ghoulnextdoor
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Everything posted by ghoulnextdoor
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Treasure glows with bright, gorgeous, golden sweetness, like citrus caramelized by a fiery sunset, beneath which something burnished and floriferous swirls, rootless blooms born in twilight skies, seafoam and honey, dissolving at dusk. Salt-weathered driftwood marbled ablaze with amber's lambent translucence, etched and grooved with a ghostly tidal language that speaks to liminal spaces between sea and shore, day and night, memory and dream.
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Imagine all the forbidden nocturnal mystery evoked by rich, smoky, brooding resins such as opoponax, oud, and frankincense, but soften it with sweetness and snuggles, make it a kinder, gentler darkness. Brown sugar candle glow, amber lantern light, the honeyed hum of a streetlamp– a companionable luminescence for the midnight soul, and a comforting balm for night owls, moonlighters, and after-dark enthusiasts.
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The Acrobats is the flushed exuberance of juicy-peachy apricot, its delicate brightness made unsettling with amber’s dimly glowing resins and the bitter tang of tannins. I don’t know if I am unduly influenced by the heart-rending painting upon which it was based, but it really does smell like a sweet memory tinged with unbearable sorrow.
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While I am much usually much more expansive in my reviews, I am confident in saying that all you need to know is this scent is BPAL’s Antique Lace, those faded phantom attic-trunk florals, and the milky-musky-powderiness of cobwebby linens, caught up in the misty salt-air mystery and bitter cliffside botanicals of smugglers and shipwrecks on the windswept Cornish coast of Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn.
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Midnight Snowfall is a winter's witching hour personified; Night Queen, shock of moon-pale hair glittering, cloaked in the dark unknown of ancient terrors looming beyond firelight, a creature born of the hush that descends upon the world as the last sliver of sun sighs into the dusk. Lunar dreamworlds, surreal shadow realms, secret starlit cities beyond time--limned in a single frozen glance, a soft, bitter stolen kiss, a phosphorescent lamentation of stars fading at dawn. The resinous nectar of champaca’s intoxicating warmth chilled by a shiver of pale, pearlescent moon flowers, swaddled, sticky, and senseless in a velvety oblivion of moonless night.
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An olfactory altar to the transformative agonies of sloughing off your broken chrysalis, The Shedding Time is a fragrance that calls for a moment, alone and in the dark. The clove is feral and sharp, a twisty slithering coiling around your awareness, deep in the shadows; each successive sniff draws it closer to the surface. Clinging to the bitter autumn honey of the serpentine spice is the shriveled exuviae of phantom flowers–a scorched and skeletal bouquet of tuberose and honeysuckle, mingles with the dissolving tendrils of earthy incense smoke. A rosy glowing emerges, the faintest sunrise blush on the freshly exposed skin, that much more alive. The body unshrouded, the psyche reborn, a perfume to witness the beauty of becoming through the crucible of transformation. Kick aside the remnants of your hollow husk and step out into the sun.
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Syzygy is the undying dream of a dusky poppy in full bloom, not vibrant and fleeting, but perfectly preserved within a gilded tesserae of amber, its vivid essence suspended in slow, honeyed time. Crumble these petrified petals into a steaming glass of milk, the creamy warmth coaxing out their hidden secrets. The first breath of Syzygy is this: a haunting sweetness, both familiar and strange. It's the memory of summer captured in a single, perfectly candied posy, not swaying in a sun-scattered field but tucked between the shadows amongst sun-baked stones. The rich, resinous beauty of the blossom endures, a timeless lure to the dark hum of ghostly bees forever adrift, doomed to perpetual yearning.
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Soil and shadow, a subterranean ember, smoldering. It’s the damp earth beneath bare feet, a bat-winged tickle of rain in the air at the edge of midnight; a primordial altar deep underground, shallow breaths sooty with ancient incense smoke and the stony language of deep time, a haunting chorus of fossil imprints and biological hieroglyphs; lights out at the last library on Earth, honeyed wooden shelves gleaming in amber candlelight, its welcoming glow extinguished, one flickering flame at a time. A keyhole cartography mapping everything, everywhere, all at once: a darkness that delights in revealing a kaleidoscope of shifting realities, where time folds in on itself, each blink twisting the vista anew. But you’ve always known how to navigate the paths of your heart’s own darkness, haven’t you? After all, both the lock and the key were shaped by you.
