Today I went to the mall during my lunch hour, and decided to grab some Chicknuggets. I walked past a perfume store on the way to the food court, and was almost knocked over by a mixture of every fragrance inside. It's an odor that can give you a sick headache, make you see stars, and most definitely... make you dream of being in Paris. For twelve years I visited Paris a minimum of twice a year. Now I haven't walked in her streets, and past her military-strength perfumeries in two years, except vicariously as the hibou spectateur. Elle me manque.An odor can be awful and nostalgic at once, and the great dissonant cacophony of perfumes I smelled today was both. The only thing worse than smelling such a great melange of perfumes at once is smelling a perfume of great significance by itself that moves you in some way. For example, Old Spice that immediately brings images of my grandfather in his overalls; the smell of Beautiful that I identified with an old friend who succumbed to cancer at the age of sixteen; the smell of Roy de Soleil which brings me to this poem by Edmond Haraucourt (1856-1941) called Le Miroir:
L'odeur de vous flottait dans l'air silencieux:
J'ai vu la chambre vide et la table laissée,
Le livre où palpitait encore votre pensée,
Le miroir qui lui sait comme un morceau des cieux.
Alors, seul, je me suis incliné vers ces choses,
Et j'ai pieusement, de mes deux levres closes,
Baisé sur le miroir la place de vos yeux.*
*My not so poetic translation:
Your fragrance floated in the still air:
I saw your empty room and your things on the table,
The book where your thoughts still palpitated,
The mirror that knows you like the stars in the sky.
So, being alone, I leaned toward your things,
And piously with my two closed lips,
Kissed the mirror at the place your eyes had been.
