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In Defense of Fragrance

I recently read an article about the recent boom in the fragrance market.  In the article, the author posited that this rise was at least partially due to Covid-19 and how people in isolation had forgotten the natural smell of other people, so a market rose up to meet the demand of people not wanting to contribute to those odors.  She also touched on the classist and potentially racist associations with scent.  While it was all very interesting, I think I have a different take on it.  

Granted, my own family has a long association with pleasant fragrances.  My great grandparents’ homes were the last I can remember that smelled neutral, except for the bottles of perfume in the bathrooms.  By my grandparents’ generation, potpourri and air fresheners had taken over their homes.  But that is not because some of those things didn’t exist before.  Potpourri & incense have been used since antiquity to scent homes.  But my great grandparents were all farmers, practical and poor people for whom these things would have been a luxury.  When I recently inherited a few of my great grandma Daugherty’s things, I was even surprised to find that she had a few Alfred Hitchcock novels and an apricot scented candle in an apricot shaped pot.  This kind of frivolity goes against my perceptions.  The candle had never been burned, and I can imagine my grandma just lifting the lid and getting a little treat of apricot fragrance to lift her spirits.  And although she was poor, she wore perfume.

In my grandparents’ homes, everything smelled “nice.”  There was lemon scented all-purpose cleaner, pine scented floor cleaner, scented fabric softener, and even sometimes a pot of spices on the stove, the scent wafting out into the house.  Neither home had scented candles regularly, but there was scent.  My grandpa’s bathroom smelled strongly of Old Spice and Irish Spring, my grandma’s of Tabu and lotion and the gentle scent of soap from the bowl of rose shaped pieces arranged in a bowl on the counter.

The home I grew up in had its own strong scents.  My mom loved scented candles, and she’d light them when she came home from work, so when we arrived from school there would be one in the main bathroom, one in the kitchen, and one in her bedroom.  There were different scents in the rooms, all seasonally appropriate, and as you walked from room to room, the gradients changed and it would all make the house feel all the more cozy.  She too would sometimes have spices going instead of a kitchen candle, and while she had potpourri throughout the house, it was rarely strong enough to contribute.  We did not have laundry scents; my dad’s sensitive skin required unscented products.  But my parents both wore perfumes: my mom had a selection of various options and my dad primarily wore Brüt, then Aspen, the Le Mâle.  Our shoes weren’t allowed in the house, and my mom would spray them with Brüt on the porch.

In the 1990s, Bath & Body Works opened and my mom’s fragrances became those offered in their lotions and body sprays, which largely replaced the need for as much perfume.  She would smell like Pearberry, Coconut Lime Verbena, or “Gingham.”  I have two brothers, and as each of us started puberty, the Brüt we shared was replaced with scents that were more individualized.  My grandma chose mine, giving me a bottle of Tommy by Tommy Hilfiger, which is how I smelled though high school and college.  My older brother received Abercrombie & Fitch’s Woods, but I don’t remember what he used before that.  I also don’t remember my younger brother’s fragrance preference, but knowing him he likely used what my dad and my grandpa used.Continue Reading

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I couldn’t get him to respond, so I don’t even know if he had a nice day.  I hope so.  He needs more nice days in his life.  He was going to Cattleman’s for dinner.  That was his plan.  After going back and forth for a long time, I actually decided to go with him.  I am also trying to get out of my own way, but since I never could reach him I still don’t know what’s going on.  

Brent came to hang out between photo shoots during the day.  It’s a stark contrast.  Brent is easy to be around.  There isn’t some deeper meaning to it; he brought some dinner with him, ate it, and then took a nap in the library for an hour before leaving.  It’s how I expect family to be.  Both him and Brad are welcome in my house in that exact way, as if they are supposed to be there.  And it is how I expect to be in there houses.  But sometimes Brad makes it awkward with guilt trips and weird tours of things he is doing.  And it all just reminds me of how Dad used his children as substitutes for friends.  Have friends as friends.  Family should be able to relax around you.

