The Perfume of Life: Book Three: The Perfume of Life, #3

By A.S. Reisfield

The Perfume of Life comprises an unparalleled series of conversations in the matter of storytelling vapors of Nature, on distillation and extraction technologies, the science of drawing out or intercepting the chemical communications of vital beings, and including also classes presented to baristas and oenologists on the respective physical bases and neurobiological perception of espresso and wine, and tutorials on the aesthetic analysis of scent, and investigations into the fragrance of dirt and death and wine and sex, into the nature of sweetness and fruitiness and spiciness and juiciness, and love and war and beauty and much more, like the significance of pheromones and deterpenation, alchemical traditions and vacuum filtration, perfume terminology and alcohol emulsions, pollination ecology and potions of seduction, that is, workshops on aphrodisiacal elixirs and their production, also trials involving Indian attars, and how to build fragrant accords, and lessons on comparative forms and media of art, and reviews of notable molecules such as 1,8-cineole and linalyl acetate, methyl chavicol and eugenol, camphor and many more, and accounts of xenobiotic compounds introduced to the biosphere, namely synthetic musks and aldehydes and ionones, and surveys of violations by the fraudful Perfume Industry and the associated biophobic campaigns of fashion houses, and training in the detection of dupery with respect to counterfeit volatile oils, and proceedings of rowdy plant perfume panels that feature metabolic expressions of saffron acacia mistletoe and magnolia, aloeswood honeysuckle osmanthus and gardenia, tarragon tuberose lotus and boronia, labdanum linden karo-karounde and angelica, and a good many others.

By means of this program of exercises and studies and the series of salons related, the grand saga of Life on Earth is uniquely depicted, as an epic narrative channeled by perfume. As a result, the protagonist Salonnier and his helpmates come to appreciate most incisively the present siege being laid to Life. And by advancing a set of principles and rationale for a movement in defense of Creation, they advocate on behalf of Nature in a manner that’s unprecedented in the history of literature.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ediciones Vanguardistas
• Release date: Jul 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9780997534153

Book preview

PERFUMES of negotiation

Licorice describes her latest study:

In this World I imagine as a perfume, coexist good and evil, jousting and flitting about, to take hold and vent here and there, as this or that molecule, covalently ascending or retreating, any given element parting ways or cohering, each instantiating odorament disguised or self-revealing, say the equilibrial action of aromatic emissions of resolution and psalm, olfactive elicitations designed for the perceiving, while elsewhere volatile top-notes of aggression are sustained and fortified by interior aspects of chemical chaos, and saturated hydrocarbons of delight intermingle with polar compounds of contempt, either evocative group modifying the other—

I try to break in by tapping clink-clink to the side of my wine glass.

…and whereas materializations of violence spawn short-chain precipitates, such etherealizations are nonetheless restrained by thurifying flourishes of understanding, and much as a fragrant footing of stoicism serves to tone down otherwise fleeting facets of impulsiveness, dispatches of diffusive anger effectively threaten the synergetic bouquet by coalescing with emanations effusing resentment, thereby embellishing the tailing menstruum of strife and pain, still amphiphilic chords of integration pay tribute to layered accents of order, and fear evaporates when effluvia are discharged in the presence of organic valorous character—

I try again to spare our guest panelists by tapping harder ding-ding against my glass.

…in any case, personality disorders like unstable reactive expressions vulnerable to decomposition are ever poised to become rendered ephemeral, however much agents of enduring metabolism are recipients of electrons donated by bioactive principles of determination, albeit the good will of low molecular weight tends to vaporize while the headspace of trustworthiness is exalted by sequestered strength which undergirds seeping wisdom which lacks tenacity, as isomeric grace envelopes yet is fixed by reality.

Finally, let’s see, it sounds to me, like a wondrous baffling cloud of perfume called the World.

PERFUMES of urgency

Licorice continues to relay aspects of western Africa, Much as strong-willed women there are especially vulnerable to being fingered as witches, many children too are liable—there are so-called fetish pastors that travel around and identify kids who have a parent stricken with HIV infection, then accuse the sons or daughters of sorcery and offer, for a fee, to cleanse them by means of mutilation and starvation, and then, if they survive the sadistic exorcism, the tortured children invariably wind up shunned and living on the streets, then the drugs, the sex, the disease and all that.

This evening we offer another in our series featuring volatile oddments. Tulíp has readied several extracts for our sensory reception:

Whereas the whirling and drifting elements expectably evoke the heat of spicy steam, revealing that familiar feeling upon breathing vapors that display a pronounced peppery zingiberous accord, the early perky sweet-woody notes soon settle down and flatten to a bitter piquance distinguishable by the influential sesquiterpenes, then the lingering embrace of a stored-cardboard chord—kudos to whoever guessed … grains of paradise, or Ghanaian melegueta pepper oil, samples of which were previously queued for review along with other confamiliar pungent gingers, but time then ran short.

