10,000 Drawings

Daily Angst: Meet and Sniff

From the somewhat itty-bitty notebook: A (very) quick sketch of Sunday's gathering

Yesterday, after getting lost in Queens, I at last made it to a birthday celebration/meet-n-sniff gathering of BPAL fans in NYC, held at the Queens Center mall LUSH store and the birthday bpal-er's apartment. BPAL is Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume oils, run by a lady named Beth. There were literally hundreds of sample vials ("imps") and bottles to sniff, including rare, discontinued oils, oils that had been aged to perfection, and some scents from other companies. We spent more time inhaling oils than celebrating Kathy's birthday, but we did remember to toast the hostess, who prepared a yummy spread.

I brought my little painted star-shaped boxes for the hostess to choose from, and someone else gave a beautiful box with a peacock design, painted in my favourite shade of iridescent blue—don't ask me why, but that shade of blue has always made my neurons perk up. Bottles and imps were swapped and given away, and I tried very, very hard to get over my obsessive hoarding of scents. I split up my matched set of Hymn to Pan imps (because I believe in spreading Panic around), gave away some scents I know I'll never wear, and decanted (measured out from 5ml bottles into an imps) some Litha (a honey-mead scent) and Montressor (smells just like sealing an ex-friend into a crypt). One small step toward breaking up the hoard.

I did generate lots of personal angst fretting about how goofy and weird I get in public gatherings. Ah well. Practice will make perfect.