Unquiet
Things

Every May, social media fills with mermaid art as artists participate in MerMay – the month-long challenge to draw mermaids daily. I wonder if everyone’s still doing that? It’s cute, it’s popular, and it got me thinking about the mermaids and water spirits featured in my book The Art of Fantasy: A Visual Sourcebook of All That is Unreal. Because honestly, my own mermaid obsession runs embarrassingly deep.

Did you watch Darryl Hannah in Splash at a young age and dream for the next decade of diving into the ocean and magically becoming a mermaid with a sparkly orange tail? I spent hours in the pool trying to perfect the dolphin kick, convinced that with enough practice, my legs might just fuse together. When that inevitable disappointment set in, I moved operations to the bathtub with the SeaWees toys from the early 1980s—those pastel-haired creatures with their tiny combs and mirrors. I’ve been obsessed with mermaids ever since. I could have included a whole chapter on them in my book, hell, I could have written an entire volume dedicated to nothing but these aquatic enchantresses.

What is it about mermaids that makes us lose our collective minds? They’re the ultimate shapeshifters, navigating between worlds with the kind of effortless grace most of us can only dream of achieving on dry land. They embody transformation, freedom, and that eternal mystery of what’s really going on beneath the surface—which is probably far cooler than the shitshow unfolding up here on this godforsaken dirt hole.

Here are some of the fishy folk (mermaids and “mermaid-adjacent”) that were included in my book…

In this captivating image of quiet vulnerability, a mermaid combs her lustrous abundance of hair as she rests on a sprawl of seaweed-strewn rocks in an isolated cove, the shimmering strength of her tail curled beneath her. An abalone shell scattered with pearls and the tears of dead sailors beside her, she wistfully gazes into the distance, unheeding of our eyes intruding upon her moment of reflection. Or do our eyes deceive us? Is this moment of enigmatic melancholia something else entirely? Perhaps a calculated move on the siren’s part when, perceiving our gaze, she notes our hunger for magic and miracles, and in feigning unawareness of our presence, it is all the easier to lure us to our watery doom? John William Waterhouse’s (1849–1917) fascination with the darker aspects of the mermaid’s mythology as both a tragic figure and enchantress drives this work, and with it, he invites us to dive into the mystery and discover her intentions for ourselves.

French painter and illustrator Gaston Bussière (1862–1928/29) studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and both worked with and was greatly influenced by his contemporaries, Gustave Moreau and also the Czech painter Alphonse Mucha. His works were visual poems of Symbolist inspiration, glowing and full of vivid embellishments and often evoked the heroes and heroines of the epic mythology. He also painted many depictions of nymphs, nereids and fairies scantily dressed and showing a typical Art Nouveau ideal of beauty, such as this frolicking trio.

Edvard Munch’s (1863–1944) mermaid looks like she is desperately looking for an excuse not to show up for that thing she promised to attend, a month ago, when she was maybe feeling deceptively energetic and probably all hopped up on those tricksy endorphins after a vigorous ocean swim. Now she’s having regrets because she’s a midnight introvert and probably just wants to stay in her grotto, chill out and look at her collection of gadgets and gizmos aplenty. She definitely does not want to be where the people are. Or maybe she’s a manifestation of Munch’s preoccupation with loneliness and anxiety – in the form of a fish-woman painted by the artist as part of a commission from a Norwegian industrialist for a large-scale decorative work during an extended stay in Paris in 1896–97. Fantasy is only limited by our imaginations, and anxious people’s (and anxious mermaids’) imaginations no doubt work overtime!

Renowned Peruvian–American painter Boris Vallejo is universally considered to be one of the masters of modern fantasy illustration. His instantly recognizable, lavishly hyper-realistic-to- the-point-of-surreality paintings have appeared on the covers of numerous science fiction and fantasy fiction novels, trading cards and posters, with subjects encompassing heroes from myth and legend, fearsome prehistoric creatures and the cosmic serenity of ocean life. From epic sword-and-sorcery battles to the strange flora, fauna, and denizens of extraterrestrial landscapes, Vallejo has painted boldly fantastical visions of almost every major fantasy figure that we know and love . . . and showed us some stunning fantasies we’d never even dreamed up!

Celebrated French artist Paul Émile Chabas (1869–1937) was a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and a painter of nudes, portraits, and seascapes. They loved him in Europe; he first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1890, and received a number of awards and accolades over the next several decades. Sentiments elsewhere, however, were not as flattering, and reproductions of his most (in)famous painting, depicting a lakeside scene of an unclad young woman protecting her bare skin against a cool breeze in the autumn morning sun, caused controversy and scandal in the United States. A similar painting in a literal sense – a watery scene, its subject au naturel – Chabas’ darkly luminous glimpse of a naiad idling in a crystalline cove leans more into the fantastic, but the expression on her face is pure, jaded realism. ‘Calm down,’ she seems to say, ‘it’s just a bit of skin.’

