Guerlain's Mitsouko, (1919), top notes of Chypre, base notes of oakmoss, and in between a lingering powdery sweetness that makes you smell like a very rich old woman.  Which is not at all a bad thing.  Diaghilev's favorite perfume, Nicky Haslam's friend Simon Fleet had bottles of it in his bathroom at the Gothic Box. 

Acqua di Parma's Colonia (1916), is a classic, popular with royalty and celebrities and worn by both Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, or so I've been told; Jo Malone's Vetiver is wonderfully fresh for summer, and my winter favorite is Serge Lutens' Ambre Sultan (1993) which I first encountered on a handsome young Frenchman and subsequently tracked down to the Shiseido boutique in Paris, in the Palais Royal, the most beautiful perfume store in the world, done in a Pompeian - fin de siecle scheme of purple and mauve and black.  Heaven.  And I always get compliments on this one.  It's the amber, naturelment.

Of course at the moment I can't smell a thing, because although some people can slow down and enjoy a little holiday, I slow down and get sick.  Or else, fueled by a constant diet of sugar and caffeine, I propelled myself through a flurry of seasonal social engagements until I crashed.  Now laid low, I am forced into a contemplative state of mind, not always the wisest course of action at this time of year.  Still, the body required a rest, and when my body rests, I reflect.

Looking back then on 2009, overall I would say I've had worse years, and even possibly worse decades.  The 80s were no collective day at the beach, if you recall, although some people must have enjoyed themselves.  But so much depends on age and location.  When I arrived in New York in the 70s I was young and ambitious and was told by those who'd been there ahead of me that nothing compared to the way things were in the 60s.  Ten years later, I was making roughly the same jaded observation to the kids arriving for their turn at life in the big city.  And so it goes.  L.A. in the 90s was amazing, and the last ten years here have certainly been interesting, but precisely how interesting depends on who you ask, how old they are and when they got here.  On top of which, let us not forget that perspective is subject to change.  It may be the only thing, in some instances, you can change.

Do you remember Sarah McLachlan's Sweet Surrender (1998)?  Some songs are timeless and some are limited to their time; or rather, they are filtered through time, the time and place when we first remember hearing them.  Well, whether you remember or not, my darling, I say give in, let go of the old and surrender to the new year.  My sense of smell will surely return and I will soon be back to feeling like my old self again. 

Or feeling like a new self, in a new year.  And how sweet is that.  

Happy New Year.