For the record, American Indians were first to suffer genocidal persecution at the hands of white Americans, after which about twenty million people from Africa became targeted for enslavement, destined for the United States. They were kidnapped from their village homes, ten million dying even before reaching the continent’s coast, millions more during the middle passage (ocean voyage). The blacks arriving were often beaten and whipped, coerced to work for free, interminably. Newborns were delivered into perpetual servitude, sold off when their masters felt like downsizing.

"This next selection, here by invitation, you might say, will speak, so to speak, for the faceted collective of azure-blue azulene-suffused (in this case, guaiazulene) odorful oils, to point out what are, in the main, long-chain principles that severally suggest cedarwood sandalwood pine and clove and guaiacwood compost and wintergreen pineapple and chamomile vetiver juniper and lemon—oh yes, Australian blue cypress, a specialty more or less, with a tangled history and culture, but nonetheless, it is most notably complex by the extent and nature of its sesquiterpenoid woodiness, which reflects that of Cupressus cypress oils, also a florality (geranyl acetate) and a spiciness (caryophyllene) and even a freshness (limonene) that it manifests—the lasting emanation enacts a dulcifying resinous fadeout that fragrantly insinuates something green and smoky, perhaps a soiled stick of celery."

Yes, okay, in a way, maybe so … we are radical insurgents, by providing for the surviving, a forum for the photosynthesizing, to relate their metabolic stories. By sitting with volatile expressions, by our olfactory explorations, we chronicle the ravaging and corruption, the epical tragedy of Life’s desecration.

We know, it requires reminding, over and over, and, no, you won’t apologize for your insistent repeating that Life is under siege.

PERFUMES of inherency

Is this a salon or an affirmation? Tulíp is just arriving.

You might say, the celestial mudball on which we live is living too, given all the trademark indications of aliveness, or at least lifelikeness, by which we mean the dynamic variousness, namely the unpredictability of it, by which we refer to the intricacy of forms and processes and properties, mainly the immensity of it.

"Is this a lesson or an étude?" Licorice also arrives late.

And again, as we were saying about perfume, the crux is that nearly all of the many tens of millions of extant species on the planet employ primarily some type of olfaction to obtain information about their environments.

We live here, but Earth isn’t just a dwelling place, it’s the seat of all organic evolution throughout time, Saffron says.

Not to diminish exceptions: diurnal songbirds and aquatic animals rely heavily upon sound, and yes, some of our feathered friends along with many mammals signal by ritual displays, and true, humanity and some other primates rely largely upon vision, and no, we’ll not likely lose sight of the rich-hued displays of flowering plants that also brandish essential announcements designed to be interpreted visually during blooming and fruiting periods of their sexual life cycles (excepting those pollinated or dispersed by wind).

Still, Living Nature, circumscribed to include all that’s alive, communicates—most of the time, by most individual and groups of organisms, in most cases (by far)—by chemistry.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, while a soundscape is worth a thousand pictures, but a perfume-scape is worth a thousand soundscapes, Saffron is referring to the experience and perhaps preservation as snapshots of different currencies of information in Nature: a picture being visual capture, soundscape the biophony, comprising all the purrs peeps bleeps chirps and voices, and perfume-scape the full elaborate gamut of emissive chemical ecology.

The goal-driven dance of sperm to impress an egg? its wiggling and shimmying to effect fertilization? is facilitated by perfume. Truly, biologists refer to the action as chemotaxis. And an olfaction receptor has been identified in hominid sperm.

The story began a while back—a few billion years back—when our long-ago distant ancestors, flagellated prokaryotes, pioneers of a kind, negotiated the World exclusively for thousands of thousands of millennia, paving the way for the rest of us.

Nothing in the World is free, not even for microscopic invertebrates swimming in the sea.

These far-removed primordial forbears lacked capacities to hear see or touch, had not a trace of any neural structure, only a group of cell-wall receptors to perceive chemical information such as that of nutrients and toxins. The molecular messengers would signal flagellar motors to rotate one way or another, to move forward or tumble away.

Those were the original environmental assessments, the earliest sensory appraisals, the first suggestions of … perfume.

All Life is chemical-based. Endorphins, for instance, were created inside cells before there were cerebrums or dendrites, axons or any neurons. We emphasize this to point up the matter of its implications.

