Athena's Owl

I had this on my wishlist, and it was frimped to me with my Premature Burial order. I opened it, I sniffed it, and thought, "that's the strangest thing I've ever smelled." and promptly put it on. I then spent the next hour saying to myself, "I don't think I like this," while compulsively sniffing my wrist. All I could smell was vetiver. that's it. all vetiver, all the time. violet? where? when I woke up the next morning, I reached for SAturnalia and put it on. and then thought, "why did I do that? I don't like it." I had it on my neck, and I was wearing a turtleneck sweater. I kept pulling the collar up over my nose and taking a deep breath snootful of vetiver. because of course, the violets were nowhere to be found. vetiver, and that's it. and I dont' like the way it smells. Honest. I don't. I did not just sniff my wrist just now and feel this utter wave of relaxation rush over me. you've got me confused with someone else. a week later, I put on a different perfume and immediately identified the vetiver. I'm obsessed with vetiver. enchanted by it - in the old sense. I don't expect anyone to understand this irrational desire to staple my wrist to my nose when I'm wearing saturnalia because I don't like the smell. *sniff* ahhhhh.

you know, when I first started with BPAL, I thought I was the anti-floral. and Jasmine was public enemy number one. but you know....I've been all about the flowers, though what I've been desirous of is a comination of floral and oriental. I think nuit is doing that for me. This imp was frimped to me from a swap, and so I believe that it is aged. what I get is the sense that I'm in a room at night with the windows open, and night blooming jasmine is wafting in through the windows while i'm burning incense... a resinous blend, with amber or benzoin, and off in the corner is a bouquet of moon-pale roses that only blush slightly pink at the edges. when I got them, they were open just a little more than rosebuds. now they're open, nearly in full orgiastic bloom. and I'm lying on a fainting couch staring out the window because It's damn near too hot to sleep but the night is so beautiful anyway. when the breeze is strong, it's jasmine, when it ebbs, it's incense, and they trade off being on "top" scent-wise but that delicate rose stays true, just underneath it. It's beautiful, it's warm, it's the perfume of a woman who flops down on your sofa and says, "I don't know what to do - Blaine and James and Chad are all pressing me to choose, darling, but I'm thinking I should just dump them all and start over, what do you think?"

imp: sweet. i think of the sweet attracting nectar of poisonous flowers. if I am quick and hold my breath, i could wade into a vine-hell of them and cut one away, carefully cradling it to take home and brew something wicked from it. I don't know what either lotus or dragons blood smells like, so this might be the two of them acting together. wet: something spicy rises out of that sweetness. like a breath of pepper. I also smell split green water reeds, and standing water way in the back. the faintest touch of sandalwood? makes me think of how it *stings* when the wind blows hard enough to blow sand against your bare skin. i mean it evokes hot, dry, dustbowl style desert. 20 minutes: remarkably similar to wet - the sweetness, the thread of spice, the whiff of sandalwood.. but the sense of standing water retreats, to be replaced by the slightest hint of paving stone, or something. Later: this might be one of the most consistent scents I've tried yet. once I get it on my skin, it smells like what it is and that's how it stays. It's got a good throw - not too strong, but I stay aware of the scent, and if I feel like i need the atmosphere of beguiling, sweet, and dangerous, this could be it right here.

imp: lemon drop candy! i want to eat it. wet: and lick my wrists. mmmm. I wonder if there's verbena in it? I would be one of those medieval ladies who smelled of verbena instead of lavender. I know the blend is supposed to be menacing, but what I've got is what I hoped for of embalming fluid and didn't get. I think there's a tiny whiff of some kind of wood under here. I smell like a clean, clean house, except edible. 20 minutes: the wood comes forward more, but that sweet lemon drop is making me dizzy with happiness. I remember there was supposed to be patchouli in this but I can't tell if there is - I'm only vaguely familiar with what patchouli smells like these days. when I move, i get wafts of scent - cedar, and then lemon, and then sandalwood incense. I don't think I would call this a sexy scent, but it's definitely clean and fresh. later: verbena gone. just sandalwood. It's simple, clean, and I like it.

