The smoke travels deep: Palo Santo and a poem about memory

Carner meets poet Ofelia Zepeda + a honeymoon trip to Mallorca

Welcome to the ninth edition of The Scented Stanza. It’s Tuesday, November 15th.

In 1929, the British poet Robert Graves moved to the west coast of Mallorca, in Deià. Of the island he wrote: “I found everything I wanted as a writer: sun, sea, mountains, spring water, shady trees, no politics and a few civilised luxuries such as electric light and a bus service to Palma, the capital.”

Last month, we travelled to the now German tourist mecca off the coast of Spain. This fact is so much so the case that the country paternalistically calls Mallorca Germany’s 17th province. If you look beyond the German radio stations, the availability of Bavarian wheat beer, and the German real estate advertisements – you will find a truly magical, mystical, mysterious dream of a place.

And so we steered clear of the crowds, and opted to stay on a nature reserve, where there were birds and prickly pear cacti and millions of mosquitos and scrubby shrubs like mastic and juniper. There were pine trees and big spiders and you could hear the ocean in the distance and you knew the sand dunes were close. One hot afternoon, we got lost in the pine forest and had to jump a barbed wire fence. Sweaty and scraped-up, we found paradise in a beach-side bar with cold beer and fried fish. There were long, narrow roads walled-in with limestone. Soft sand in fingernails. Cradled on either side by salt flats, we saw flamingos flying low like pink kites.

It was our honeymoon.

And there was smoke. In the mornings, the neighbouring farms slash-and-burned to prepare the ground for next year’s planting (were they burning olive branches?) and I wondered how I would ever figure out how to recreate this moment, this feeling, this scent. Right on the verge of a new season, right before the hotels and pools and restaurants would close and the island turns off its lights.

I haven’t yet found the perfect scent for that week, which was particularly singular. And so I’m zeroing in on the smoke, because it sparks the pleasure centres of my brain. Smoke is memory and safety and danger. Smoke is the full stop at the end of summer’s sentence and the promise of winter’s next chapter. Of burning everything down in order to prepare the fields for the long renewal.

What comes close? Maybe it’s Aftelier’s Vanilla Smoke. Or Aroma M’s Vanilla Hinoki. Is it the Patchouli 24 by Le Labo I already own? Then there’s the smoky herbaceousness of Byredo’s latest release, De Los Santos. Or maybe it’s something completely different, like Corsica Furiosa by Parfum D’Empire with no smoke at all, just an overwhelming greenness that climbs over you like ivy.

But the right scent is most likely the one I have yet to smell. For now, I’ll opt for Palo Santo by Carner, composed by the flashy perfume house in Barcelona. This Palo Santo is savoury and humid. It smells like buttered rum, milky chai tea—and smoke.

Germans sometimes talk about Zukunftsmusik when referencing what’s to come: it’s all just the music of the future. While the scent of Palo Santo approximates the hazy-dewy-balmy mornings on the surreal little island of Mallorca, it’s not quite right. Maybe instead of the past, the perfect scent is always the future’s music. And I suppose I am still looking.

This is “Smoke in Our Hair” by Ofelia Zepeda, first published in Where Clouds Are Formed in 2008.

Spritz your wrists with Carner.
Leaf through more poems by Ofelia Zepeda.

Fragrantly yours,
The Scented Stanza