Making Perfumes In A Medieval Monastery

“In a world sayable and lush, where marvels offer themselves up readily for verbal dissection, smells are often right on the tip of our tongues — but no closer — and it gives them a kind of magical distance, a mystery, a power without a name, a sacredness.” — Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

Every time I do that meandering hike up to The Cloisters through Fort Tryron Park, I like to pretend I’m in the scene of an Anne Carson poem. With one single exception during the 9 years I’ve lived in New York, I only go to The Cloisters in the dead of winter. Like Carson’s narrator on the moors, I trudge against the biting wind, making my way over circuitous slopes lined with threadbare trees, up slippery stone staircases amidst jutting boulders, and along cliffside overlooks rendered sepia and ashen.

By the time I make it up to the entrance to the building — whose monastic tower and hourly clock chimes feel so utterly out of place in a city of pavement and skyscrapers — I’m already a few minutes late to the perfume-making workshop.