Textless Thursday (18)

More often than not, New York IS Wonderland. And I'm Alice.
Or the Cheshire cat.

3!

Today is September 18th. 

I left Slovenia on June 18th, which means that today marks 3 (!!!) months since I moved to New York.

I still have to pinch myself from time to time, because sometimes this whole shenanigan simply fails to feel real. Dude, I live in freaking New York!!!

The past three months have been a rollercoaster to say the least. Ups, downs, side turns, flips. You name it, I got it. All of it. I went from crazy-bordering excitement to deep sadness and everything in between. There's been frustration, joy, laughter, disappointment, worry, anger, hopefulness, awe. With no order whatsoever, no transitions, no small changes before the big ones. And a couple of briuses, both physical and emotional. But no tears. 

Yepp, I've had it all.

SOTD: The National - Hard to find. 

One thing that has NEVER popped into my crazy brain? Regrets. 

There are none. At all.

No matter how hard it sometimes is, how many times I get mocked for being "unadjusted" or an "uneducated foreigner" or "obnoxiously stubborn in my foreign ways", or how fun and exciting everything back home seems*, I LOVE MY CHOICE and would re-do it a million times over.

IstraTiMaterna view towards the Adriatic from Lipnik near Rakitovec,
Slovenian Istria (aka home turf), Slovenia 

Of course, I miss my friends horribly. Not a day goes by when I see, hear or do something and think how much more fun/awesome/meaningful that thing would be if I could share it with the people close to my heart. I still text them those random things, but a transatlantic text is never as powerful as one that only needs to cover a few kilometers. And more often than not, I hate the 6-hour time difference between Koper and New York and the 5-hour difference between Dublin and New York. It makes catching up more complicated than necessary, because, em, all of us, no matter which side of the Atlantic we occupy, sort of have, em, lives et cetera.

Well. I've met some pretty cool people since moving here, but haven't gotten really close with anyone. It is not easy for me to truly connect with somebody and my friends (I put that one in italics, because my definition of "friend" is quite different from what a typical American's would be.) from home still find me interesting enough to keep in touch regularly. So I don't feel like there is any necessity for new friends. Unfortunately though, it does not exactly work both ways and keeping in touch does not significantly reduce my withdrawals. Plus, my social life over here mostly sucks, as it is basically non-existent. I don't really go to glamourous clubs or cool beautiful-people-clad bars. There is the occasional coffee, stroll, drink or chat, but nothing more.

Non-IstraTiMaterna view from 30, Rockefeller Plaza (aka Top of the Rock),
Manhattan, NYC.

And that is perfectly fine, actually. 

Although a superfun night out with mojitos wouldn't hurt... But darn, it would ONLY be as superfun as expected if M and Z were there, too. 

Oh well, I guess sometimes a girl can't have it all at the same time. 

Cheers.

Jules

* I kind of know from experience that things back at home are NOT all that exciting. Nevertheless, I  do have 30+ years of experience with life in Slovenia :)

A scent of sense

I've always deemed the sense of scent a very important one. 

I associate the scents I smell with memories, dreams and beauty. 

And nastiness, too - especially on a humid garbage day in the streets of Manhattan, but that's a totally different story and we shall not speak of it here and now.

Source.

Back to the romantic notions.

Scent.

Yes. Right.

I'm the kind of person who needs scented candles and who filled her closet with satchels of lavender before filling it with clothes. The kind of person that boils orange peels and cinnamon sticks for hours. I'm someone who realizes she's getting over the boy she loved the minute she starts forgetting how he smells. The kind of person who does not leave the house without a spritz of perfume. To be honest, I wear perfume even when I don't leave the house. 

Because I associate the scents I smell with beauty. Even on myself. And because a very nice fragrance is one of those luxuries that I can actually afford to splurge on. 

A change of seasons (I am quite ready for the fall at the moment) also means a change of fragrance. And since I finished my previous colder-months staple, Lola, a perfume shopping trip was in order. Lola EdP is one of my all-time favourites and I am pretty convinced a fresh bottle will be gracing my apartment very soon. It is a heavy, but graceful, sort of vampy, and ladylike. I love it. I got my first bottle in Paris a few years ago and, yes, the scent will always remind me of Paris. Nevermind the fact that Marc Jacobs is quintessentially New York, my Lola is a Parisienne.

Another perk is that it kind of drives a few people I know crazy. In a good way.

Source.

But I was craving something new and different - since my life is all new and different at this point.

I had my eyes on this baby for a while now.    

I hadn't tried it before, but the whole "pheromone-emulating" idea was just too intriguing not to give it a shot. When Molecule 01, the first of the range, was first launched, it caused serious buzz. Now, there's a whole range of these concoctions, all of them based on one single aromatic chemical. 

A non-scent scent that is supposed to smell like you, but better? Seriously?

Yeah, yeah, sounds halfway too good to actually work, and halfway creepy as in Patrick Suskind's sort of creepy. 

So I looked it up online and checked where in New York it is sold. Yay Bergdorf Goodman!

I finally went there last Monday, when the weather was lovely and autumnly crisp enough to make my summer perfume smell out of place. It took me a while to navigate the HUGE beauty department at BG, but it was worth it. 

Of the three I tried, I fell in love with Escentric 01 immediately. There are a few others in the line, but 01 was my favourite. To me, it smelled like september rain, fresh grass, burja, and fruit. Lots of fruit. Nothing annoying or edible or whatever association fruity scents usually give me. Just good. 

Source.

On the way home I couldn't stop sniffing my wrist. And it just kept getting better and better. 

Honestly, the crisp notes it produces on me are a huge departure from what I would usually wear this time of year, but boy do I love this scent.

I've been wearing it for the past few days and still haven't gotten my nose saturated with it. It is weird. The scent itself comes and goes... It's half past seven pm now, I've worn this dose of Escentric for about 12 hours now, and it's still there. And it smells exactly as it did in the first hour.

It makes me smell so hot even I would do me. Or something.

Wow.

Jules