Stagnation

Hello. It’s been a strange month. The restaurant where I was bartending closed, I found a new job that was supposed to start by now and keeps getting pushed back, and in the meantime the government is giving me about $1000 a month to survive, as if that’s a possible thing. For a while I was optimistic about the break. I was “finding myself” while making tagliatelle from scratch and going on disturbingly long runs. But it doesn’t take long to become depressed about a lack of finances while living in a notoriously expensive city. Bumming around summer Toronto isn’t nearly as pleasant when you start to get anxious about wanting to buy a seven dollar iced matcha. And as my month of rest and relaxation progressed, I started to feel worse and worse. The thought of all the things I should be doing (blogging! making cooking videos! developing recipes!) started to weigh on me and make me feel like I am doing a bad job at being unemployed. I started playing Animal Crossing again. I also found out that even if you have twenty-four free hours in the day it is still very easy to feel like you’re not doing enough. And even on days when I don’t feel too guilty to watch reality TV in the middle of the day and laze around in my underwear I find that these activities no longer feel like a bit of naughty fun. I feel like a child who’s eaten ice cream for breakfast for a week straight and I am practically begging for someone to discipline me, to give me the oatmeal.

Thankfully, despite my budget cut, I have a backlog of samples. My treasure trove is so full that I get the same feeling looking inside my sample drawer as I do choosing an activity on any of my unemployed mornings: crushed by the scope of possibilities. For days, I would look inside, get scared, and put on Osmanthus Ormonde Jayne again. Eventually I opened my sample drawer hard enough that a single sample came flying out. I took it as a sign. It was Phaedon’s Sable & Soleil. And for about a week straight, I would spray this on my wrist in an attempt to pin it down, but it’s been really hard. I can’t even pin down how I feel about the scent. I think I like it? I smell again. It’s been so wet and humid in Toronto that the scent was playing hide-and-go-seek with me, coming and disappearing and blending with sweat and appearing again. The opening and the drydown in this fragrance are so different. On my first spray, I thought the “sable” in the title referred to the sable cookie, there was something a little milky and sweet and zesty in the opening. There’s also the note fragrantica reviewers say reminds them of bug spray, which is a lemon balmy- lemon blossom type accord. After a minute or two an acrid green smell starts to creep up - perhaps the geranium. The middle of this scent very much reminds me of moth balls. Luckily, the projection on this scent is really humble, and you really must have a close sniff to experience the mothball middle before it dries down into a subtle coconut musk with a soapy undertone. The other note fragrantica reviewers claim to smell is rotting seaweed, and while there is something salty and marine in the mix, I think saying that there is a hot rotting aspect is giving this scent too much credit. It’s very soft and pretty and regrettably, there is nothing nasty in it.

I think this is a scent I like and respect very much. I don’t think I love this scent and I don’t think my life is changed from experiencing it. Because this scent is so subtle, I find myself coming back for more and more sniffs throughout the day. Perhaps its closeness to the skin is actually the draw, the way it asks you to come closer over and over. I think this is a scent I would call “smart” if I was somebody’s old timey mother. If i was selling this scent in a department store, I would say that it is the perfect beachy scent. I would marry this scent if I was looking for a nice, plain, hardworking scent to settle down with. Sable & Soleil could never offend someone. I sometimes wear this scent with a liberal smearing of Nemat’s vanilla musk oil on top, to add a little powdered sugar.

Okay, thanks for reading! And I will actually be back soon this time. Xoxo