So, you get older and you start to think in simplicities at least I thought so until I sat down to list my favorite things as a recipe for happiness.
Years ago I began to collect the vintage perfumes worn by the iconic women of my early life: There is Mother's Toujours Moi, Gransmother's Ma Griffe, Tante Regines's Shalimar, Ma Belle Mere, Sabine's, Ylang et Vanille, my own Antilope by Weil, Chergui by Serge Leutens, Tabarome by Creed (when it was the original one) and several others,cannot forget Amazone by Hermes. Scores of bottles of old perfume; all the Balmains, Guerlains, Diors, Chanels, certain fragrances by Hermes, etc. on and on. Perfume evokes the joys of childhood for me more so than candies or toys. As well, I adore to feel velvet next to my skin and fine silk Peau d'Ange, and particularly delight in stroking watered taffeta moire (when it was all silk) with my long nails, ditto Skinner Satin on the skin.
Fine fur puts me into ecstasy even though I know it's a cruel trick on the poor progenitor of the pelts. I have had many furs but my favorites would include, a huge blue fox stole, a thick chocolate mouton lamb coat and a Blackglama full length mink coat I received one Christmas from an ex when I turned down his offer of a gold and diamond Rolex.
When I was a small child I loved to put my little face into my Mother and Grandmother's furs to brush the pelts against my cheeks and to inhale the lingering scent of their perfumes clinging to the furs.
We are led around by our olfactory keeness in that we can smell and taste thanks be to this most wonderful of senses. As a child I recall gnawing on sugar cane in a field, sipping wild honey from the waxy comb, licking the bowls of my Mother and Grandmothers cakes and icings, the pollen scented breast of the red bird my Father brought to me (in a little cage he had made) and then, to my chagrin, when Daddy made me turn the little wild bird loose (my first lesson in freedom and to love something is to set it free), licking the creamy center from my first Hostess cupcake, Granny's buttermilk pralines, our cook's chocolate and lemon pies; hard fried crunchy corn pone, lobster with drawn butter, lump crab in white butter sauce, picking up pecans from our trees, blackberries straight off the bush in my garden, and Pompano en papillote.
Sensory overload is me.
Jewels, furs, pearls on the skin, pima cotton sheets, caviar on blini, Calissons de Aix on the tongue, Mariage Freres tea (Pleine Lune in particular), handmade high rag content artisanal writing paper with frayed edges (French are the kings of designer paper products and writing instruments), Mont Blanc or vintage Waterman fountain pens with fat glass pots of peacock blue ink, French wafered nougats, French crystalized fruits, marzipan and almond paste, foi gras with Sauterne (I know it's cruel and mea culpa), omelets with black truffles, fine olive oil from France or Italy, birds nest soup, fine tea from India, China and Japan, tiny Umiboshi the salted preserved Japanese plums, the list can go on but it's enough and I give too much away on my character.
Take a moment and think about the times you were happiest in your life. Mine are the simplest times: the Candy cigarettes and wax lips of Halloween; smelling a crackling wood fire on a moonlit night in fall in an apple orchard sitting smack on a haystack; picking the produce from our garden; in the midst of a steaming kitchen cooking some delicious things like steamed treckle toffee puddings; burying my nose in the chest of a wonderful man who has on a good cologne.....just a hint of cologne after a steamy rendezvous so the fragrance is mixed with the fine perspiration he exuded during our heady acts of love (or hate as it may be).
Lindemans Kreik Lambic swilled with a bottle of bitter or a pint of Old Peculier in a pub or on a boozy day at home!
Amaretto licked from the fingers of your lover or kissed from his lips in a frenzy.
People will say it's the birth of their children, the day they married, when they graduated from college, etc. Those things are fairly common on the Happiness meter. Perhaps give thought to the kinkier pleasures of life; laying in a bed with sunlight filtering through some heavy velvet drapes pulled to fend off the afternoon sun because you and your paramour should not be in bed at that hour. Raindrops slapping on a tin roof while you snuggle deep into the down of the goose feather Duvet your British/Dutch Sea Captain lover has imported for you from his Netherlands home along with a few frozen bottles of Genever; a drink so potent a few thimblefuls have made you so giddily dizzy and drunk with passion you've burnt the roast in the oven. He always pronounces a toast his Dutch Grandfather quoted whilst imbibing Genever, "voor de wormen", and you can't help but think about the big "wormen" awaiting you in the boudoir......(this is the one man I most regret when I think of relationships I have bashed).
Have you had a 1982 Margeaux? Try it on a heady night when you have the best possible steak to grill and pommes Duchess in the pot add a bit of handmade thick lemony Hollandaise on a bland vegetable and you have a meal of epic culinary delight.
Now I leave you gentle reader to ponder one of the best pleasures ever concocted:
MOUSSE AU CHOCOLAT
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