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In Tiffany Morris’ novella Green Fuse Burning, the author writes, “Spring was an assault that arrived at the door with flowers in hand…” and Roses, Pearls, and Emeralds is the olfactory equivalent of that neon green revelation. The lime, juniper, and pine comingle to create something surprisingly unarboreal, more oceanic, but also unnervingly electric. Massive bioluminescent algal blooms cause ocean dead zones, and ultraviolet radiation runs amok in wild grottoes and caverns. The rose, oh wily troublesome rose! (Me and rose have history!) is the unexpected, benevolent note-wrangler in this composition, reigning in the maritime radioactivity and lending a soft floral haze that settles and soothes and coaxes it back to land. A little cottage garden that sometimes dreams of kaiju.
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Aloof and alluring, a cool, bitter metallic shiver, like poison painting the tip of a small curved blade; musk and throbbing darkness, like psychic muscles cramped around the remembrance of a wound. The scent of duels lost, blood on the ground, moonlight elegies–all impressively tragic stuff, outrageous melodramas played out on the stage of one’s own mind…as is the wont of those of us who are really good at hurting our own feelings. Our Lady Of Pain is the most beautiful, most diabolical of Mean Girls…but as they say, the calls are coming from inside the house.
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Chestnut Vulva is an unexpected autumnal fantasy of comforting warmth. Velvety chestnut puree, smooth and sweet, with a subtle hint of milky creaminess; a touch of unsweetened cocoa powder adds unexpected depth, grounding the sweetness with a hint of earthiness, like fallen leaves crunching underfoot, while geese fly low on the horizon. Cardamom's delicate floral spice is whipped into a toasted meringue, a luxurious garnish in a thermos full of this enchantingly warming fall beverage in the dying light of an October afternoon when the spring sun showers seem a long way off.
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Sun-leached bitter citrus, vanilla dust motes trembling in fractured light – lace curtains, cobwebbed and frayed. A single wilted violet bears witness to the fleeting nature of affection; a shattered porcelain angel weeps tears of melancholic orris-tinged grief; the air is thick with a euphoric effluvium of malefic ecstasy, the intense overripe sweetness of red musk and ravaged souls, beauty tinged with madness, a poet's overwrought breakup sonnet forever immortalized in a single, gleefully melodramatic, flamboyantly maddening scent.
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Well, you thought this was a Tupperware party – Jello molds, covered casserole dishes, PTA gossip. But you knew different the moment you saw those seafoam green formica counters had been converted to a winking burlesque runway. All your friends do shots of ground pistachio paste lightened with pineapple juice's fizzing neon effervescence, folded into the creamiest, velvety custard...laced with acid. You don't want to seem like a square, so down it goes! The last thing you remember is your hostess's outrageous shimmy and the mesmerizing billowing twirl of her whipped cream pasties. You awake on your front lawn, the technicolor escapades of the night before swimming before your eyes, the taste of an astronaut ice cream tiki drinks on your tongue.
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Thinking about this perfume is akin to thinking about stars, or color; as in, the light we’re now seeing is from a star already dead, or how the color of an apricot is what we perceive it to be because some wavelengths of the spectrum are being absorbed and some are bouncing off and what we actually see in the end is all of the colors that it is not. Speaking of apricots-- this is how I know that no matter how many perfumes I smell or reviews I write, I am still no closer to knowing anything at all. Despite not being listed in the notes, apricot is what I smell here. A thickly jelled apricot marmalade into which the slow poison of sweet herbs are suspended and inky drippings of wine swirl like smoke. Imagine dipping a quill into this sticky jam jar; envision penning your deepest buried needs and secret yearnings. Consider that each word preserved in these conserves comes at a cost; know that when you've emptied the pot, the bill comes due. Though much like million-year-old starlight and all the colors we cannot see, these are abstract repercussions, problems for future-us to solve. Let's gather our marmalade wishes while we may. The pot is full for now.
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Last year, I bought a quartet of Strawberry Shortcake-themed candles. My excuse for this foolishness, not that anyone is asking me to justify myself, is that I'd had a bad day, which turned into a series of bad days, culminating in a whole-ass bad month. I was excited to illuminate these little beacons of nostalgia, but sadly, each was more disappointing than the last. If I'd had Rhubarb Custard Muffins and unscented wax (and, I suppose, any amount of ambition or motivation to speak of), I could have recreated exactly what I, as an adult now, was seeking in those candles with this scent's vibrant bracing blush of rhubarb enlivened further by the jeweled, juicy tang of strawberry, and tempered--only slightly so-- by a creamy vanilla drizzle of custard and scant dusting of oaty streusel. This a scent brimming with cheeky, exuberant optimism that rips its tart heart right out of its chest and offers it to you immediately upon meeting you, no questions asked. This is what that drab stable of Strawberry Shortcake candles should have been!
