Way back when I was planning this website over two decades ago, blogs were relatively new. I had grandiose and impossibly-ridiculous ideas of how I wanted ALANILAGAN.com to appear, none of which was possible. First, I wanted ambient music in the background and shifting light schemes. Second, I wanted fragrance, pumped out of everyone’s computer to complement whatever the current blog post was. Third, I wanted smoke (well, just some water vapor) to accompany the fragrance. I was going for an entire sensory experience. After discussions with my first webmaster, none of those wishes would come to be granted (or even possible) so I compromised and took up the challenge of writing the atmosphere I wanted to convey.
Since that time, many advances have been made on the website front, but I still can’t emit fragrance or smoke from your lap top or phones. That means this blog post on jasmine blooms must be a thing of description, a thread of words to wind its way into your mind versus your nose. A sweet classic white floral, jasmine’s perfume is tempered by a freshness, an element of green that keeps it from becoming too cloying, too sweet. It’s difficult to capture that outside of the natural scent, so I’m not a big fan of perfumes that proclaim to be jasmine – only the real deal will do. And maybe that’s something I should have realized from the beginning – there is just no approximating certain fragrances, and my initial attempt to do so was probably best left unfulfilled.