Theodor Severin Kittelsen (1857– 1914) was a Norwegian artist, one of the most popular in Norway. Famous for his illustrations of fairy tales and legends, and eerie Nordic folklore, Kittelsen’s dreamlike canvases, rendered in muted tones depicting mountaintop troll magic down to sea ghosts deep in the bogs, reveal his melancholic longing for his countryside. During a stay in Munich, the artist is noted to have opined, ‘What appeals to me are the mysterious, romantic, and magnificent aspects of our scenery . . . it is becoming clearer and clearer to me what I have to do, and I have had more ideas – but I must, I must get home, otherwise it won’t work.’

Peerless illustrator of Russian folklore, Ivan Bilibin (1876–1942) was a graphic artist and stage/costume designer who was largely influenced by Art Nouveau and whose work is commonly associated with Russian fairy tales – to the extent that we could say his work very much defines our perceptions today of what Russian folklore art looks like. Seen here is Bilibin’s depiction of a waterdwelling demonic creature found in the mythology and lore of Eastern Europe – the Vodyanoi. A bloated, cranky frog-faced old water spirit, who, when angered, breaks dams, washes down water mills and drowns people and animals – the surest way to rile the Vodyanoi is to upset the natural balance of his watery habitat. Although according to legend, he can be appeased with a knob of butter. That seems fairly relatable.

Space constraints and the permissions and whatnot meant leaving behind some treasures. Here are a handful I wish I could have included!

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When I reached out to Asheville Raven & Crone about carrying signed copies of my book, The Art of the Occult, I had to laugh at myself. What was I going to say? “Hi, I’m an author! My book exists! Want some?” But they said yes, and now here I am, promoting myself as a “kinda sorta local author” to Asheville, which feels both ridiculous and perfectly accurate.

(Still waiting to hear back from Mr. K’s, by the way. Call me, Mr. K’s!)

The truth is, I’m not local to Asheville at all. I live hundreds of miles away and visit maybe once a year when I can manage it. But Mary – my sister – chose this place, built her whimsigoth paradise here among the artists and musicians and people still rebuilding after the hurricane. Through her, I’ve gotten to see how this town works, how it holds space for mystics and weirdos and creative people who’ve found their community.

When I thought about it, that’s what the “kinda sorta” qualifier really captures – the way belonging works when you’re a creative person. It’s not zip codes or voter registration. It’s recognizing something familiar in a place, even when you’re technically just passing through.

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For the past few years I was scared I was going to die in my sleep before I turned 49. I made it! (If I croak tonight, I will be very embarrassed about sharing this prematurely, and I will haunt you all about it forever.)

49 has always seemed a weird number to me. But then again, being a human alive in this world is an exceedingly weird thing, no matter how many years your bones have been clattering around on its surface. My bones and innards and flesh bits and all the rest of me have been around for 49 years today. What a thing. My only order of business is to continue keeping it weird.

I was planning on putting together a whole big blog post, not exactly birthday-related, but sharing some routines and rituals and practices and patterns and such that help me get through my day at this stage in life. And I am still planning on doing that! Just not today, I guess. It’s not even noon today, and I have done a lot of stuff, and I still have a lot of things on my list (nothing fun, really; it’s a work day), so I just don’t have time to write the thing, and I don’t want to stress about it. So I won’t! There’s always another day. Hopefully!

Instead, just a record of my face on this day, the day I turned 49 and lived to tell about it!

P.S. if you want to read about the perfume I wore today, I wrote a bit about it over on Patreon, and as a little gift from me to you, it’s free and you don’t even have to be a member to read it!

If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?

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What causes a piece of art to catch your eye? It will come as a surprise to no one that mine gravitates toward certain irresistible elements—jewelry that catches light in impossible ways, flowers rendered with botanical precision yet somehow more alive than their real counterparts, clothing that drapes with such exquisite attention to fabric’s weight and flow that you can almost hear the rustle of silk against skin. Perhaps most compelling to me is that particular quality of melancholy that hovers at the edges of beauty, reminding us of its inherent fragility.

And yet lately, I find myself drawn to Ernest Biéler’s paintings (1863-1948) for reasons that seem almost contrary to my usual tastes and which I am struggling to articulate. I suspect I will get there by the end of this writing. His approach reminds me of a perfectly balanced conversation—detailed enough to be fascinating but never so technical that it loses its soul. His canvases strike a balance I really appreciate right now: meticulous in execution yet warmly accessible in spirit, offering a quieter beauty that speaks in a lower register (less ostentation? I guess?) than my typical aesthetic/artsy fixations.

Born in Switzerland and trained in Paris, Biéler’s artistic journey took him from early Impressionist influences to the elegantly stylized approach he’s best known for. After discovering the Swiss mountain village of Savièse during a summer holiday, he found both his spiritual home and his most enduring subject matter.

My favorite of his works might be “The Leaf Gatherer”—a perfect embodiment of what I mean by a “balanced conversation” in art. The scene depicts a woman outdoors in autumn, gathering fallen leaves into a large white sheet. Dressed in a black top and striped sage green skirt with a blue checked apron over it (and sporting a jauntily vibrant neck kerchief), she bends to her task among rust-colored leaves.

Her neatly braided hair, the carefully placed rake on the ground, the discarded black hat nearby—every element feels precisely observed yet utterly natural. Behind her, houses with blue rooftops and trees in varying autumnal hues complete the scene with the same careful-casual balance. Nothing feels forced despite the clear technical mastery—like someone telling a complex story without constantly checking their notes.