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A sharp inhale of florals with something, a sweet pang of memory, a tender, fruiting slip of dream, floating just underneath the surface, just beyond your grasp that you can't touch no matter how you reach for it; the darkened, wavering reflection beckoning in the pool that no matter how deep you swim, you can never close the distance.
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White Chocolate, Orange Blossom, Sugar Crystals, and Champagne
ghoulnextdoor replied to Jenjin's topic in Lupercalia
I was expecting a soft white chocolate and orange blossom water scent, but this one is unexpectedly nutty- toasty-malty with a bit of oaky-leathery-coffee and plummy-orchid-florals! But if you wait a bit...that's when things get really good. On the dry-down, this becomes a velvety soft cocoa butter, warm brown sugar musk, and it's just the perfect balance of intriguing/familiar and comforting/captivating, sweet-but-not-too-sweet, close-to-the-skin scent. -
I was a little scared to try this one because I've read that the same component that gives petrichor, that old rain-whisperer, that wet, mineralic tang, is also present in beets. Geosmin. This irregular sesquiterpenoid explains why I do not care for the scent of petrichor and cannot stomach beets. Except for pickled beets, which I love, but I'm a bit of a pickle fiend; you could probably pickle up an old boot, and I'd love that, too. But in Heart Beet there is only the swiftest, most fleeting whiff of dirt and stony dampness and then the immediacy of what I think of as shampoo ginger. We have a profusion of ginger-but-not-quite-ginger growing wild in our backyard, and when you dig it up, it looks just like ginger, and it has that same fiery-floral tang of fresh ginger too, but there's something that smells a little soapy about it, as well, which gave us pause and made us think maybe we shouldn't be eating it! We looked it up, and we are pretty sure it's "shampoo ginger," which could be eaten (but it's bitter) but is more often used in toiletries and cosmetics. And then, at the back of that zesty-floral-freshness is a murky musk, slightly sweet, subtly earthy hum that is so weirdly, unexpectable wearable. This scent is as if you dug up a magenta-blooded, lumpy, heart-shaped taproot and deemed it a quirky imaginary friend and shared all your juicy secrets with it...and then that dang beet tried to give you some sassy advice.
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The red benzoin and amber incense smoke combine to make a strangely sultry balsamic, floral scent that brings to mind some sort of supplication to a saint of dangerous sensuality, a prayer along the lines of, “Poppy crowned queen of night, patroness of thieves and robbers, friend, and light to all that burns." I wish I could remember where I read that! Which has nothing to do with this next reference, but you know all those romantasy books that are all the rage right now? Like "A Court of this thing and those things?" This is a perfume that smells like the heady promises of those lavishly fantastical, come-hither book covers.
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A single, spectral bloom tucked amidst the cypress trees; rainwater which has caught the reflection of the moon; the shimmering peal of a cracked bell at the 13th hour--
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A damp, earthy green and cold minerality like a shroud of moss scraped from a frost-flowered gravestone. A soft, dusty herbal whisper, like crushed leaves scattered in wild, wet weather. A path of long silence and deepening shadow.
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A beguiling liveliness of ripe plum and velvety violet shrouds a shadowy heart of dark magic and bitter vengeance, resinous opoponax and mysterious opium evoking the midnight feathers of forbidden knowledge
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Beneath the golden cloak of rye stalks, sweet, sun-warmed hay, and chamomile’s milky innocence, a feral musk stirs, and the raw, rich peaty soil hints at the darkness of this unspoken truth, the haunting knowledge that the bounty of the fields comes at a cost.
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A woodsy phantom limb of creamy white sandalwood aches beneath a veil of slithery black silk, its fading perfume an opulent counter to the metallic tang of blood and the ironclad resolve of self-preservation’s small, sharp curved blade. The scent of forever caught between two worlds, a beast in disguise and a ghost not yet dead. The luxurious warmth of sandalwood and the sweet summer whispers of jasmine paint a specter of ambiguous innocence, while coconut milk and rosewater offer a fleeting glimpse of soft youth and beauty, but a shadow lurks beneath. Labdanum’s leathery balsamic resin and cardamom’s uneasy floral spice weave a tale of forbidden desires and dark bargains, leaving a scent that evokes a seductive, albeit perilous transformation.
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Thick, rich, molasses dreams, a soft smear of butter infused with cinnamon’s spiced fire, and the powdered musty sap and syrup of amber’s subterranean glow; a promise whispered, a bargain struck, and the cold comfort of calling darkness your own.