape their identities as dandies and sophisticated men about town, with both of them alluding to new synthetic scents. Wilde’s use of perfume as a sign of decadent sexual identity, explored in Dorian Gray, is rudely interrupted by his imprisonment in 1895, but the idea of perfume abides with him during his incarceration as an important ideal and consolation.
I am absolutely on my knees that one's use of perfume as a sign of decadent sexual identity can be rudely interrupted by incarceration. Yes, please.
In any case. Back to Sartre (although he annoys me). I want to bookmark his discussion of the white blackbird. Did you know that they exist? They do. And I want to return, perhaps in the next entry, to the construction and comparison between Baudelaire and/as a flamboyant, somewhat self-obsessed yet self-uncertain blackbird that is completely white.
More on this soon, indeed.
***
Today was one of sunshine and phantom excitement. New leaves and new bodies turning over to feel the heat of what may be shining, above them.
The last few months have been beautiful and blotchy. Deep kisses and good music. Complex incense and meticulous order. The multitudes of thick fabrics and textures. The delicate snap of eyeglasses.
I'm setting my suitcase down for a bit.
The one I've been sprinting around worlds with.
The leather is worn
but I still know how to stash my trash and secrets within its lining.
be well; be loved,
k.
(title via Moss Icon)
(photo by Paul Graham via untrustyou tumblr)
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