I’m just frustrated because Brad is genuinely fun to be around, but it’s hard to get to that point when everything is so dramatic.  I wish he could just calm down, then maybe it would make sense to stop by and hang out for an afternoon.  Regardless, I hope he had a pleasant day.  Happy 44th to him!

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Watermelon Seed

“Un enfant,
C’est le dernier poète
D’un monde qui s’entête
A vouloir devenir grand
Et ça demande si les nuages ont des ailes
Et ça s’inquiète d’une neige tombée
Et ça s’endort, de l’or sous les paupières
Et ça se doute qu’il n’y a plus de fées”

Three stones were dropped in the creek
where the dragonflies kept them company,
the prehistoric nymphs feeding on their umbilicals.
We had trouble finding our way back to that place,
but were rewarded for doing so with watermelon,
which we let drip down our hands and arms
in the intense heat of an Oklahoma summer.
The gemstones were kept fixed in her eyes,
projecting sad and murky images from her heart.
I was too young to feel the distance, but her hands
recoiled when she saw that I had the same stone
skin she’d thrown into that creek so long ago.
The dragonflies still fed nearby, emerged for
their brief adult lives to witness our return.
There is a shed still bursting with private musings
and with his attempts to understand the pain,
of loss and of rejection and of mistakes made.
I’ve grown apart, my hands unable to find hers
and my eyes now filled with gemstones.
Chasms have opened where creeks used to be,
and stones have spilled out in all directions.
Unspoken words and indifference hang low,
clouds that block the sun and offer cooling shade.
When the watermelon has been eaten, you spit
out the seeds, which sometimes grow into new
plants that put on the beautiful refreshing fruit.
Sometimes, those seeds rot and turn to dust.
I am still a child, ignorant and stupid.
I’m standing in the grocery store, broasted chicken
in my hands for my grandma’s dinner, dumbfounded.
She looked past me, the gemstones in her eyes
blinding her from seeing me, even though I could
see the glint of recognition on her face as she silently
passed by. That was the last time I saw her.
Dust.

Notes

Written 19 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Watermelon Seed” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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The Transformation of Gaia’s Daughters

For Ann & LaDonna

Two chrysalises formed
separately, identically.
The prairie’s tall grasses
still grow between
everything we’ve ever known
and everything we’ll ever know.
Time has stood still for nearly two years,
and maybe our lives have been placed
in Aion’s ancient hands.
They’d formed those pupal shells
from two-seater pumpkins
borrowed from Thoreau’s own quill,
from the canvas tops of
their ancestral covered wagons,
from velvet cushions
left at their homes
for my uncle’s comfort,
and from red-lettered Bibles,
Jesus still reciting the instructions.
Outside, a chorus of children,
throngs of former students,
sing the songs they learned
when the two had been caterpillars
eating holes in the leaves,
dreaming of new plants
and of wings.
The students still wear the costumes
of philosophers and founders;
they are clutching small stones,
gold-paint chipping
from their rough forms.
The deafening joy fills the air,
heavy with heat.
Sunshine pools in one chrysalis,
vacant now in the stillness.
It glows like a stained glass lantern.
Inside the other, wings still form,
mimicking the shining pattern
projected on translucent walls.
They might have been
the Grimké sisters,
struggling toward a better world,
or they might have been
the mothers of us all,
here at the very creation,
the big bang jointly reared
in their care, set free to stretch
its infinite wings,
tempered by their brother, time.
The trees recall the cosmic story,
reveal the events in
ancient languages drawn on leaves.
It is also etched into insect wings,
in specific dialects of jellyfish,
and in the network of veins
spidering through our bodies.