The familiar mantra, it should be plain to recognize, when we meet with it in whichever guise.

Impressions made by scentful oils aren’t confined to human neuronal systems, in that such transmissible compounds interact also with physiological target tissues and organs, including the respiratory and digestive, endocrine and circulatory, actions stemming from the affinity of info-molecules to living membranes.

The extended messaging trajectory of aroma, fixed in our collective memory within the soma, within our bodies, is regardable as a kind of phenotypic recognition of ancestral Life forms.

These metabolic dispatches intrinsically impact Life. The scented subjects of our inquiry, under construction with the swings and stops and detours and starts of evolutionary tinkering since way before humankind, way before animals, even before eukaryotic cells … they affiliate with Life.

This central idea, we don’t mind repeating, given that it’s so central, which is why we don’t mind repeating, this central idea.

These assertions are corroborated by numerous cases in point—for example, cell walls of our antecedents of three billion years were found to be constructed of triterpenes as membrane-stabilizing structural components, suggesting that the terpene production assembly line is traceable from present, back to earliest animated Life.

Gods walked on Earth in those days, Tulíp says.

After their debut emergence, triterpenes (which comprise thirty carbon atoms), which are precursors of steroids, would again later show up in marine algae. And sesquiterpenes (with fifteen carbon atoms) would later be well represented among early land-dwelling mosses. And monoterpenes (with ten carbon atoms) would later be prominent among early forest-dwelling coniferous needle trees.

Now, in my dreams, gods walk still.

Which brings to mind that we’ve paid evolution’s price of billions of deaths to get here. Which brings to mind that our biological heritage is worth keeping in mind.

Early on, blue-green algae, later jellyfish, then centipedes then horsetails then lizards then finches then orchids then puppies.

That is … the terpenoid (mevalonate) biosynthetic pathway was already in place when plants first colonized land, primed to produce lipophilic (don’t much react with water) lightweight (readily becoming vaporous) diffusive (will spread out) terpene perfumes that exhibit limited reactivity (travel independently), thus elegantly suited physiochemically to negotiate the new aerial forum for communication. Likewise, the phenylpropanoid (shikimate) pathway was fully developed and serving as the means of amino acid synthesis throughout much of the epic of evolution. These two molecule-making machineries, which variously manufacture compounds for metabolic and economic activities, coloration and structure, defending against animals, protecting from environmental elements—organic strategies conserved over great expanses of time during which Life forms came and went—were on standby, ready when called upon to divert and slightly alter their production lines, to create the majority of volatile oil constituents found in Nature today.

Early on, sponges, later seaweeds, then spiders then skippers then crickets then kinglets then thistles then pickles.

That is … before human people originated over a hundred thousand years ago there was perfume, even before hominid origins two or three million years ago there was perfume, even before the dawning of flowering plants over a hundred fifty million years ago there was perfume, even before the first appearance of insects and land plants over four hundred million years ago there was perfume, even before the arrival of initial creatures with nervous systems over six hundred million years ago there was perfume, even before the evolution of early multi-celled organisms over one and a half billion years ago there was perfume, even before … well …

The grand pageant of evolution is recapitulated with each and every experience of an essential oil.

Whether it be metabolism or reproduction, cognition or self-defense, no matter which, every activity associated with Life, at whichever level of organization, involves the agency of chemicals, be they hormones or ectohormones, pheromones or allelochemicals, primers releasers allemones or kairomones, no matter the appellation, whether flavors fumes or fragrances, no matter the designation, each is just a variation of … perfume.

Saffron recites from a biology text, A newly fertilized human egg is a corpuscle one two-hundredth of an inch in diameter that forwards complex instructions into the womb cavity in order to regulate fetal tissue development of proteins and carbohydrates and fats, referring to messages sent by the medium of … perfume.

Insects have the same opiate receptors we do.

So, as we behold this evening’s aromatic oil samples, as we inspire deeply to appreciate these expressive compilations of principles, we’ll make a point to pause, to ceremoniously consider that our sensory perception coincides with our cellular reception of chemical constituents, that parties to the transaction existed long before there were any brains inside heads of any animals, long before thought, before hearing, before vision.

Herein we find an argument for an order of universal intelligence, or at least for the unity of all Life, and for common answers to far-reaching questions, Licorice interrupts.

But our inquiry concerning the extraordinary case of perfume is no general argument in favor of generality. There are precious few attributes that all living beings hold in common: not a capacity for self-awareness, not consciousness, not competitiveness or aggressiveness or carnivorousness, not nervous systems, not circulatory or respiratory or any other systems, not autotrophy, not sight, not sexual reproduction, not even sex.