This quality extends through all his work. Take Femme en bleu. Against a background of indigo flowers, each petal and leaf rendered with loving precision, stands a woman in a flowing dark blue dress with a fascinating geometric-patterned bodice. The pattern is exquisite but doesn’t feel fussy, while the flowing fabric below reminds me so much of modern lagenlook fashion—that distinctive style with its layered, architectural quality,  those loose-fitting, asymmetrical pieces that somehow manage to appear both relaxed and carefully structured, as if someone took your favorite linen pants and gave them secret philosophical meaning. Her calm expression is neither aloof nor overly inviting—she’s just there, existing in her blue dress, clearly not giving a fart about our opinions either way.

In Les Tournesols, sunflowers and hydrangeas create what looks at first like a perfectly straightforward garden scene—almost greeting card material in its serene composition. But there’s something about its perfection that creates a strange anxiety, like those Magic Eye pictures that were ubiquitous in every American mall in the 90s. You find yourself almost crossing your eyes, unfocusing your vision, half-expecting something else to emerge from the too-perfect arrangement of blooms. The colors are vivid but somehow contained, as if nature has been asked to behave itself for the portrait session.

Though his Swiss pastoral scenes brought him fame, Biéler’s Les Bacchantes reveals his fascination with mythological themes. Here, Dionysus’s followers spiral across the canvas in saffron and flame-colored dresses, creating a whirlwind of movement that somehow never descends into chaos. Even these women in religious frenzy keep to their marks—it’s divine madness with excellent choreography. I find something oddly satisfying about this: ecstasy that doesn’t spill over the edges. (Anyone else obsessed with the idea of the Bacchantes after reading The Secret History?)

L’eau mysterieuse shows women in richly patterned dresses gathered around a circular pond that looks too dark to reflect anything clearly. Are they doing goth laundry or communing with freaky water spirits? The scene doesn’t tell us, and I love that ambiguity. Their clothes—reds, yellows, and purples that practically vibrate against each other—look spectacular against the stone surroundings. The pond itself feels like a black hole at the center of the composition, pulling everything toward it. That low stone wall around it isn’t keeping anyone out; it’s practically daring you to step closer.

Not all of Biéler’s subjects exude dreamy mysticism. The three young women in his 1920 painting of village girls project an entirely different energy—a trio that looks ready to fuck you up, steal your lunch money, and then go milk a cow without breaking stride. Standing hand in hand on a dirt path, their traditional black jackets and differently colored skirts (purple, blue, and white) can’t disguise the intimidating solidarity of their formation. Their expressionless faces reveal nothing, but the way they stand together says everything. I’d cross the street if I saw them coming.

Les Sources presents yet another female collective, with seven women in flowing, translucent green robes gathered around what appears to be a sacred spring. The two central standing figures could be priestesses, while those kneeling at the water’s edge seem lost in whatever they’re seeing in the reflective surface. The fabric looks so light it might float away if anyone moved too suddenly, as if it’s been woven from the mystical pond itself—gossamer silk spun from mystical depths, still carrying the memory of ripples and reflections.

Les Feuilles mortes captures an autumn ritual amidst a carpet of golden leaves. A woman in a billowing orange dress raises her arms skyward like branches reaching for light, while earth-toned figures spiral around her in a hypnotic dance. The fallen leaves beneath them seem to tremble with their own secret movements, completing this autumnal dream sequence—beautiful, precise, but slightly uncanny.

You know how sometimes you want ball gowns and castles and a dragon’s hoard of jewels—maximalism dialed up to eleven with the knob broken off? And other times you just want some real simple-life cottagecore shit? I have a lot of stuff. I LOVE my beautiful things. But sometimes I dream of running away into the wilderness and leaving the burden of all that stuff behind. I think Biéler’s art scratches that itch for me.

I just today read these lines from Mary Oliver’s poem, and they resonated profoundly:

Perhaps that’s what draws me to Biéler’s work right now—these visions of women gathering leaves, tending ponds, dancing in forests. Women who appear weightless with their lack of possessions, yet somehow more present because of it. Not that I’m about to set fire to my collections (let’s not get carried away), but there’s something about these paintings that speaks to that part of me that occasionally yearns to know what it might feel like to fly. (But I might get held fast by the gravity of my lagenlook layers.)

If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?

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I heard a YouTuber quote Mel Robbins a few years ago: “If you want to change your life, just start acting like the person you want to become. I’m not kidding…it’s called ‘Behavioral Activation Therapy.’ The more you ACT like the person you want to become (even when you don’t feel like that person yet), the quicker you become them.” I still don’t know who Mel Robbins is, but I don’t know that I need to or that I care!

I was thinking about this in January when I had my annual reading with Sister Temperance Tarot, and I remember saying something like “I’d love to be the kind of person who…” and then following up with “I mean, all I have to do is just…be that person, right??” I continue thinking about it on a daily basis, and it feels like some kind of mental alchemy—the notion that embodying behaviors might transform us from the outside in, rather than requiring inner transformation first. Like a strange ritual where donning the mask eventually reshapes the face beneath it. That we become what we repeatedly do, not what we dream of becoming while scrolling through Instagram at 2am, bathed in the pale blue light of infinite possibilities.