imp: oh, smelling the dirt. oh my yes, indeed. and that... is that the cypress? something green and strangling comes to mind. I don't catch either the patchouli or the black orchid yet. wet: on my skin, the dirt goes back, and here comes patchouli, no wait, the dirt was just stepping aside to let it through. wow. this is interesting. this smells the way I hoped crossroads was going to smell. and it's not sweet at all. it's earth and moss and patchouli. not a whiff of the orchid yet... but that's okay. I'll need a bit more time to see what it develops into. but OMG yay and I think if I need this to be sweet, I can layer a smidge of something sweetly floral with it, and it will be wow (whoo, caught a waft of that woody green just now...) 20 minutes: now it's spent some time on and this is the dirt scent I've been trying to get but could not. Yay! later: now I get orchids. beautiful. They'll pry this bottle out of my prematurely buried fingers.

another story review: imp: green. like wet grass and leaves, and rain soaked concrete faintly beneath it. walking home from school with the gutters rushing beside you, a book tucked under your coat to protect it from the wet while the rest of you gets drenched, watching debris fly down the gutters--fresh green leaves beaten off the branches by hail, and raindrops pelting into puddles hard as stones. wet: it's raining too hard, and in desperation you seek refuge under an evergreen, leaning under its branches for a bit of shelter, and the drops don't fly here. fallen dry needles break and their sharp sap wafts up into your nose, overpowering everything else. Long ago, someone drew patterns into the falleen needles with a stick, their lines barely a divot now. they go all the way round the trunk, faded, but still intricate as writing. 20 minutes: you wander around the base of the tree trying to make out what that pattern in the needles is, but the lines blur and twist on themselves. you have a headache from trying to make sense of it all. you duck a particularly low branch, and the scent of rot crawls up your nose, a flash of roiling, sickly white admidst heather flocked fur. you back out from under the tree, fighting nausea, and wish the whole experience would go away. I'm washing this off. ugh.

imp: Mint, set to hit you in the face. burning sugar. liquour. something swirling and dizzy with the sweetness. this is a medicine that won't cure your ill. you take a swig of the liqour and accept the hard candied mint, so strong it clears your sinuses because there's no room for anything but mint, and you go down into the fresh cut hole, down into the tunnel with your high amp flashlight. Wet: the hard clack of an ovoid mint in your teeth as you explore an old undergrond room, like a barrow grave, and the candy melts down to anise seeds, tasting of licorice. exposed roots from the tree above your head tangles in your hair, and you have to stop to unwind yourself from its grasp. you spend a little extra time picking all the broken hairs off. you don't like the idea of just leaving them there. later: sweet herbal pastilles and bitter poison. the combination is really quite cool. I'm not sure if it's the right thing for a perfume, but I like the smell.

In the Imp: green, like rain-soaked bamboo. it's got something else too, something beautiful and soft. it smells like a cool day in spring. Wet: it morphs as soon as it hits my skin, but into something I can't quite recognize. it smells like the texture of sugar floss, the way it melts the second it hits your tongue, but it doesn't smell like sugar floss. it's more like a floral scent before it distintigrates because it's being pelted by rain. very definitely a stormy scent, like the hint of a lightning storm about to hit. after 20 Minutes: that ephemeral melting scent comes forward more, leaving the bamboo behind. it's definitely flowers, but damned if I could tell you what - white, waxy-petaled flowers. it has that drowsy scent. but it's not flowers alone, by any means. it's flowers on top of eveything else - whiffs of white tea and a bit of rain - the first rain scent that has worked on me, since my experience with tempest was an utter disaster. I really love this. it's not like the warm and sensual perfumes I usually like, being greener and crisper, but it's really lovely. it feels very city - does that make any sense? Later: gorgeous. after a while the floral scent retreats and smooths out. the rain scent dries back to slightly damp city streets. and the bamboo comes back a litte more, but not so overwhelmingly green as it is in the imp or freshly wet on the skin. and now that floral smells more like cherry trees in bloom. it's very pretty, and I think it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do - combine the fresh green and florals with a more city feel. keeper, heck yes, bigger bottle time.

