Divine Heirs Perfumery, LLC

Inside Divine Heirs, each wall is its own shade of blue, but your mind automatically files them all under “ocean blue”. The office is set up as if Manny had hung a series of full-length mirrors on the supply closets to the right of our desks, unfolding his kingdom out of unlikely corners into a series of incongruous hallways and perspective points, extending on and on to create its own universe. A million little cubicles, every wall a different blue. Different angles of the sun on water, different depths, different climes. It is his universe. The ceilings are painted in ripples.


The other thing about Manny is the way his little sex-kitten heart purrs in orange. Manny wears an old man’s suit to the office, but his pumps, his wedges, his boots, his spikes, they are all some variant of orange. Damien and I name patterns of his moods based on the direction of the stripes of his stockings: carnival for vertical, little girl for horizontal, pizzaz for zigzag, or obscene for the furry-textured zebra prints, and the fine detail of his temper is hinted by the particular cast of orange of the shoes they escort. Huddled over my desk, we spin tales of the nighttime company that led to the creamy shades, the spectacular hangovers bringing miserably flat shades, the evening plans foreshadowed by swirls of flashy orange, but though we sit uncomfortably close to what seems like an awfully intimate secret, there are many things we don’t know about Manny. Like today, his spiked boots are Mars Popsicle, like a cold fire, his heels little snapping firecrackers that draw your body into a cringe. I tell Damien how he had company all morning and through lunch, a visitor who, against all form, went straight past me to Manny’s desk and tried to make some point or threat or just tried to dominate his attention, and how, for hours, Manny read to that visitor from the scrolls of our product names at the very peak of his vocal chords, high-pitched yet operatic, formal, even, until his company, face puffed and flaming, sweating and completely defeated, simply dropped off the planet. Diminished. Was sapped of importance, until you didn’t even notice he’d left, except that Manny had stopped singing.


We look over to him now, licking honey from his caller’s ear and wonder how he knew to pick those boots ahead of time. And who could be so angry with Manny?

For Diane, with Love

On your birthday I engraved a heart on the bench in the park.

I did it spontaneously, without any plan.

A bit out of ordinary for me, to do that, I may say.

There was something new in the air, a new shade of purple or red or blue in the sky.

I am not sure.

There was something warm in the cool breeze that was messing with my hair.

I remember the feeling,

I don't remember the facts.

It was that feeling that took my hand and drew the heart.

I wouldn't know who or how or why drew the other hearts;

every day I would see many new ones.

It makes me smile, it is so like you: to inspire and to create this happy place.

I love you Diane, happy (belated) birthday!

may my heart always be open to little

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

- ee cummings



"may my heart always be open to little birds...whatever they sing is better than to know..."
(photo by anke merzbach)


"and even if it's sunday may i be wrong...there's never been quite such a fool who could fail pulling all the sky over him with one smile..."
(by anke merzbach)

"I am not able, and I do not want, completely to abandon the world-view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information."--George Orwell (Why I Write).

"Wilde was deeply impressed by the English writers John Ruskin and Walter Pater, who argued for the central importance of art in life. Wilde later commented ironically when he wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray that "All art is quite useless". The statement was meant to be read literally, as it was in keeping with the doctrine of art for art's sake, coined by the philosopher Victor Cousin, promoted by Théophile Gautier and brought into prominence by James McNeill Whistler. In 1879 Wilde started to teach aesthetic values in London."--on Oscar Wilde, from Wikipedia

Te miro y se me abre la mente

.

Ni siquiera una mirada, para verte
sólo he de cerrar los ojos.
Oigo tu voz sin que hables
susurrándome caricias al oído.
Sin tu presencia, siento tu cálido respirar entrecortado
en mi cuello.
Atrapas mi pensamiento, lo esclavizas.
Estás ya dentro de mí y no puedo hacer nada,
mientras avanzas por mis venas como veneno
del que no me puedo deshacer.
Veneno tan dulce por otro lado.
Dulce, pero incurable, quisiera que fuera incurable.

by Miguel A.C.

[zoe]


(please press the photo, then the magnifier for a larger size to see the connecting lines...)

