Fragrance
Reflections on jasmine season
It’s a fragrant time of year, and where I live it’s all star jasmine, peak bloom, rampant in my neighborhood. It literally stopped me this week on a morning jog, also on a night walk with a friend, when the smell was particularly intense.
I generally avoid scent. No perfumes, no scented anything. For me, nothing’s worse than you walk past the exhaust of an apartment building’s laundry room, and out pours dryer-sheet cologne.
Scent is extremely powerful, especially at full broadcast. You can’t taste food without it. It’s a bridge to memory, identity, a sense of place. In my personal history, it’s Cape Town, South Africa and British cleaning products; Paris, France and river water; Town Hill, Maine and fireplaces.
Greenwich Village is human piss, marijuana, hot dog steam.
Fragrance as a time machine, interrupting thought, pulling me out of the background anxiety of paying attention to world events.
My paternal grandfather: Beer.
My maternal grandmother: Marlboro Lights.
My first serious girlfriend used to spray the mixtapes she made me with her perfume—UB40, U2, and CK One. Thirty years later, I catch the scent and think of her.
Here, Los Angeles, April, in the air is jasmine and honeysuckle layered with grill smoke from a taco stand around the corner. For me, the smell of jasmine is “sweet” and “citrusy.” Also oily like basil, almost “fleshy,” or something skanky, kinda sweaty and lush. For those reasons, it’s preferably a night smell—jasmine shouldn’t be smelled in daylight? Because under a moon, or in the glow of a streetlamp, you dip your face into a shrub, or the vines draping walls, and it’s practically narcotic.
𓀠 Tomorrow’s 3+ things for premium subscribers:
Punk music I’m surprised to discover I love, and a newish band if you like oldish Django Reinhardt. Also, the best of the year’s avant garde thus far.
For tennis heads: favorite new shorts, also a new monofilament polyester string I like
A selection of “weird lady lit” and “novels for unpleasant women.”
Treat yourself for just $6/month and enjoy the Sunday supplements: great books, travel/shopping picks, cool stuff generally.
❀ Hey, if you’re a writer looking for help—editing, coaching, brainstorm juju—I recommend collaborating with Rachel Knowles.
Rachel has helped me significantly over the years, not to mention lots of other writers: novelists, screenwriters, Substack-ers, the gamut. Whether you’re aspiring or established, everyone needs an editor. More info at her website.
What the what
“Meditations in an Emergency” is a weekly essay from author Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with three-plus things to love, plus a monthly travel-lust ballyhoo.
Rosecrans is a correspondent for GQ, a contributor at Travel + Leisure, and the bestselling author of Everything Now, winner of the California Book Award. Other books include The Last Kid Left and Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down. His debut novel, You Lost Me There, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
For magazine articles, bio, contact info: rosecransbaldwin.com.
Disclaimer: if you buy something using a link from here, I may receive a commission.