in the imp: candy sweet, with spices beneath, but not like cinnamon red-hots. there's something else here to, it smells like a meadow with leather, just a tiny bit, but old well worn leather. wet: candy on the first whiff - no wait, more of the grassiness coming forward now...way back there, that's the sea, the sea I know with the salt and sea-wrack smell...wait, what the hell is that smell? pine trees? and how fast can this stuff morph? cinnamon, i swear I smell cinnamon. And I'm afraid that I don't like this. hmmm. after 20 minutes: cinnamon red hots and christmas trees! this is the clash of scent versus skin. Arrrrgh. i need soap. into the swap pile with you, tintagel.

in the imp: sweet and soft and wistful. really sweet smelling - i'm not catching anything distinct from it in the imp at all, other than wanting to try it on my skin. so... wet: slight feeling of cocoa, but so slight I could be wrong about that. not nearly as sweet on my skin. I smell bones, dry, dusty bones. that's neat. this smell makes me want to wander out onto the cliff face on a moonlight night, sprayed by high cold surf when I'm wearing nothing but a nightgown and a knitted shawl, convinced I heard the voice of a long dead love just outside. it's the most haunting thing I've ever tested. after 20 minutes: spices and wood, soft and dusty. like an ancient box made of sandalwood, so old it's starting to crumble, and a sweetness just behind it, perhaps a spilled bottle of liquor or madiera, dried enough to be sticky. later: this is wonderful, but faint on me. I still have the dusty sandalwood, old bones, and spilled wine soaking in the floorboards, but now i'm also getting a smell like old paper, too, and I'm sure that's not in there.

imp: oranges, and chocolate just behind it, but it reminds me of grand marnier chocolate torte. wet: strongly boozy. really amps up the grand marnier association. and... something else there too, again with the foody smells. oh that's the cherries! I smell like a dessert. after 20 minutes: this is so simple yet nice that I forgot to check it again after 20 minutes. later: waaay later. faded down, soft and nice and not so boozy any more. this might be a good choice for layering with something else. it's pretty, but uncomplicated. I think that I prefer complex scents, and that while the food scents smell nice, they're not a good fit for me.

imp: leather and well, some kind of flower. i dunno. it's sweet. maybe that's the amber? wet: something more spicy now. for such a leathery scent it does feel girly, and that's cool. but there's something else under it that smells like a bar of soap. uh oh... 20 minutes: still spicy, a bit of leather, the flowers are all gone. but so is the soap. later: This is nice but too simply spicy/leather.

this review isn't so much about the scent as it is about the story I got when wearing the scent specifically to review. I'm happy it gave me a story. imp: the scent of violets waft past your face as you flick the starched linen square open and spread it over one knee. it takes a bleary moment for your eyes to focus on the thing on your breakfast plate: a charming little bunch of violets and primrose, all wrapped in a lock of hair for a bow. You hand the plate to a passing servant and watch another pour your tea. You barely wonder who it was this time. wet: perhaps the musk and sandalwood was the reason for it: when you walked by, the cloud of violet was sprightly, acceptable, floating from wrists and throat. but in rest to speak with an new and dear friend with the jewelled toe of one shoe resting between theirs, a warm embrace that touched from knee to shoulder ("But come! We are friends!") and the jocular intimaticy that invited petting and caressing of someone new and beautiful, the musk and sandalwood fought its way through silk and linen to capture the senses, borne by the body's heat. when you leave the object of your attentions, you leave behind a slight stammer and bright flushed faces, watching you for the rest of the occasion. 20 minutes: you wanted a quiet dinner. specifically, you wanted a quiet dinner with your new friend. but there were violets and primrose on your plate again. Really, you should also start teaching these youngsters how to take a hint. later: in the night while your new friend sleeps you open the sandalwood box and touch the latest posy of violet and primrose, wilted without the love of water, bound by a lover's hair. it will dry like the others, and you will keep them in this box for when the night is at its deepest, and you are at your most alone. you will touch them and remember: they love you. desperately. you have that power, to make them love you...if only they love this piece that you give, and then take away cruelly, so they feel they might die of it. they love you. this is the proof. love it. mmm.