The phrase “I’d like to be the kind of person who…” floats through my mind with alarming frequency. Sometimes while brushing my teeth, those little pre-threaded floss picks tucked under the sink muttering about me judgmentally. Sometimes, while pouring a Diet Coke over copious amounts of cracked ice, even as I imagine, instead a delicate cup of Earl Grey loose-leaf tea, hot. Sometimes, while canceling plans with a friend I genuinely want to see, not because I want to stay on the couch, but because I get caught up in all the anxiety that goes into seeing them. Is there parking where I’m going? What if I can’t hold up my end of the conversation? The effort suddenly seems insurmountable.

So here’s my running list of people I’d like to be…

The Everyday Aspirations. The kind of person who…

• “…flosses every day.” I have started doing this after a lifetime of not. I am 8 days in, and my gums no longer look like they’re auditioning for a horror film when I do it.
• “…wakes up at 5am to walk 4-5 times a week.” I do this 1-2 times, if at all. I love waking up early and I love walking, but somehow detest the act of putting on exercise clothes and actually leaving the house for this specific purpose.
• “…starts incorporating yoga into their routine for flexibility.” I don’t need to do a headstand or twist myself into a pretzel. I just want to be able to squat at all with my bad knees.
• “…cares enough about something to learn about it before diving in.” I write about perfumes and fashion based on feeling rather than facts. There’s something both liberating and terrifying about this approach—knowing I’m sharing pure impressions rather than expert analysis. But perhaps there’s a world between these extremes I haven’t explored yet.
• “…keeps better touch with friends and family.” I can spend three hours looking at strangers’ vacation photos, but I can’t manage a ten-minute phone call to someone I actually love.
• “…would prefer a cup of tea over a diet coke, a scone or some shit rather than Cheetos; something nice instead of something garbagey.” There’s a certain elegance in choosing the thing that asks more of you—the steeping, the waiting, the ritual of it. The Diet Coke is immediate, thoughtless. (But so delicious and caustic and crispy!) The tea suggests a life more deliberately lived, even if that deliberateness and mindfulness and what have you makes me roll my eyes at myself sometimes.

The Self-Growth Aspirations. The kind of person who…

• “…paints watercolor flowers and creates detailed still lifes of jewelry boxes.” I want to make visual art, but I’m terrified of being bad at it. I knit, but always from someone else’s pattern. I write constantly—for this blog and lots of other places—but writing doesn’t feel like art to me. It’s just something I can’t not do.
• “…can confidently belt out a karaoke tune.” Or be brave enough to do it at all. I don’t even set foot in karaoke places to begin with.
• “…speaks up in difficult conversations.” When moral toughness is required. When someone needs to be stood up to. When grief and condolences need to be expressed. I fear these moments of necessary confrontation and emotional honesty.
• “…watches Ingmar Bergman films.” And other directors that celebrities wax poetic about when visiting the Criterion Closet—Tarkovsky, Kurosawa, Ozu. What kind of person watches these films? Someone more patient than me, certainly. Someone who doesn’t check their phone every seven minutes. Someone who appreciates the profound beauty of a static shot lasting longer than the time it takes to scroll past ten Instagram posts.
• “…enjoys the things they already own.” It’s not that I need to stop wanting more—I probably never will. But I have finite time and tons of stuff already. Books unread, perfumes unsprayed, clothes unworn. I need to savor what I already possess instead of constantly accumulating more.

The Wishful Aspirations. The kind of person who…

• “…who travels.” Without the anxiety about getting to the airport, through the airport, and all the logistics that seem to overwhelm me. The actual packing part is fine—carelessly done at the last minute.
• “…who is more clever and interesting in social situations.” Rather than barely opening my mouth, paralyzed by that fear that reminds me of the quote: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”
• “…who finally lives in Portland, in their own arts and crafts house.” With built-in bookshelves and those charming little reading nooks in the Pacific Northwest. This despite familial obligations tying us to this area—aging parents and siblings who would deliver guilt trips if we moved across the country.

What if, as Robbins suggests, we’ve been approaching transformation backward all this time? We treat motivation like some rare orchid that must bloom naturally before we can take action. We wait for that perfect crystalline moment of readiness, of feeling aligned with our aspirations, before we make a move.

Perhaps becoming the person we want to be isn’t about waiting for inner transformation. Maybe it’s about small, even mechanical actions, repeated until they form grooves in our lives, paths of least resistance that eventually feel natural. I read somewhere that you should remove the obstacles that make the thing you want to do harder. Perhaps I should literally sleep in my exercise clothes if I want to be the kind of person who walks at 5am.

These selves we aspire to—the daily flosser, the early riser, the brave conversationalist—they aren’t separate entities waiting to replace us. They’re already here, fragments and possibilities tucked within our contradictions. We contain multitudes—practical selves, aspirational selves, wishful selves—all shifting and reshaping as we reach toward what we might become.

