Magickal Realism

If you made it a resolution to be more green in 2009 and were not thinking of body paint when you said it, you might be interested in the Do Not Mail List movement. Run by the organization Forest Ethics, this group wants to give US consumers the same opt-out rights in the mail that they have with their telephones.

I’ve actually spent hours removing myself from magazine mailing lists only to have them reappear at my door. While a Do Not Mail List would certainly reduce material available for me to convert to incinerates incense paper, I think I’d be willing to make the sacrifice to have both more privacy AND more oxygen from trees still standing.

I meant to put “resolution” but I like the idea of “revolution.” It sounds like I mean it…or else like I’m about to invade a small country. I’m not sure what I’d do with the country once invaded, though.

These are my big plans - such as they are - for 2009:

Keep on keepin’ on.

Exciting, huh? :)

Seriously,  I’ve been at this two years. I’m going into year three. I’m still learning and still often overwhelmed by what I have yet to learn.

I would like to:

1. Create a more convenient packaging option for my men’s fragrances. Right now I’m thinking little roll on applicators that fit the bottles I currently have.

2. Be more present in my daily work. Etsy becomes a headspace, and sometimes it’s the wrong headspace.

3. Continue my artist’s way stuff. I finished the first book in the series, and I’m going to move through the rest. What does that do for perfume customers? You’ll see. You’re already seeing the results of some of that internal work in my shop.

I’m still staying away from shops/wholesaling. It’s not yet time - I’m still developing things and I like person-to-person sales.

4. Switch the majority of my base oils to jojoba. This may take awhile.

5. Firm up my fragrance-free goods line. It sounds ironic,  but it’s not. Most perfumers have to keep it light on the olfactory surroundings to work - and it takes effort to find fragrance free deoderant, shampoo and soap.¹

If I were to ask for anything from the new-year fairy, it would be to:

Bump up my Google ranking

and to get me featured in a bunch more blogs.

If anyone wants to interview me, ask away!

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1. Soap is the lowest on my priority list of things to make. [↩]

I hate Americanized Mexican chain restaurants. The food tastes wrong to me - it’s hot spicy, almost but not quite burning your tongue off, and after a few bites I always have to push it away and make do with the chips and salsa that seem to grow on the tables. I’ve watched with bewilderment as my companions tear into their pseudo-Mexicana with gusto. Can’t they taste that awful way the food carbonizes to black on your tongue? I live in a street with three Mexican-owned Mexican restaurants. Not one of them uses this bizarre American-chain spicing approach, even when they serve you food spiced the way they eat it.¹

As I moved packages of spices into my refrigerator jars last week, I at last discovered the exact culprit of this effect: cumin. Cumin is reviled by perfumers and cooks alike for its overpowering odor and its tendency to completely take over any dish or perfume mix.

Image via Wikipedia

It’s not cumin’s fault, really. It is simply that cumin is incredibly powerful and makes a rather blunt statement. It must be managed in very small amounts to be enjoyed with any success.

Let me make something clear: I’ve never worked with cumin as a perfume material. I use - you could say overuse - coriander - but cumin itself has never made itself up my radar until I got my noseful last week. Now I know why. I also suspect that a lot of people who think they dislike oregano really hate the taste/smell of cumin. Even while the scent in large amounts is heavy-handed, it still intensifies the effects of the spices around it. Black pepper becomes thicker and blacker and more likely to sneak up on you as hot; cayenne doesn’t even introduce itself before it launches an all out assault and chili sort of crawls up your tongue, all thanks to the effects of the cumin.

So what to do with it?

First, use it sparingly. Even in a couple pounds of taco protein, only a pinch is needed.

Second, think about what you want intensified and what you want offset. Do you have a lot of hot spices? Then a pinch - JUST a pinch - of cooling mint might help.

Third, if you don’t love it or even like it, don’t use it. You can use coriander, oregano and allspice as much easier to handle and less overpowering substitutes.