[Te miro y se me abre la mente:The Thread]
This illustration was inspired by Vesna's creation of the title phrase of this post (I look at you and my mind opens), and her initial photo.
I tried to incorporate the spiral connectedness of the shell, linking the various threads around the drawing. The image also fits with the first line of Migue's poem "Ni siquiera una mirada, para verte," as the central character--the clown gazing upon the simple string carried by the bird which inspires the opening of the possibilities of his world--is aware of the presence of all the other characters somewhere within himself. I was playing with the idea that he creates them with his imagination but also that they are there, unseen until he opens his imagination. And that one's imagination can be opened simply--with nothing more than a glance from another or of another. The bird could be the soul of the girl, here shown at different stages in her life all at once.

The vines draped over each of the young trapeze-artist's arms are loosely (the plant is not actually a vine) based on the drawings of the Adonis flammea in The Book of Botanical Prints by Basilius Besler. According to that Dressendorfer and Littger, who edited the book, "their red flowers recall the legend of how the flowers grew from the blood of the handsome favorite of the gods, which is why the plant has had this name since the 17th century." Adonis was a Greek god, a son of Cyprus, closely linked to the rebirth and vegetation deities of several other cultures. Wikipedia says, "He is an annually-renewed, ever-youthful vegetation god, a life-death-rebirth deity whose nature is tied to the calendar." For these reasons, I felt the plant to be a good symbol for the stages of the male aspect of the drawing.

One of the reasons he is linked with the cycles of death and birth lies in his beauty. Again, Wikipedia: "As soon as Adonis was born, the baby was so beautiful that Aphrodite placed him in a closed chest, which she delivered for security to Persephone, who was also entranced by his unearthly beauty and refused to give him back. The argument between the goddess of love and the goddess of death was settled by Zeus, with Adonis spending six months with Aphrodite...and six months with Persephone."

[end zoe]

[vesna]
He woke up with a mind like a Harlequin;
to whom thinking feels like a pain.
She dresses like a Mannequin,
She winks to the mirror, a bit vain.

His face is perfect: no apparent flaws.
Beautiful Adonis, ready to shine.
She sings: "He glows."
She believes:" He is mine."

He moves around the town,
feeling tall and proud.
One day she will pick the wedding gown;
One day they will fascinate the crowd.

Their story continues to live;
Their love has a magical power.
There is so much beauty to give:
she is a bird, he is a flower.
[end vesna]

We are the time. We are the famous by Jorge Luis Borges

We are the time. We are the famous

metaphor from Heraclitus the Obscure.

We are the water, not the hard diamond,

the one that is lost, not the one that stands still.

We are the river and we are that greek

that looks himself into the river. His reflection

changes into the waters of the changing mirror,

into the crystal that changes like the fire.

We are the vain predetermined river,

in his travel to his sea.

The shadows have surrounded him.

Everything said goodbye to us, everything goes away.

Memory does not stamp his own coin.

However, there is something that stays

however, there is something that bemoans.

Jorge Luis Borges

"Narcissus' Nightmare Becomes a Dream" (by zoe jordan)
[zoe] He looks into the pool--living, not stagnant--and sees not his own reflection, but that of his other... [vesna] image. The image broken into pieces, transformed into some unrecognizable shape, was looking back at him. Narcissus felt broken and unprotected, it seemed like the living pool was reflecting his inner self. His nightmare was there in front of him, so alive and scary: there is this floating ugly creature convincing him that his beauty is invisible, that his fears are out there for the world to see. Narcissus closed the eyes...
[zoe] He wished to see beauty, but new beauty: he wished to look into his reflection and see something more beautiful than himself, himself but more beautiful. He squeezed his eyes shut, and he willed it. And with his eyes shut, his other senses began to take over. He could smell a blossom, some blossom...what was its name? And a gentle, singing voice floated across the air, barely reaching his ears... [vesna]

Alphonse Mucha, Princess Hyacinth

That was the smell of the spring, of his mother's garden full of white hyacinth, smell of her warm hug and gentle touch that was wiping the tears from his dusty face. He was a little boy again. Playful and careless. He only feared that the night will interrupt his play and he'll have to go to sleep. He didn't like nights and sleep when he was a boy, they were bringing with them scary dreams...

[zoe]
...dreams of the forest before him, endless and dark, the monstrous roots and the hidden swamps, and the whispers of all that awaited his fall...the shivering trees that warned him, with sudden silence, of that dreaded arrival...


"Spooky Tress," by Gabriel Jordan