I'm wondering if there is anything I need to know about ordering logistics that involve more than one country. here is the situation: I will crochet for BPAL. Someone took me up on it! She lives in the US, and I live in Canada. She wants me to tell her what BPAL I want, and she will order it for me, and have it shipped to me. AT THE SAME TIME, she will be ordering for herself for the first time. Is there anything we should know about making sure that the details on this order are clear to the people at the lab? should it more properly be done as two seperate orders? if the purchaser is in the united states, is it possible for her to use the credit card cart to send an order to canada, or does it have to be done through paypal? will the paypal address accept credit card orders? see how confused I am? I thought I'd share.

True, but there may be a customs hitch to worry about. I am currently trying to get some imps from a Canadian swapper, and she is having a LOT of trouble getting them to me because Canada Post is claiming that they are a "dangerous good". If BPAL is in the business of shipping internationally and already knows how to sidestep this administrative landmine, placing the American and Canadian orders seperately would make a lot of sense. yes. those crazies at Canada Post are loony enough. add in the ban-happy hordes at Canada Customs - where a mere clerk can seize goods at the border at a whim (I mean that literally) and you're navigating a landmine when it comes to mailing goods from private citizens. if I have packages mailed to me from businesses, they go through all right - but packages mailed from private citizens? I have had most of these seized, searched, delayed, and in some cases, refused outright even though there wasn't anything dangerous about them. I've done imp swaps and nearly all of the bpal packages I've had came to me sealed up with the orange tape that proclaims, "this package was inspected by Canada Customs."

Imp: oh, I like that, and I don't know what it smells like. crushed flowers and herbs, freshly picked and wet, cut with the single stroke of a silver-bladed knife by moonlight and pressed, each drop caught in a glazed bowl so their scents still carry the bitterness of fresh want. This imp smells like a spell...of attraction, every bough touched by a magnet, charged to bring that desire to the wearer. Wet: sharper, wet. that green edge comes forward, determined, and then orange blossom spreads over it sweetening, feminizing...becoming what's expected, and then it swirls again and becomes a cloved orange and a mingling of feminine scent and masculine scent, mingling together, flirting. that's the trick of the spell, to attract the other half of the perfume by smelling like it's already done. people want what they can't have, so waft unavailable and watch them wonder who? and the magnet draws them. (laugh! not long after I put it on, I got a wolf in my room. he hit the bead curtain and said, hey, are you testing perfume? what is that? I like it. I can smell it from here and I have a stuffy nose! it attracted the only man in the house. it attacted the only man in the house, and he's gay. lock this stuff UP.) 20 minutes: It's the exitement of a flirtation, those times when you realize that the person you are wanting wants you back, and you circle around each other, knowing you can close in on the attraction if you want to, but you don't have to just now. That the memory will be enough to draw you together again. neroli winds around like ribbon, clove simmers underneath, and orange flirts in and out with bergamot, and the other bit I can't identify could be the mimosa - part pepper, part wood, part herbal, part flowers. it's really lovely. Later: still lovely strong. the orange is more forward now, but not so much that the other scents disappear. I'm going to wear this all day, even though I have to go out in public. it's a keeper. I think too that it's a unisex scent, and a man could wear this one.

In the Imp: sweeeeeeet. sugary peach drink with southern comfort in it. a sticky ambrosia you're not supposed to drink while you're in Faerie, or be doomed to stay forever Wet: Boozy candy. fruity. I'm not used to fruity. this is the scent doomed to have no story. I have the feeling that I am not going to like it. 20 Minutes: okay, I think I know why they say it's brilliant and ethereal, but that's just not right for me. It's still boozy peach popsiccle melting across my knuckles. it's delicious, but so. not. me. and I have the sneaking preview of a headache, so I'm washing it off and it's going in the swap pile. Later: I'm still disappointed. thinking back, it was a lot like trying to eat a peach popsicle on a sticky hot summer day while watching a ball game, but the home team lost.

