Dearest Lucy,
I appreciate so your kind thought to invite my participation in your perfume project Clarimonde! And how timely!
I did as you said and ordered the book My Fantoms from the library and quickly read the short story The Priest. Having read the story through only once and not many times as I would have liked it gave me a rather more sketchy impression that perhaps served to imbue my personal projections into my perceptions such as they are!
My first group of thoughts around the story were rather literal, as I told you on the phone. My most loving Aunt and God Mother was a nun for 17 years and so the stories from that time in her life impressed me immensely in their intensity of tragic wistfulness. I do understand the desire for Oneness with one’s chosen religion, if one has one, and in my childish imagination- at 7 years of age I do remember very well profound religious feelings. I also recall grave doubt, even at such an early age, of the renunciation of sexual pleasure.
Dear Lucy, would you find me very naughty to admit I had desires to become a witch at only 7 years of age? The power of potions and magic intrigued me so! But again… in my childish mind I had the impression that Witches would not make attractive marriages so… that became the stopping point of my fantasy!
Whether Nun (the power of the Church) or Witch (the power of magical potions), these ambitions seemed so devoid of sensual pleasure and beauty they were both dismissed from my ambitions (not without some regret). My sister and I used to play a game of “which would you rather be, the most beautiful in the world, or the most clever?” Beauty always won, but it was never an easy choice and always came with the remorse of knowing, intuitively, the power that would come from ultimate knowledge.
Can one have both Dear Lucy? Can one know oneself so deeply as to … have the clarity of communication between one’s unconscious and conscious mind that…. the third part of the triangle… the Divine becomes fully knowable to one? Is that what they call enlightenment? Is enlightenment bringing fully to the light the darkest, the most unknown.. nay unknowable parts of the self?
What of this crossroads of the LOVERS, the Number 6 Arcana of the Tarot? What is the deeper meaning of the paths of good and evil? If I learn not myself, if I never connect my conscious with my unconscious and make between them a dialog intelligible then what? Am I doomed to the same fate as Romauld? Will my unconscious literally cannibalize my life, will it drain my vitality to the point that I become a ghost, my own Vampire?
Is that the knowledge of good and evil? That the self is ALL? Dear Lucy! Never did knowing oneself seem so critical! I am tortured that in my mid-life a crossroads appears before me as plain as on Full Moon Night… and the truth is.. I know not which way to turn!
I think that if there an answer be … quietude and contemplation will surely reveal it!
Your friend in quest,
Monica
Editors Note: Clarimonde is a Perfume Project with Lucy Raubertas Indieperfumes.
This is an ongoing project… we will update with posts and project perfumes as they arrive!
Clarimonde Part 1 Indieperfumes
Clarimonde Part 2 Indieperfumes
“La Morte Amoureuse” is a short story by written by Théophile Gautier and was published in La Chronique de Paris in 1836. It tells the story of a priest named Romuald who falls in love with Clarimonde, a beautiful woman who turns out to be a vampire.
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- The Golden Nose and Oud Luban…Mandy Aftel’s Fragrant Interpretation of the Clarimonde Story… Dear Sister Dearest Mandy, I feel like you have passed...
- Paradise Lost Dawn Spencer Hurwitz for the Clarimonde Project Bronzino painting Perfumer Dawn Spencer Hurwitz’s Words: Paradise Lost {...
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Dear Monica!
I so appreciate your deep and thoughtful response to the story. This story of Clarimonde has an odd power and resonance for me. It moves me so deeply I almost cannot comprehend how much except by reading it over and over. The interpretations of sensitive others such as yourself, and the perfumes being made, are real yet still ethereal clarifications and the meanings multiply. That is the sign of mythic and creative power, when a story reflects itself in self-projections and calls to memory, as perfume does too.
Yes, I also have that crossroads right before me, and that may be why this story leapt out at me. As we have said to each other, there is both, the priest and Clarimonde, inside me. They also seem like the the two halves of the the anima and animus people speak of. There is the quest of finding your true soul mate who completes you, or perhaps lives within you already, except that most of the time one is sleeping while the other is awake.
The lip stains you sent me with the sacred scents of myrrh and incense reference in a physical way the memories I have of Mass very early in the morning before Catholic school as a young child. Married to comfort through their pure and beneficial materials of shea butter and herbs, they are an ornament to adorn the body and heighten facial expression.
I was always fascinated by the nuns’ full habits which they still wore when I went to Catholic school. They framed the face in a way that really spoke to me, but it was always a little frightened by the strictness that demanded they be so bare of any adornment. This was in a time when all women wore at least lipstick, when Elizabeth Taylor was considered the most beautiful woman in the world. Nuns were the only females I saw at that young age who did not participate in that voluptuous sense of self beautification.
Your fragrant lip stains are beautiful and I love the choice between the carmine and the violet! I will write further on them and the perfume you sent me on my post this time…
XXOO
Lucy/indieperfumes