Flowers of Fire!

When I was in my late 20s, I fell in love with flowers. Roses, jasmine, geranium, ylang ylang, iris and Wong-shi? Yes, Wong-shi, a type of Chinese gardenia blossom that floats on the surface of both Laura Biagiotti's original fragrance Venezia and the 2011 reformulation. Along with mango, black currant, prune (makes it plummy) and osmanthus (the apricot scent). Underneath it all is vanilla, cedar wood, ambergris, musk, civet and tonka bean. It was heaven! It still is...thankfully without real civet, musk or ambergris. How did they do that? I think...just like Kilian Hennessy...she took her time. All of us who loved her homage to the floating city of dreams that Venice is are blessed to have this fragrance again. I have a bottle courtesy of my friend Wendy's recent trip to Venice.

I wasn't sure if it was quite as fabulous, but I slept last night with nothing on but this exquisite juice and awoke wrapped in the arms of a sweet self I have missed. It is icing on the cake, or petals floating in the canal, that Laura Biagiotti's reformulation was done right, and that she has helped to finance the recreation of Venice' La Fenice Opera House famous green velvet curtain hand-embroidered with gold daisies that graced the stage before the 1996 fire. This little bottle of juice is what is on fire. Flowers of fire. Memories in the bottle floating back to me...

I've also been trying to find the modern equivalents of what seem to be the now watered-down Mitsouko and Narcisse Noir favored by Anais Nin and June Milller. I think also they get toooooo dark and indolic on me. I'm comfortable with a little darkness, and with the right combination of woods, vanilla can take you there, but I guess vetiver is too much for me. I love cardamom too.

I posted this on Facebook too, and Alison said: "Wow! I'll take 3 bottles please! Again, you should be a writer. If you were in marketing you could make a killing. Of course, then you'd probably have to write about worthless stupid products and you would quickly get bored and depressed and quit because it would suck the life out of you. So never mind. Your description of this fragrance is as intoxicating and romantic as Venice itself."

Um. Wow. And Diana told me that I NEED to self-publish my three manuscripts, one of them of prose-poetry, as well as all of my poems. Now that I think of it, Anais Nin self-published at first, and so did Virginia Woolf. Hmm. It is hard not to sound egoistic in wanting to do this. I am good at writing.

But I just keep huffing the flowers! I have written for years for myself. I have three unpublished manuscripts, one of which is finished...and several compilations of poetry. The poetry is really painful stuff, but some whimsical in an Alice-In-Wonderland sort of way. The finished manuscript is lyrical, surrealistic prose-poetry. It is very dear to my heart, and was very healing to write, which is why I keep it close to my heart. Thanks to everyone for their kind words about my writing. It is a pleasure to hear after years of hearing people say to me: "Well, it won't make you any money", or "I'd like to write too..." when what I needed to hear was this. Encouraging words and love and appreciation for my soul.