In the Imp: Golden. I'm drunk on it from one deep sniff. peach? what peach? I smell amber resin and musk and it's golden and soft, like the first spikes of dawn across the sky, golden that smells like the colour of a peaty whiskey, of warm honey pouring out in ribbons like glass. It's so heady and beautiful. Wet: the peach wine pops out, but it is golden. a celebratory drink, drawn deeply from a trophy, sweet as victory on a perfect sunny day. amber behind it like resin insence offerings, burning from thuribles while we wait for a ceremony to begin - a happy one, with laughter and celebration. the peach fades back, and green comes forward - but a soft green, a barely green, a little bit herbal and a lot rounded like a garden around us while we stand barefoot in cool grass carpet and the shade keeps the heat off us while it sprinkles down a sunlight mosaic. 20 minutes: sweet, but not cloying. still peach wine, still sunshine--a joyous ceremony that breaks into dances as somebody has a pipe and someone has a fiddle and someone has a skin drum, and people sit in the grass and weave crowns of wild flowers, leaves and grasses, and give them to people who must forfeit a kiss and a dance on light feet and sets of four that circle and break apart and circle again with different partners, and every song is ended in cheers and calls for more, and the peach wine flows from each person to each, shared in a cup bathed in laughter and stolen kisses for luck. Later: fading now, if a sunset could be considered fading. lovely amber and peach together, a bit of musk hints at people going away in discreet pairs once the lilac dusk steals over everything. This peach is better than Fae's peach, but i think it's still too sweet for me. the scent is beautiful - it's just not me.

In the Imp: Lovely. a brandy that's infused with orange blossoms, a ghost of dark chocolate on my tongue, and smoke lingering in the background. a comfrotable-dark paneled room, a globe of drink and a pipe at my elbow, turning a thin wafer of dark chocolate in my fingers as I taste that and fill my mouth again with this not sweet but smell those oranges drink--the line of glowing warmth down my body and the brandy pools. I feel reckless, lounging here in my man drag - outrageously uncorseted, not a single pin in my hair as it tumbles. I am young enough never to have done these things before, and young enough to glorify in the wickedness of drink and smoke and smoking jackets, alone. I shall play billiards next, and look for my father's blue magazines. Wet: the scent changes to something else, wet on my wrist. something rich and dense and lush. swollen with flowers, but not sweet - a breath of the breeze, perhaps, as I open the french doors for air and lean outside to banish the dizziness of man's drink and man's smoke from my head, and the beautiful smell of the hot Ceylon night and mother's roses steals over me, curling an arm around my waist and leading me outside to breathe it in, but it hasn't cleared my head at all. The moon rises over a pond of flowers, and I hitch the belt of father's smoking jacket around my waist and pick my skirts up to walk barefooted across the garden lawn to it, past the sleeping peacocks in the glorious night, and why haven't I ever been out here before? After 20 minutes: a drowsy sweetness of flowers, melted chocolate on my fingers, and a peaceful night of the moon and stars. so warm out here I could sleep with the peacocks, but I'd get caught for sure, so i get up and go back to my father's room. the brandy, put away, the pipe cleared of its dottle, and a pot of tea with honey and milk waits for me. my ayah will not tell on me, and I have a cup and look out at the night before I go to bed so no one will be the wiser of my adventure. Later: I go to breakfast, having slept the sleep of the innocent... as long as no one detects the ghost of pipesmoke in my hair. Luckily, we're breakfasting on the terrace to watch the peacocks, and the table has a bouquet of blooms, and more of that blessed tea. This is hands down and for sure a keeper, on the buy 5mL list. It's not Kali as I envisioned it, but it's sure nice.

in the imp: roses. roses and dust, with sunlight filtering through a tenement empty of furniture, but the lady who cleaned it used everything rose. she smiled when she hadned over the keys, and her teeth were dark with the sugar she held between her teeth for her tea. wet: roses. but this time a bouquet of welcoming roses, the kind that hold multiple blooms on a stem, filling a cut-glass vase standing in the sunlight. red roses and pink roses and flame tipped blushing roses and white, and the window is open and so I smell mowing and someone smoking a cigarette just outside my window, waiting for the thump of my handbag and the clunk of my shoes on the floor before climbing the fire escape to knock. He'd better have another one of those smokes. I don't care if they're Gauloises. 20 minutes: so I cooked, with that cadged cigarette clamped between my teeth. and I milled pepper into a dish with cayenne, and the dust blew up and got in my nose. I sneezed mightily, and my fire escape lurking stray offered me a handkerchief of linen, pressed and only a little scorched. He didn't need it back just now, but brought me a stem from the vase to soothe the pepper away. the sausages are on now, and we're pronouncing our box wine as "Shy-razz" because we're so Swayve and Dehboner. He's picked up the guitar and has tuned it, politely saying nothing about the 7th fret that buzzes or the strings that really should be replaced, and sits in the window playing White Stripes songs and serenading the back alley garden with his West London accent. I snort with laughter, and get pepper and cayenne up my nose again. Later: just roses, and my visitor is gone, along with the memory of our dinner. only roses, and dust, and an ash-blond hair on my pillow. If I need a rose scent, I'd say this one would be it. But it's not exciting enough to make the we needs it, my precious list.