Creation, who safeguards the master key? Saffron teases.

The assertion, rather, it’s a specific notion, a particular and exceptional notion, and this won’t be my last attempt to make the motion, to put forward that perfumes of Life, however enigmatic, are the most prevalent, most compelling and most suited, as they constitute the fundamental and primary currency of information among the living, to chronicle and tell the epical story of Life on Earth.

Already ticketed for replacement.

PERFUMES of desolation

The crux of the corruption of Creation is the ruse of production and reproduction.

"Presently we launch, to audition a selection of molecules and their emissions commissioned for a modern rendition of the comida corrida, comprising odorants popular with formulation chemists, tomorrow’s comida casera," Saffron introduces her latest conceit, a prix-fixe menu featuring futuristic fare.

"First the entrada (entrée): cis-3-hexenal is a compound that dispenses a sprinkling of green-grassiness, 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine releases elements of bell pepper, trans-2-hexenoic acid specializes in cheesy properties, 4-methoxy-2-methyl-2-butanethiol projects distinctive blackcurrant character, and trans-2-dodecenal turns loose a citrus-peely interpretation of coriander."

Sierra Leone in 1997 suffered a third coup in five years, its capital Freetown overtaken by a motley aggregation of pillaging so-called rebels donning army fatigues and bawdy costumes, carrying assault rifles and grenade launchers, mostly kids from the bush who’d been fighting since preadolescence.

"Next is sopa (soup): 1-octen-3-ol issues mushroomy materializations, dimeric mercaptopropanone renders a wafting chicken-soup perfume, 3-mercapto-2-methylpentan-1-ol throws out a show of onion notes, allyl methyl disulphide purveys vapors that bestow a garlic quality, and 2-methyltetra-hydrofuran-3-thiol reveals a meat-broth aspect that seeps into the boundary layer hovering over the bowl of food."

They had names like Colonel Bloodshed, Commander Cut-Hands, and Mister Die, scary enough for the residents, but this nightmare was exceeded a couple of years later when the returning drugged teenagers swaggered into the city by night to rampage and spread violent terror even more wanton than before.

"From the wine menu the sumiller (sommelier) recommends 4-mercapto-4-methyl-2-pentanone, which provides to Sauvignon wine its cattiness, or you can select from among several aguas frescas: 2-methyl-4-propyl-1,3-oxathiane exudes as if it oozes a reference to passion fruit and from hydroxyphenylbutanone emanates a sensory presence of raspberries, ethyl 2-methyl butyrate effuses an apple-juice effect and trans-2-decenal indicates one of many shades of orange while the sulphurous almost rubbery 1-p-methene-8-thiol makes a representation of grapefruit."

They burned entire families alive, sliced off the faces of journalists, tortured doctors for treating the wounded, cut out tongues and raped girls, enacting by plan or improvisation whatever brutal means of killing or creative method of mutilation they could imagine.

"For the plato principal (main course) you choose from among the following: trans-2-trans-4-decadienal sends out a sensation of chicken fat, 2-methylfuran-3-thiol scentingly serves up suggestions of meat (beef), 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol gives off an aromatic incense of smoked ham as pyrazine ethanethiol imparts a persuasion of pork and 4-methyloctanoic signals a sense of lamb."

They were eventually driven away, but beforehand they left their trademark impressions by means of special squads of young marauders who carried out mass amputations, seeming outwardly not to be organized, yet the operations were too sweeping to be random.

"And guarniciones (side dishes) del dia include 2,3-diethyl-5-methylpyrazine, which redolently reflects potato chips, 3-methylthiopropanal evokes fragrant french fries, and thioester sec-butyl 3-methylbut-2-enthioate channels a metabolic impression attesting to galbanum-like verdancy."

They chopped off hands or arms with rusty machetes and axes against concrete slabs, then stacked the appendages in bloody piles or hauled them off in grain bags. Dozens of children were observed walking around with limbs dangling by shreds of unsevered skin.

"Finally, from our postre (dessert) counter: 5-methylhept-2-en-3-one lends an ambient handful of hazelnuts, 2-methyltetrahydrofuran-3-one contributes a caramelic chord, and 2-isopropyl-4-methyl thiazole instills an instillment inimitably gassy like durian fruit or sweetcorn soaked in sewage."

PERFUMES of revelation

The accused unbeliever is the true believer.

Back from a hiatus we’ll say? Saffron welcomes Licorice.

This next ritual exercise in fragrantness is prone to act upon our senses or spirits with unpredictable effects: breathing slows or quickens, or eyes water, or skin tightens, or emotions well up, a feeling of disassociation may take hold, or