All these aspirational selves feel like mirages on a horizon of possibility. When I reach for them and come up short, I wonder if it’s the reaching itself that matters. The tension between who I am and who I’d like to be creates a strange, electric space—a liminal territory where what might be and what cannot be somehow coexist. It’s a realm tingling with impossible probabilities, opportunities, eventualities, but also shimmering with its own wildly improbable magic. Maybe we are all just collections of attempted gestures toward some imagined ideal, forever falling short but beautiful in the attempt. Or maybe we’re just hopeful losers? But we keep trying? I hope?

What versions of yourself linger just beyond your reach? And what small, seemingly insignificant action might begin to call them into being?

If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?

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I’m obsessed with Cordelia Cupp –and her outfit– on The Residence. The whole ensemble speaks to my love of clothes that somehow exist outside of time – the riding jacket with leather patches, the Fair Isle sweater vest, those perfectly balanced trousers that are neither too slouchy nor too crisp.

It’s not that the clothes themselves are strange; they’re actually deeply practical and beautifully made. But there’s something almost subversively old-fashioned about them in the context of the White House’s contemporary glamour. They’re clothes that prioritize function over fashion, durability over trends. I half-expect to find them in some vintage shop with a mysterious story attached, or in my grandmother’s cedar chest, alongside hiking boots still caked with mud from adventures I never got to hear about.

I love how she moves through the White House completely unconcerned about standing out. She arrives in “a world where how she looked was going to look completely different from everybody else,” and doesn’t seem to give it a second thought. The pants especially. How do they fall just so? I want pants like that – practical enough for crouching to observe birds or suspects, but with enough structure to suggest competence.

I especially appreciate how every bit of her appearance feels deliberate yet completely unprecious. Her leather satchel looks lived-in but purposeful. And her shoes – sturdy, practical hiking sneakers ready for whatever terrain her investigations might lead her across. And those socks with their subtle stripes peeking out between pants and shoes – a tiny touch of whimsy in an otherwise utterly practical outfit.

Her style borders on dandified but it’s not full of vanity. There’s a thoughtfulness to each piece that seems rooted in function rather than fashion. It’s timeless in a way that feels almost jarring amid the White House formality – not because the clothes themselves are strange, but because nobody dresses with such honest practicality anymore, especially not in settings where appearance typically trumps comfort and utility.

If you are wondering about the specifics of the outfit, here is what I have found out…

• Banana Republic Brown Wool Riding Jacket with leather patches
• Polo Ralph Lauren Brown V-Neck Fair Isle Sweater Vest
• Keen Brown Hiking Sneakers
• Bed Stu Dark Brown Leather Satchel
• Socks??? A mystery!

The title of this post is one of those perfect lines Cordelia delivers with such understated precision. Her humor is written so wonderfully- she’s not trying lighten the mood or entertain, she’s stating observations with remarkable clarity. Throughout the series, her quiet asides often contain more insight than entire monologues from other characters.

There’s something about Cordelia that’s strangely charming despite her eccentricities. Unlike Sherlock Holmes, who can come across as a brilliant asshole, she seems so much more human. She’s methodical and meticulous, but her brilliance feels like it comes from somewhere deeper, more grounded.

I can’t imagine she wears perfume, but if I were to create an imaginary fragrance for her, it wouldn’t be composed of specific notes so much as atmospheres: the quiet scrape of feet over limestone outcroppings, mist rising from forest pools at dawn, wind threading through ancient hawthorns, leaf-litter rustling with small creatures, wild mint glimpsed along a trail, the mineral tang of distant rain clouds gathering over a bird sanctuary, the cool breath of air from a deep ravine where raptors circle.

Are you watching The Residence? Are you obsessed with Cordelia’s style too? Those pants, right??

P.S. do you have a favorite character and is it Sheila???

If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?

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Celine Night Clubbing (I actually wrote this last month and forgot to include it, le whoopsie) You might be wondering how a sample of something called Nightclubbing ever even came to be in my possession, but for whatever reason, I have been weirdly intrigued by the idea of it, and serendipitously, an Instagram friend generously offered to send me a sample, so here we are! As a wallflower/homebody, the idea of nightclubbing in any form gives me the willies. And yet, I have somehow found myself on numerous occasions doing a nightclubbing-type thing. This is 100% because I am a people-pleaser and rather than rocking the boat, I just go along with the thing people want to do. When I find myself in these situations, I remind myself that, as a human, it’s good to have “experiences,” and I suppose I go into a bit of a dissociative/fugue state where I am looking at everything through rose-colored glasses, even while things are still presently happening. I call it rose-colored glasses, but I don’t know if that’s quite it. It’s more like “what are the good and lovely things about this unsavory situation that I can mine later for whenI inevitably write about it?” I smell that when I smell this perfume.

It calls to mind an album review I wrote several years ago for HÆLOS’ “Full Circle” – waxing poetic about that surreal stretch at the end of an evening when you’re in the cramped backseat of a car, forehead resting against cool glass, watching palm trees transform into celestial giants as streetlights become stars fading at the edges of your vision. Nightclubbing captures that moment when a beautiful night suddenly crosses to the other side of too late, triggering a nostalgic, aching void that’s perpetually lurking at your experience’s periphery. This is quiet aftermath after doing the thing, whatever the thing is, and it’s also the space between euphoria and melancholy where you’re sitting still, internalizing feelings you don’t yet fully comprehend but somehow recognize you will one day know all too well. It evokes that compulsion to desperately reach for connection in darkness, just to assure yourself that you are okay.

