To A Destined Shore Ithaka Mendittorosa -Versi-Odori d’Anima 2019

Luke Woodford

Cafleurebon review, orginally written in its first form by Danu Seith-Fyr, June 12th 2019.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.  Arriving there is what you’re destined for. But don’t hurry the journey at all.” C P Cavafy. 1911.

Ithaka was the first incarnation of a new trilogy, ‘Versi Studio’, Menditorrosa Odori d’Anima, envisioned by Stefania Squeglia, that draws primal waters from poetry, the Poem Ithaka by C P Cavafy (1911), emergent Perfumer is Camille Chemardin.  The second in the Versi Collection was Orlo, inspired by the poetry of Sylvia Plath. Upon reading Ithaka  I ask, why do we separate ‘travelling’ and life, for to be alive and drawing breath is travelling.

Chiara Fersini

 Mendittorosa Odori d’Anima, Ithaka, speaks undeniably to travel either upon the globe itself or the internal travelling that yields to us so much. The mythology of antiquity breathing as an ethereal insistence. I have often shed my skin, to renew my life and have lived several lifetimes in my unfinished span.

Chiara Fersini

Always the time accelerates, we travel life’s curves and passages, ever more conscious of the passing moment. Reminded of the sands running pace through the glass. Imperative to imbibe every sensation and moment of the path chosen, never forgetting to take the unknown trails. In the demands of the modern world, how we can forget to observe and appreciate the wonder, the minutiae in awe. The sunlit sea warmed by Mediterranean sun, the wonders of light playing on ancient stones, labyrinthine scents of the ages in layered nudity.  Travel lays us bare and invites us at every crossroads and brow of the hill to sense beyond our senses.  The first sights of new locations, the hands of new love upon our skin, the hearing of church bells ringing through ancient winding streets, the discovery of unique airs that waft over a particular place scenting your pathway with an unperceived perfume, that once smelt, imprints immemorial.  The immaterial treasures that find their way under our skin. All assimilated osmotically into our substance.

Pokras Lampas

The rising anticipation that sits within you like a held breath as you travel, the vistas opening before like the unfolding of a never-ending rosebud that has ached to reveal itself.  Sharpened excitement, our visions swirling, taking form even before land is sighted.  The poetry of Constantine P Cavafy urging us to garland ourselves with the treasured pearls of existence.

As you set out for Ithaka, hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body. C P Cavafy.

It is an entrancing composition, from its very meeting with my skin to days later, the finest gossamer reminiscences around me.  Bergamot, bright and inceptive, brings the lightness of being that I associate so fully with travelling light in any sphere, the sense of release and ease of being within yourself. Warmed hues, at the prow of a sailing boat, bathed in an aquatic Magnolia that is nothing short of sheer delight, watery and ethereal with a rich incense mantle, delicate tendrils emanating from a thousand sticks of the Temple creating a subtle body upon my form. Beckoning me to feel, to open my eyes, to extend all senses beyond their modernity dulled capacity.  Menditorrosa Odori d’Anima, Ithaka asks me to reach beyond reminding me over and over of each precious sensory experience that is now.

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

  Ithaka C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems (Princeton University Press, 1975)

Each step upon this journey is a metaphorical evolution within, Ithaka beguiles continuously.  A sublime quartet of Incense, Cedar, Cypriol and Benzoin, far flung at the beginning, like Ithaka on the horizon, insight to new possibilities, like stories read page by page. They are winds of the Zephyrs blown from the four directions, carrying aloft all manner of promised encounters.  Standing at the prow of your ship, instincts high, every second fecund and enlivened. Arriving in proximity, a polyphony encompassing Labdanum and Patchouli, embraced again with incense plumes. Written in Ithaka are all the places that incorporate me, scribed in skin, that gathers all the scattered pieces together and decorates my Soul in ardent garmentage.

Pokras Lampas

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”

― anaïs nin

 Ithaka is the distillation of exploration in each respiration, the minute observation of nanoseconds, the constant wonder and renewal of life for living. The epitome of the pinnacle of each moment.

Bergamot, Aqueous Magnolia, Incense, Patchouli, Labdanum, Incense Resinoid, Virginian Cedar, Cypriol, Benzoin.

Ithaka, Mendittorosa - Esxence 2019.

with gratitude and thanks to Stefania and Mendittorosa for your generousity and friendship.

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