Sundays, I always go for my half marathon jogging, not really ambitiously running for any time goal, but happily enjoying the fact that it still works and that I’ll get it done.  In the second part of the run, the way the mind works sort of changes; maybe it is oxygen, maybe it is endorphins and other hormones: It gets sharper. During these last miles, I usually think about all that happened the last few days, mails that I got or did not, articles and posts that I read or did not, invitations that I got and did not answer, perfumes that I did not create and perfumes that I want to create. And I cut through most of these thoughts with a icecold knife.

Like me telling the sales rep in the Zurich department store’s niche hacienda what I really think about art in perfumery and why I could not care less about art in perfumery these days. Or me talking to a couple of trolls out there, cutting their egos down to the size of their brains.

You get the idea: Towards the end of the jogging you get a bit bitter, also with yourself.

Thus, as I mostly do not like what I have created during the week, I come up with plans to do better: Get a better hyacinth picture done that pays real tribute to what the flower is all about.

Or redoing the hyacinth base because it is not what I really wanted. Actually, this I did Saturday. I simplified, switched the balance of a couple of ingredients and went brave with benzyl acetate. Benzyl acetate means: Sweet! Heady! Alarms ringing! Crazy flower!

The base I was talking about last week missed the point. Missed my point. Not that the base is not good. Trust me: It could easily be bottled, and sold under big  letters declaring this perfume as an art. So you see: I am so tired of perfume as art; I guess this is my starting point for a scented week with a lot of joy and smiles ahead: Forget about perfume as an art, don’t look for it in department stores, it will never make it there,  but look out for joy, here and there. Not more not less.

Towards the very end of the run, you’re meeting paradise. All the troubles seem gone, and there is the happy little post-it note in your brain telling you that it is all over son. And that the new hyacinth base might be alright in the end.