Beneath all this emotional complexity, Nightclubbing ultimately settles into a warm, sandalwood vanilla skin scent – vanilla as the throbbing heartbeat of a hand in your own when you’re no longer alone in the dark, the steady gorgeous thrum of human connection when the music has faded but its echo remains imprinted on your skin, a haunting reminder of the night’s ghostly tenderness.

…however.

That was upon my first sniff. It left me wildly feeling …feelings. Of some sort? It made me want to relisten to that album a thousand times, which I think I have done just in the past week alone. But sadly I can’t seem to recapture the experience of that first wearing of Nightclubbing. Now, every time I spritz it, it smells like a vanilla sandalwood air freshener from Bath and Body Works that one of my sisters uses all over her house, which doesn’t smell bad, but I also associate it with litter boxes that desperately need changing, so also..it kinda doesn’t smell great.

Sigh. The vagaries of fragrance!

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab x Haute Macabre Persephone’s Ascent A Persephone-inspired composition, minus the pomegranate! How incredibly marvelous, I love it already. Instead, a pale floral incense with a core of bleak woods. The release of a bitter, burning, frozen heart. A bleeding fist breaking violently through the earth, clutching a soft bouquet of pallid blooms. A blackbird’s shadow in the snow. A weeping spider biting through its tears. A spill of grief transmuted through the incubation of dreams. An exhalation of fading winter memories. A weary spirit in two halves, the beauty of how in escape you kept both.   A wrist ringed with the ghost of spring blossoms you’ll never smell. All the springs before you yet.

Diptyque Orphéon Cedar soda with juniper bitters. Water drawn from a limestone well surrounded by briar and bramble, thicket and thorn. Aerated ice chips that shatter between molars. A single cypress cone crushed between fingers. Cigarette ash that never quite made it to the tray. The condensation ring left on wood that won’t ever completely fade. Cold metal keys pressed against warm lips. The sharp intake of breath when the cosmic chords of Alice Coltrane’s harp arpeggios cascade through space, suspending time. Morning sky like a scrim of quartz; a little light, just enough to see by.

Serviette Frisson D’Hiver A shriek, a howl, a prolonged tee hee hee hee; a pause, a champagne hiccup, and everything shatters. A tinkling cackle pealing and slivering like weaponized bells, crystal blades that split and splinter the night. A lake that holds more stars than the sky ever dreamed of possessing – celestial sparklers, myriad, multiplying before your feet, even as your eyes glance upward noting their absence in the sky. What lake reflects what cannot be seen? What ghost swallows its own echo before sound can escape? Scent as the most terrifying Sailor Moon villain who never existed: pale as bone, bright as a blade, each breath a shard of story where you are nothing more than a footnote. Pitliess – all razor citrus and winter’s exposed nerve. Each droplet a fragment flung from some terrible, glittering precipice. Mercy drowned long before you arrived. More stars than sky, more reflection than reality. You’re not getting out of this alive.

Seance Perfumes Love And Eternal Darkness Imagine Nosferatu as a gentle collector of flower meanings, his spindly clawed fingers tracing the delicate lines of rare Victorian botanical guides. Each pressed bloom becomes a document of human transience – a memento of lives that bloom and fade, capturing moments more complex and fleeting than mere survival, than markers of age. In this herbal sanctuary, he studies the intricate ways humans forge connection: a language of touch, memory, and fugitive emotion that exists far beyond the physical realm of blood. His collection traces the trembling edges of human vulnerability – how a single flower can hold entire histories of love, loss, and longing, each petal a whispered secret of a life about to vanish. A predatory creature probing sensitivity and frailty, an immortal examining ephemera. Here, a bouquet takes shape: pale lilacs unfurl their powdery breath, soft as pillowy sleep, nestled against sprigs of lavender heavy with twilight, white jasmine trailing memories like pale ribbons of moonlight, and a single sprig of forget-me-not – a promise so delicate it might dissolve at a whisper. Each flower carries the same hushed message: I will visit you in dreams.

Aftelier Bergamoss Sweet grass crushed beneath wriggling toes burrowing into honeyed earth, the loamy green must of spring’s waking breath, Neko Case singing “maybe sparrow” plaintive at dawn in a golden grain of light-fall, wildflower valleys thrumming slow-footed with moss, burnished dew pearling, sun-soaked syrup suspended on unfurling ferns.

Chanel No. 19 reminds me of finding the perfect vintage vanity set at an estate sale—immaculate crystal bottles and silver-backed brushes arranged just so—but when you lean closer, you notice someone has etched a razor-sharp critic’s observation into the mirror’s edge. It’s not vandalism exactly, but a deliberate counterpoint to all that polish.

