Dreaming Scents

If you are like me, no matter how tired you are on a weeknight you put on a little something before bed. (Weekends are a different story entirely. This is New York City.) A brushed cotton v-neck tee, my flannel boxers from Uniqlo and, of course, something that smells good. It has struck me of late that fragrance may trigger and/or influence dream activity or, as may be more the case, a “thinking over” the problem of a particular scent. Not the problem in the sense of defect, but problem as in arithmetic –– the unraveling of a Gordian (or not-so-Gordian) knot. Sometimes, as in “what cigarettes are my neighbors smoking and why is it coming through the wall?” But often it’s a problem I’ve set for myself.

For the past week, I’ve been working through my repertoire of rose soliflores. Is it some premonition of Cupid Day? Or is it the balmy weather beckoning an early spring? In any case, my dreams have had a close, affectionate quality: strait, as opposed to wide-open, spaces; faces of childhood sweethearts; a phalanx of sad, tender salad-day crushes; duvets thrown over futons in student rooms, wine glasses and brandy snifters found the morning after whatever wild party ... In the past, I’ve found that animalics upset my sleep. Some of the sweeter musks are innocuous, but civet and castoreum act our their feral tendencies. I awake at two o’clock, as if visited nocturnally by some succubus. Or, more commonly, I scratch myself. Feline grooming behavior of a past life? Would somebody get Shirley on the phone ... please. The ouds I was sampling are, by far, the most stimulating. Even before falling asleep, my mental state would be keyed up. I would catch myself in waking daydreams, opening some door, traipsing down some mile-long corridor, or visiting places that I’d never been before: jungle, palace, temple. And then there are the scents that I sleep through: the hesperidics, the citruses, the L’Eau Imperiales of the fragrance world. They must get absorbed into the sheets or just -- poof! -- into the air.

But my favorite -- enjoyed with a friend after a sumptuous little feast last night at Cookshop on Tenth Avenue -- was a balloon-shaped glass of Calvados, which seduced my nose, caressed my palate and transported me back to an old apartment after a dinner party, the candles’ glow caught in my neighbors’ windows, a lover asleep on a pillow next to me. If only someone could make it into a perfume ... The premium I would pay is, itself, the stuff of dreams.

Image credit: Picasso, La Rève, oil on canvas, 1932. Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society NY