ghoulnextdoor

Iced lemon slices in a cut-glass bowl, encased in ice; fresh, crisp herbs soaking in ice water, subtle as a lacy front or two. The memory of a glass of sweet white wine, a honeyed, floral Gewürztraminer wisp; round, rich, luscious, and strangely absent for all its suggestion. Somewhere between charming and refreshing, gentle with a glint in its eye; Not overly polite yet definitely inoffensive, nothing weird you can put your finger on, but there’s a phantom shimmer, a flickering presence, an impossible-to-name thing, which makes it either perfectly frustrating or frustratingly perfect.

The opening from the sprayer releases something akin to a decrepit lightning bolt locked in a dusty crypt. Sharp, electric decay, musty current, moth-eaten voltage. Then…a bit of shadowy aromatic lycanthropy, and it’s again what I thought I loved. A phantasmagoric zoetrope, a being resembling a Maria Germanova-type, shapeshifting through theatrical roles, a noble lady draped in jewels, a swaggering pirate, a beggar woman cloaked in rags, an avant-garde fairy in Stanislavski’s embodiment of The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck. Ghostly photographs, the specters haunting antique cartes de visite. At turns, powdery, leathery, metallic, vegetal, austere, sophisticated. Moscow Art Theatre witch-queen caught mid-transformation, glamorous and gloomy, enigmatic and a bit unsettling.

Eau Duelle rustles like a susurrus of sighs stirring through the reeds from that exact territory Algernon Blackwood describes in his short story/novella, "The Willows." Dry vanilla, grassy and herbaceous, maybe even rhizomatic, swaying, shifting, and restless. A humming of place, a hollow wind. Silvered marsh lights, bizarre fancies. Soft moonlight on myriad murmuring leaves. Vanilla as the uncanny antagonist of the nature trail, the weird tale the willows tell.