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1. In Minnesota it’s commonplace for ethnic restaurants to have two menus: one for Americans that is very mild and inoffensive, and one for themselves where spices come out full force. You have to be very clear when you order that you say not to make your dish for an American. [↩]

After more than 10 years admiring the casual issue, I finally started a subscription to the Herb Companion. I’m beside myself with delight - it’s well balanced, interesting and it always gives me a new way to think of and look at plants that I might have looked at a million times before. Ever-greedy for some print to read, this sent me on a hunt through other publications and I believe I’ve found my “top 10″ herbalist/aromatherapist subscriptions for 2009.¹ Not all of these are herb magazines, some are to keep up on trends, and others are to ensure a well-rounded inspirational palette.

You already know why I love the Herb Companion. If you’re not sure, pick up a copy at your local bookstore and check out the recipes. That may well sell you.

This magazine condenses some of the most recent medical studies on herbs and also tracks what might happen with them under FDA regulations. Extremely useful and important information, nicely packaged in a quarterly magazine.

This hefty semi-yearly publication is a hit to the wallet but also gives you some important data on the materials you use. Some public libraries to carry it, but if you like to thumb through pages and mark things up, this just might be the journal for you.

The Utne Reader is a time-saver among independent publications. This magazine takes the best of indie articles and presses them all into one neat package so you can see a sampling of what’s going on in American subcultures.

Harper’s Bazaar has replaced Marie Claire as the smartest of women’s fashion publications. While there is still some hair-tearing insanity within it (one writer penned an essay on how she was still OK with herself even though she was a size 8 - hardly gargantuan in the real world where the average American woman is a size 12) there is also fashion, savvy interviews and a certain ahead-of-the-curve perceptiveness lacking in other women’s publications.

At first you might think decor has nothing to do with handmade beauty. But think about it: people fragrance their homes, burn incense, layer scented candles into their decor schemes…it’s good to know where it’s all going!

For pure visual overload, zeitgeist and probes an alien couldn’t manage, there’s Interview. Just read it and let your subconscious cook for a few days. You’ll amaze yourself.

The home-as-spa feel has become a way of life with Real Simple leading the way. Along with giving ideas for how to make life less cluttered and more positive, it does prevent a feast of products; it’s like the shopping feel of other magazines but with a targeted purpose for you behind it.

Indie supporter extraordinaire, this magazine has paved the way and raised the voice of many an indie-and-woman owned business. There are as many people reading this magazine for its creative and low-key ads as there are out there reading the articles.

This is the magazine of choice for microbusinesses these days, perhaps because it’s one of the few to aim at small businesses making non-traditional choices in everything from business type to financing.

Do I subscribe to these magazines? Not all of them, yet. I’m carefully counting out my budget - my big indulgence is the Herb Companion. But I pick up the others as I go!

You can find perfumes and other herbal products at Magickal Realism Natural Perfumery.

1. I decided to skip over certain trade magazines because of their prohibitive expense to micro-sellers like myself. [↩]

I scored another treasury - and this is what I did with it this time! Please give these sellers some much deserved exposure by giving the treasury a click and a comment.

I understand that the whole “goodwill towards men” can take some work.

“May all beings have happiness
and the causes of happiness
May all beings be away from sorrow
and the causes of sorrow
May all beings know peace
and the causes of peace
May all beings ever be part of the great happiness and sorrowless.”

The frenzy’s still going. I know it, you know it, and you might just be escaping into your blog feeds just as a way of escaping the rest of the world or because, like me, you sometimes become compulsively attached to the Internet.

I’m not going to recommend you go smell lavender or a pretty flower or sprinkle herbs on yourself. That’s all up to you, especially with conflicting information on whether or not certain essential oils are effective as relaxation aids. Besides, adding chemicals to an already stressed-out body invites trouble.

Here’s what I recommend: plant your feet flat on the floor. Sit up straight, using your stomach muscles to support you. Take 10-20 deep breaths, all the way down to your abdomen. When you’re done, pick one thing among all the things you have to do circling in your head that you can do today. Give all your attention to that until it’s done. Then, pick another thing and do that. The goal is not to finish your list. The goal is to give the tasks you do all your attention. Close the browser, go do that, and have a Merry Christmas. Also, please make sure you drink at least 32 ounces of water during the day?