In the Imp: this is also green. but it's the green of the forest of british columbia - so green it's all you see, and the moss and leaf-rot under your feet is so soft and inviting. you could lie down in it and rest. there are flowers here too, though - flowers that smell sweet and high, but you don't want to touch them or their poison will seep into your skin and give you strange dreams of flying and sex. Wet: sharp. suddenly the high scent becomes burning spices sprinkled on a charcoal braizer, and again i feel a cloudy headiness, a disquieting disconnection when you stare across at the faces of those with you in your first magickal circle and wonder, Am I really safe? and flowers somewhere, flowers left behind like the olefactory signal of the condemned woman buried under my feet to keep from rising, but in spite of her wickedness someone laid lilies and white hyacinth in her grave before they covered her up with earth. and back to spice, and now dusty earth like a dirt road, and this scent is lovely and redolent and hugs its way around me with its beauty but I can never, ever quite forget, and it can't ever quite conceal that I am in danger here. after 20 minutes: flowers overwhelm me. my nails are broken from scrabbling in the earth, to sit up, but the weight of flowers is crushing me, holding me down. I can breathe, though I can't breathe anything but the flowers, they're pressing me with white blossoms, and I shall die here as the currency of their bargain, overwhelmed with blooms. Dry: moss. and flowers. I liked it better when it was wet, but it's still pretty.

(this is my first BPAL review, ever.) In the Imp: Green. I cannot describe this. I smell and I see Green waters, studded all over with windswept glitter from the sun. High sun, slanting toward afternoon, but the breeze coming in from the ocean cools me and brings this scent, as if it were the cleanest sea in the world and an island in the distance was dripping with ripe to bursting lemons, lemons that never felt anything but sun and rain and butterflies' feet because no one lives on this island of lemons. Wet: it's the smell, but I can't tell you what that smell is. I hold my nose to my wrist, and up close it's lemon and a flower that grows in the jungle and clean sea - the fantest hint of kelp, but not dying fish. it's the beach, but it's not a beach where I have ever been, because it doesn't smell like hawaiian tropic and marijuana, but there could be the hint of... mojitos, nearly. the barest whisp of mint, the tang of an alchohol, and the distant lemons. I feel the golden eternity glowing all around me - if I close my eyes in this my own blood illuminates like stained glass through my eyelids, and I sink into the beautiful warmth of sun-worship and I catch, just silghtly, the impression of salt from sweat. This is amazing. no designer perfume EVER did this. Drydown: the lemons recede a bit, and now there's something a little bit briny coming forward, and I just want some duct tape so I can leave my wrist crammed up against my nose OK? thx! Dry: I've gone inside, the smell of the sea has faded, and the landward breeze sweeps sweet night blooming flowers through my open window. I've never experienced anything like that. I worried that I wouldn't be able to describe the scent at all and as it turns out the scent took me to freakin Tahiti. Truly, I had no idea this was even possible with a perfume. and I've got seven more...

Only once out of my pay pal. Odd. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Having done business with paypal, I can tell you that it only went out of your account once. If you did a transfer with paypal. it confirms the transaction right away, and you get an email from BPAL that confirms the order. Youg get a SECOND confirmation when the money actually clears into BPAL's account, and that is when they start the order. I'm looking at my mailbox every day... I got my confirmation on the sixth of May. Come on, BPAL goodsmellies!