The fragrance carries itself with immaculate poise but sidesteps the accommodating softness we often expect from classic perfumery. Intensely sharp and dry and green, with an earthy, rootsy powderiness that feels pulled from some garden’s underground mysteries. There’s an acrid verdancy about it that reminds me of stumbling across a line from a Margaret Atwood poem or a Patti Smith lyric etched into pristine bathroom tile – the juxtaposition feels ridiculous considering we’re talking about a Chanel perfume, but that’s genuinely how it makes me feel. Alongside this runs what I can only describe as a leathery, grassy woodiness that makes me think of expensive boots walking purposefully through wild gardens.

That sour metallic tang and bitter effervescence feels unmistakably vintage to me, though I couldn’t tell you exactly why. But what keeps drawing me back isn’t just this quality—it’s how the scent seems to subvert its own refined elegance with what I can only call a punky funk. Like costume jewelry that’s outlived its original owner—slightly tarnished, impossibly elegant, carrying what feels like decades of stories. The fragrance exists in what I experience as a kind of gloomy luminosity, like sunlight filtering through grimy stained glass onto marble floors—both austere and achingly tender at once. It shifts on skin throughout the day, revealing facets that appear and recede like carefully guarded confidences. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of moss-covered stone steps leading to a garden where everything useful grows—medicinal herbs, not decorative flowers. Other times, it morphs into something mineral and cool, like running your fingers along marble that’s been sitting in shadow. Its most fascinating moments come when warmth breaks through all that greenness—not a golden warmth, but something more like the heat signature of intellectual fervor, the temperature of thoughts running too quick and deep to share casually.

A few extras: Over at Patreon, I share Six Perfumes For A Weekend Jaunt and A Peek At My Sister’s Perfume Shelf and over on Instagram I was featured in Eau La La by Genevieve’s most excellent Shelfie Sunday!

If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?

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Eau La La by Genevieve very kindly featured me on her most excellent and fun Shelfie Sunday Instagram Series and I had a blast waxing extremely, purple-y poetic and at great length (because this is the only way I know how hehehe) about my lifelong fascination with fragrance and perfume and my 20+ years of collecting.

Here’s a brief snippet…

“In a world trapped in the claustrophobic confines of hideous reality, perfume is the crack that lets the light in – an expansive, boundless playground of the imaginary and surreal. It may only be a bit of psychic gossamer, elusive as poetry sculpted in mist, but it lets you slip through the world in a veil of elegance or a melancholy cloud of romantic longing, moving you to beauty that transcends the visual and tangible. A perfume might carry me to arid deserts with binary moons or moonlit forests where witches dwell in chicken-legged huts – places only imagination can conjure but scent somehow manifests.”

You absolutely must visit her account and peep at how she so beautifully pieced all my words and imagery together! Read more here!

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As Taurus season unfolds its sensual, earthy embrace, I am once again drawn to the pale, hazy feminine worlds of Marie Laurencin, an artist whose work “Les Amazones” I featured in my 2023 book, The Art of Fantasy: A Visual Sourcebook of All That is Unreal (p. 224 if you’re seeking it in your copy at home!) Though Laurencin herself was born under Scorpio’s intense gaze (on Halloween, no less), there’s something undeniably Taurean about her artistic sensibilities that speaks to my bull-headed heart – that stubborn insistence on surrounding oneself with pillowy softness while simultaneously maintaining firm boundaries about what (and who) gets excluded from your carefully curated paradise.

Born in 1883 in Paris, Laurencin became a central figure in the artistic avant-garde of early 1900s Paris, moving in circles dominated by Picasso and the Cubists. Yet she would later declare that “Cubism has poisoned three years of my life, preventing me from doing any work… As long as I was influenced by the great men who surrounded me I could do nothing.” A statement delivered, one imagines, with the perfect blend of Parisian ennui and withering side-eye.

Living in exile in Spain during the First World War, far from the clubby Parisian scene, Laurencin began to find her own voice. By the time she returned to her native city in 1921, she had traded sharp noses and geometric planes for a distinctly feminine, fantastical aesthetic. Her palette pared back to pinks, light grays, and blues—macaron tints that taste of rosewater and dry champagne. Her prose poem “Le calmant,” published in 1917, speaks to her melancholic state during this exile: “More than bored/Sad/More than sad/Unhappy… More than exiled/Dead/More than dead/Forgotten.” The artistic equivalent of that dog surrounded by flames: “This is fine,” it announces, fur already smoldering.

“Why should I paint dead fish, onions and beer glasses? Girls are so much prettier,” Laurencin once remarked, a sentiment that captures her devotion to beauty—a quintessentially Taurean value. Like the bull’s stubborn appreciation for sensual pleasures, Laurencin refused to compromise her vision, creating an alternate reality governed by feminine principles.

Laurencin’s signature style features a diaphanous, gauzy transparency where everything seems to float. Feminine figures with wide-set eyes and hollow gazes drift through creamy pastel landscapes. Her painted worlds sound like strings played with too-gentle fingers, taste like macaron shells that shatter at first bite then melt into something unexpectedly complex—sweetness laced with bitter almond, a confection that offers pleasantries while quietly damning you to hell for a minor transgression that they have never forgotten (le whoopsie, that’s my Taurus showing).

