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more snow and silver wrapping paper

Jogging in winter land yesterday was wonderful. The snow stayed on every fine twig and there was something magical in the forest where I usually run. Less magical was downtown on Saturday: Crowds shopping. Lots of them. Too many.

I was downtown with the W.-factor (do not ask me why I felt to do so on Saturday!) because I had this urge to get something warm to wear, cuddly with a high feels good factor. Playing with roses and ambra over the weekend was not good enough: I wanted soft wool and 100% coziness. Thus, we fought our way through crowds, and could not help observing all these kits: Perfume and soap. Perfume and body lotion. Perfume and minis. Perfume and and and…

“Look at this!”, I said, slightly annoyed because I do not offer a kit. Well, not true: I offer the discovery set.  Thus, I got my pullover, and  went into “how to offer gift wrapping service and do we really want to offer it?”- thinking mode, extending all the way into my Sunday jog.

There, I was trying to come up with axes and a proper picture for the fire tree that I want to start playing with, discussing this together with Mandy in our open letters series again. But somehow, with all the snow around me, I did not get very far with the fire tree. hmm…

But I learned a bit more on art over the weekend and continued worrying there: I read an article in the NYtimes online about gaming and how it changes, on the phone, late Saturday (I WANT an ipad…) and the article by Seth Schiesel referred to “Art as Experience,” by John Dewey’s  work on the philosophy of art.

There I read “art exists not as artifact but as we engage with it”. OK.  This is soooo true, especially for perfumes,  I thought and copied the article and sent it by e-mail in order not to forget it. The concept of a perfume being a piece of art only makes sense in the context of actually being smelled, ideally on skin, and in a serious engagement of the senses. But then, I wondered, perfumes as pieces of art cease to exist if nobody wears them.

And then, with all the changes during the “lifetime” of a perfume like [add the name of perfume here that got its formula changed to render it beyond recognition] when does it cease to be a  piece of art?

And then, who cares? Folks buying the perfume with body lotion kit probably won’t.

“We cannot do everything!”, the W.-factor said to me weening about not offering soaps and stuff. “Yes”, I admitted,” but I want to. ” …at least a gift wrap option! And then we went shopping for silver wrapping paper.

And towards the end of my jogging I was worrying less about my scented objects being art to engage with but more about my latest take of the rose.