What Patchouli Means to Me

My first brush with patchouli occurred sometime in the mid 80's, we were in Boston (Charles Street to be exact) crossing the street and there were some people standing on the island between the streets, they were in the middle of crossing also. They were kids, probably a few years older than us. My boyfriend at the time said, "Ugh, patchouli...." when we got near them, but not loud enough for them to hear. I said "What's patchouli?" which he answered with a Shushhhh, I didn't know who or what he was talking about. He said, "Those hippies over there, they reek of patchouli." And those kids looked kind of dirty, I recall they were all bundled up in stringy like clothes-it was winter and one was wearing a brown suede fringe jacket with an acoustic guitar strapped to his back- so they looked like stringy, frindgy clothes and hair. Not filthy dirty but hip dirty, they had a style, a coolness about them.

It smelled like fresh dirt which the wind wafted it in our direction, and it was strong. Like soil and oil, and planting things in terracotta pots outside in the summer. It did not smell like perfume to me, it was simply an aroma, not something you'd pay a lot of money for out of a store which came all packaged up in a fancy bottle with a sprayer. It was the anti-perfume, the anti-establishment perfume.

A few years later I bought a small, amber bottle of patchouli that smelled just like that dirt smell. Not Spiritual Sky, I had smelled their patchouli and it wasn't the same. This was some, possibly hand-mixed/handmade oil I got out of an occult shop that had shelves full of exotic oils. Along with the patchouli I got a bottle of Mango and a bottle of Sandalwood. The sweetness of the Mango attracted me.  I also acquired a bottle of coconut and some different Musks (Egyptian Musk, Dark Musk, the ones they sell on the sidewalks in NYC). So I had a nice little arsenal of fragrances going there with all those bottles. That kept me satisfied for a few years.

The patchouli laden perfumes of today don't have that soil like scent, well very few do, if even. I don't catch the soil/dirt accord except in one fragrance. It arises when one of my girlfriends wears Angel, and only on her do I smell it. On other people Angel smells sweeter, more cotton candy, more chocolate. On her the patchouli explodes. Must be a body chemistry thing.

I was reminded of the hippie patchouli incident a couple of days ago when I had the dogs out for a walk. One of the neighbors had recently raked up leaves (or neatened up their ground area, their house is on a hill so its not a lawn) and the rake had exposed all the semi-moist dirt, with little chunks of grass remaining. My dog thought that would be a great place to sniff around or go pee-pee so I had to pause there and the scent hit me. My mind wandered off and back to 30 years or so ago, remembering those frindged hippies and their patchouli. I don't even know if the dog did her business there or not, I was daydreaming of patchouli.