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  A Cluster of Red Chrysanthemums Perfume Oil

  Red chrysanthemum petals, guava pulp, crimson-tipped peonies, and sandalwood incense.

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  We Wear the Mask Perfume Oil

  We wear the mask that grins and lies,
  It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, –
  This debt we pay to human guile;
  With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
  And mouth with myriad subtleties.

  Why should the world be over-wise,
  In counting all our tears and sighs?
  Nay, let them only see us, while
  We wear the mask.

  We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
  To thee from tortured souls arise.
  We sing, but oh the clay is vile
  Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
  But let the world dream otherwise,
  We wear the mask!
  – Paul Laurence Dunbar

  This poem – this song – is one that has moved me since my childhood, and it’s so incredibly difficult to translate it into scent. I don’t know if I am capable of doing honor to Dunbar’s words; all I can do is craft something that is akin to how much this makes my heart clench. The scent I have chosen is a soft lavender with dry woods, carrot seed and iris, sandalwood smoke, and wisteria.

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  Socrates Perfume Oil

  SOCRATES of Athens (c. 470 BCE – 399 BCE)

  To Socrates, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” He did his examining publicly, by elenchus, which is italics for “the question-and-answer analysis of ideas.” (We still call this “the Socratic Method” and it still bugs people.)

  Socrates portrayed himself as a “gadfly” to the torpid “great and noble steed” of the state, and powerful Athenians agreed, though they were not universally grateful.

  Socrates also claimed he had a mystical inner voice (his daimonion) and it dissuaded him from such deeds as seeking high office. Ineluctably, this daimonion and his many other peculiarities were weaponized by Athenians of high office.

  Despite his patriotic service – as soldier, as divinely-appointed nuisance of Athens – Socrates was tried, convicted of impiety and corruption of the youth, and sentenced to death by drinking Conium maculatum, which is italics for poisonous hemlock.

  Socrates remained Socrates to the last.

  …I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to address you as you would have liked me to address you, weeping and wailing and lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed to hear from others, and which, as I say, are unworthy of me. But I thought that I ought not to do anything common or mean in the hour of danger: nor do I now repent of the manner of my defense, and I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live.
  – Plato-s Apology

  Inspired by anointing oils used in the philosopher’s time after partaking in public baths: orris root, ambergris accord, frankincense, olive blossom, black fig, and marjoram.

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  L’Homme Fut Solitaire Dans un Paysage de Nuit Perfume Oil

  Odilon Redon

  Lilac-stained labdanum casting a long shadow across a flicker of frankincense smoke and ambergris accord.

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