perfume

i inadvertently snapped this clary sage stem after i photographed it, and not surprisingly, a little puff of sage scent soon reached my nostrils. it reminded me of a book i just started reading called perfume by patrick suskind. the hero/villain of the book is a sort of human monster, born in 18th century paris, who decodes the entire world based on scent. he is a mozart-like prodigy in the realm of scent, and like mozart writing his first opera at age 12, this character begins before grade school to create new forms and combinations of scent, sometimes only in his head. i don’t know where the book is going although he has already killed a girl whose scent he was able to track on the wind, like a polar bear, from the other side of the seine, down several streets and an alleyway. it has been fascinating to read a book so steeped in smells, good and bad, and to realize how little smell is incorporated into so much writing.

clary sage flower stem in winter