If you have a break later on, visit Magickal Realism.

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Asafoetida is, according to those who have never encountered the Corpse Flower, the foulest smelling plant ever. I’d read about it in my early occult st udies and  I had a rough understanding of its use a s a tool to make everything  disappear from demons to your mother-in-law because of the sheer repellent nature of its smell. So, on a trip to New Orleans many years back, I saw a shop carried it and I had to buy an ounce just to satisfy my curiosity.

A pinch of curiosity got on the beautiful Indian tunic I’d just bought and two years later the smell remained in that particular item of clothing. I kept it because I found that the asafoetida kept off mosquitos more effectively than common insect repellents on the market. It also kept everyone else off me, sometimes a beneficial trait. It’s powerful stuff, used to make any intruder go away.

You can imagine my surprise when I discovered that cooks in India have used it for centuries, and sometimes in generous amounts! It supposedly gets milder when cooked in clarified butter, although I’m not sure I believe it. I recently moved from a thoroughly ethnically-mixed apartment building where this herb is used in cooking almost daily, and I think that any “mildness” is in the consumer’s perception.

I’m no longer completely repelled by the smell, and it was with some pleasure that I found that the Indian and Arabic grocery stores on my street carry it - notably both put it on a shelf below their “medicinals.” I like to keep it on hand, as it’s highly effective for scaring the daylights out of earnest pamphlet-holders. I haven’t worked up the nerve to try it in cooking. I think the next batch of worcestershire sauce I make up, I’ll try a pinch - I’ll report back should I survive the experiment.

Stop by Magickal Realism Natural Perfumery for happy smells.

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I’m sure many of you are very, VERY alert and uncommonly tense/distracted this Monday morning. Rather than overburden you, I thought I’d share this little bit of holiday nifty I discovered at Surdyk’s in northeast Minneapolis last week.

It’s my holiday, or our holiday (depending on who’s here or how you look at holidays.)

Whatever this day does or doesn’t meant to you, I wish you great cheer, much happiness, and goodness to you with the return of the sun.

From Rent, by the late Jonathan Larson

“The opposite of war isn’t peace. It’s creation.”

Here she lies
No one knew her worth
The late great daughter of Mother Earth
On these nights when we celebrate the birth
In that little town of Bethlehem
We raise our glass- You bet your ass to-
La Vie Boheme

To days of inspiration,
Playing hookey, making something
Out of nothing, the need
To express-
To communicate,
To going against the grain,
Going insane,
Going mad

To loving tension, no pension
To more than one dimension,
To starving for attention,
Hating convention, hating pretension,
Not to mention of course,
Hating dear old mom and dad

To riding your bike
Midday past the three piece suits-
To fruits- To no absolutes-
To Absolut- To choice-
To the Village Voice-
To any passing fad

To being an us- For once-
Instead of a them-

La Vie Boheme

To hand-crafted beers made in local breweries
To yoga, to yogurt, to rice and beans and cheese
To leather, to dildos, To curry Vindaloo
To Huevos Rancheros and Maya Angelou

Emotion, devotion, to causing a commotion,
Creation, Vacation

Mucho masturbation

Compassion, to fashion, to passion
When it’s new

To Sontag

To Sondheim

To anything taboo

Ginsberg, Dylan, Cunningham and Cage

Lenny Bruce

Langston Hughes

To the stage!

To Uta

To Buddha

Pablo Neruda, too

Why Dorothy and Toto went over the rainbow
To blow off Auntie Em

La Vie Boheme

Bisexuals, trisexuals, Homo Sapiens,
Carcinogens, hallucinogens, men,
Pee Wee Herman
German wine, turpentine, Gertrude Stein
Antonioni, Bertolucci, Kurosawa
Carmina Burana

To apathy, to entropy, to empathy, ecstasy
Vaclav Havel- The Sex Pistols, 8BC
To no shame- Never playing the fame game

To marijuana

To sodomy
It’s between God and me
To S & M

La Vie Boheme

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