27 February 2020

Notes

Brian Fuchs, “The Transformation of Gaia’s Daughters” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

Also appeared in Social Distances (Scissortail Press, 2020)Continue Reading

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Campsis radicans

That house still haunts me;
the absences I feel are extreme.
Brad has kept the trumpet vines,
electric and intense like himself.
He pulled the irises that were once
lining the paths and taking breath
away from visitors as they passed.
The enormous black-purple blooms,
now towering only in our memory.
He inherited too much and not enough,
spending time and money adjusting,
spreading out and stamping his energy
onto the places that had been our center.
He’s added alcohol to the room where
my grandma’s last moments began,
highlighting the permanence of it all.
Where there was once an annual
display of daisies and cleomes,
a chainlink box sits, overgrown with
those intense trumpet vines.
The garden is all wild and unkempt,
like he’s trying to preserve something
that cannot be contained or suppressed.
Life spills out from our dark spots.
The house was full of undue pressures,
now settled into a gritty beauty.
The roots will continue to grow,
the trumpet vines will spread,
and one day my nephew’s children
will wipe tears from their eyes when
they visit a house that meant so much.
And they’ll talk about the intensity
and how much they’d give to have it back.

Notes

Written 20 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Campsis radicans” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Making Circles in Darkness

on the loss of my mother

Sometimes going through the motions
is enough; it’s almost like living.

Sometimes it’s too much effort
to cross the room for heat,
so I watch the snow fall through
the cracked window,
the layers building up
of snow and blankets
as warmth slips out
through the opening.

I’m drunk on my own grief,
and my hand makes lazy circles
in the air to amuse me.
Life doesn’t mean anything;
it never did.

Sometimes there exists in me
a tempest that cannot be contained.
I rebuild and shift things,
furiously dig through the snow
and in the soil,
looking for a place to deposit
the excess energy
and the memories.

Life clings, meaningless
and important.

One day I will forget to feel the pain,
I’ll laugh without stopping myself
and I’ll let the flowers bloom
without shutting myself away
where I cannot see them.

The lazy circles amuse me;
I’m an infant again,
motherless and cold.
Each day feels different,
experienced in ways
I always feared.

I wonder how I’ll remember joy
when it tries to come back in,
and I wonder if I’ll want it
after the years I’ve spent in darkness.

Life clings, heavy
and beautiful.

Notes

Written 7 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Making Circles in Darkness” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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In a lot of ways, it feels like things are starting to make sense for me.  And it a lot of other ways, it feels like things are as chaotic as always.  Everyone seems just a little frustrated, but I’m not sure most of them can articulate why.  I know I can’t.

I finished Okie Dokie last month, and I have done a couple of edits to it since.  I hope I’m at a point where I can leave it alone now.  My copies come in the mail Saturday, and I’ll really know then.  I’m both excited and terrified to have my writing available for others.  That was always the goal, but I’m just so nervous about these things.  I hope others can appreciate my point of view and I’m looking forward to getting feedback, even if that feedback is negative.  Constructive criticism is always welcome.  I actually just assume that if someone doesn’t like something I’ve written, then that is just a preference they have and does not reflect on my writing in any real way.  If the consensus is negative, then I’m just writing the wrong things for current audiences.  I will have to wait and see.  The really difficult thing will be critiques by those I admire or grammatical errors pointed out by those I don’t.

I’ve started working on my next book, which will be similar to Okie Dokie in that it will contain selections of poetry from the past twenty years, as well as a few new poems to pull the book together.  I’ll have one or two more like that before relegating unpublished poetry to a “remnants” book of some sort in the future.  I have some things I’ve written that I really love, but I’m not sure how to make them work in any of these projects.  I do want a story to emerge from the collection, even if only loosely.  Okie Dokie was about myself and about how I see the world around me.  The second book will be about family and the places from which they came.  The third book is about friendship and love.  If I need fourth or fifth, I’ll do another about myself and then a last one about family, as those are the two subjects I’ve written the most about.  I’m also not limiting my writing.  I have other things I want to write and those things will fall into the projects that make the most sense for them.

For October, I’m enjoying some spooky stories and songs throughout the month, and I am of course bothering family with those things.  I miss sharing things with people.  I find everyone becoming increasingly isolated, and not just in my own family.  I’ll post some of those things on here during the month.