Interminable Grotesques Perfume Oil

INTERMINABLE GROTESQUES

Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes—a kind of “debased Romanesque” with delirium tremens—go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.

But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase.

The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so, and I exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of its going in that direction.

They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds wonderfully to the confusion.

There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the cross-lights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all,—the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction.

Flowers in full chase, radiant and absurd, grotesquely endless: narcissus blooms lolling on broken stems, their buttery perfume swelling into a debased crescendo of honeyed heliotrope, toxic lily of the valley, almond blossom, and opium poppy.
5ml Perfume Oil
Price
Regular price $31.00
Regular price Sale price $31.00
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The Yellow Wallpaper

Our scent adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” was first conceived as a Halloween 2020 release, inspired by the confinement we were experiencing during that maddeningly uncertain time. Good taste prevailed, however, and we decided to shelve this series for another time.

That time has now come! This beguiling and ruthlessly economical snippet of horror fiction has been a formative reading experience for high school students for decades, even though the subject matter is decidedly adult.

For new readers staring down non-fictional legislative attempts to revive 19th century standards for pregnancy, motherhood, and mental healthcare, our heroine’s predicament seems all too current… and her escape (as it were) oddly cathartic.
Halloween 2025

As of this writing on a lovely September afternoon, everyone who works at BPAL seems to have some kind of Halloween project going on in the background, whether related to costume creation, home decor, or brewing up frightful treats. And this doesn’t even count as “early” to most ‘Weenie wackos!

Our relatively recent tradition of previewing Halloween fragrances at Dragon Con has been incredibly useful in terms of getting us in the spooky spirit. And then we get to witness others’ enjoyment of it, which proves contagious. (If we’re lucky, this joy is the only infection we brought home from Atlanta this year. Get thee behind us, Con Crud!)

This year’s series is like a scrapbook stuffed with snippets from artists we love – illustrations from John Herndon, Becky Munich, and Drew Rausch are back in rotation – as well as our own personal experiences, tastes, humor, and horrors. Even this year’s literary component, a fragrant adaptation of the short story The Yellow Wallpaper, is connected to memories of the childhood discovery that words printed on a page can affect a person more brutally than anything they’d ever seen on a screen or in real life.

And of course, by now some of the perfumes in our Main Category of ‘Weenies have been in rotation for over twenty years. To the extent that little bottles of oily essence can function as scraps in a book, we share your pleasure in revisiting them, rereading the descriptions, and inhaling the contents, wondering how on earth this all happened.

May your season be filled with such fragrant remembrances, in whatever form those take. May our ghosts feel invited to visit and speak, and may their messages stand a chance of being heard before we’ve passed out of range, slipping back into winter’s relative peace and silence.
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