By banishing men from her canvases, Laurencin performed a kind of elegant exorcism, replacing them with something infinitely more interesting (and really, isn’t anything more interesting than a man?). When adapting traditional scenes of courtship and romantic intrigue, she simply excised all male figures, leaving only women and animals in her gossamer tableaux. Male collectors and critics could view her work as delightfully feminine, while her friends from Natalie Clifford Barney’s salons recognized the coded Sapphic paradise she was weaving, a secret garden where women could commune and flourish without explanation or apology.

This duality feels particularly resonant during Taurus season, when we oscillate between the practical concerns of the material world and our deeper yearnings for beauty. Laurencin understood this tension. Her commercially savvy approach (200 promotional posters papering Paris’s wealthy neighborhoods for her 1921 solo show!) funded her creation of private worlds—intimate enclaves, silken sanctuaries where the male gaze had no purchase.

As I sit with her dreamy imagery now, I imagine them as perfumes—complex scents with hidden depths. Perhaps something that opens with cool green narcissus and pale violet, before revealing a heart of ghostly iris and crushed peony petals preserved between the pages of love letters. The base notes would be surprisingly earthy: ambergris washed ashore after a storm, splintered antique wooden picture frames, and a thread of musk that wraps around your wrist like a stray lover’s hair.

I return to the petal-soft splendor of Laurencin’s feminine realms when I need reminding that beauty isn’t frivolous, but subversive, that creating your own reality is sometimes the only reasonable response to an unreasonable world. In this Taurus season, let us be like Laurencin: stubborn in our devotion to beauty, and wickedly clever in how we share it with those who confuse brutalism with truth, those who mistake “great men” for necessary influences, those who demand dead fish, beer glasses, and onions.

If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?

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So they stripped out all the timber
And they leveled all the land
And they drilled and dynamited
’til they blew the mountains in
I tore down my old homeplace
And I dug up Daddy’s grave
And I relocated Momma to 14 miles away
-“Half Mile Down,” Old Crow Medicine Show

I took a quick trip to Asheville to visit my sister, Mary, whom I hadn’t seen since two Thanksgivings ago. My brother-in-law thought I might like to see Lake Watauga, about which he told me that the singer at the Evening of Appalachian Murder Ballads show said, “Lake Watauga — it’s haunted, y’all.”

I guess the story is that Lake Watauga is a drowned memory, a landscape of loss where an entire town lies silent beneath cold waters. What was once a living community now rests 140 feet underwater, its streets and homes swallowed by concrete and bureaucracy. Families were uprooted, graves relocated, generations of history erased—all to tame a river and build a dam.

When I thought about what such a place might be like, I imagined I could hear the town’s last breath—dead houses creaking, empty windows staring up from the dark, waiting. But in truth, the lake was breathtaking—the clearest water I’d ever seen, so transparent it seemed to hold no secrets at all. I could have easily sunk into those haunting thoughts, let my mind drift with the ghosts beneath the surface. Instead, there I was—being present and appreciative and happy to be alive and living in the moment and all that jazz.

P.S. those boots are the Dr. Martens Chelsea boots and they are so comfortable and I love them so much.

I am not the most efficient or practical packer of travel bags, but I always smell real good. If you’re curious about my perfume picks, I wrote about it on Patreon. The tote, if you’re interested was part of a bundle when Severin Films did a thing for the expanded edition of Kier-La Janisse’s excellent book, House of Psychotic Women. This was sometime last year so it’s no longer available, but you can still get a boxed set of some of the films mentioned in the book!

And re: perfumes, I shared a peek at my sister’s perfume collection over on Patreon, too.

Even more peeks! Here is a little gallery where the dream of the celestial-goth-Pyramid Catalogue -90s is alive at my sister’s home, and the Fairy Wonderland room lives in infamy eternally. On the wall above the guest bed are some artists that you will no doubt recognize! I see Caitlin McCarthy there, a little Nona Limmen print, and, of course, that enormous Waterhouse artwork on both the main wall and the one next to it. There are a few prints by JMW Chrzanoska that we had in our childhood home, and there’s a glamour shot of our mother in a turban! And there’s me, with long dark hair and a hat, from one of our visits to Cassadaga.

While my own bookcases are a riotous jumble of piles and stacks and tchotchkes strewn willy-nilly, my sister’s are meticulously curated and organized. And yes, there are several empty picture frames on those shelves. She’s the kind who spies the perfect frame and will search for the perfect piece of art to display in it, whereas I collect the art first and… never get around to framing it.

And look at that whimsigoth bathroom! Gosh. Spending time in Mary’s always leaves me feeling equally overwhelmed and inspired.

During this trip I also:

◈ Rediscovered my deep love for Neko Case’s Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
◈ Found a novelty claw clip shaped like a stack of Pyrex bowls (you can get it here)
◈ Ate the most delicious sandwich of focaccia, pesto, burrata and charred broccolini at Flour Sandwich Shop. I am absolutely going to recreate this.
◈ Took in an impromptu show at the Grey Eagle and sat next to Moth Man for a spell. La Luz was fantastic.
◈ Saw lots of devastation from last year’s hurricane. It was brutal. I found myself frequently on the verge of tears and completely lost it when my sister started talking about the antique shops full of memories that washed away, and “all the little trinkets floating downstream.” It is still so rough up there.

If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?

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