Terra Incognita

Another week in sunny Paradise. No, not really but at AlaraApothecary, if life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. It’s been a really busy time. There’s a prospective pop-up in London, there’s a new range of diffusers being finessed, there’s a photoshoot for an ad campaign, etcetera, etcetera. Sleep, you say? Pah, sleep is for amateurs. We laugh in the face of fatigue.

Not a lot to report. The news is still all about Covid and quite frankly, you need real faith to believe the whole farrago is sustainable. Let me say it again, Covid is a busted flush, it will never hold. All we are going through now is just sound and fury, signifying nothing. Yes, I have been called a crazy fantasist. More than once in fact but it doesn’t mean I’m wrong. You know my motto, ‘Be of good cheer, greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world’ All news seems to be only bad news, and my heart goes out to the poor Afghanis. Talk about your nightmare scenarios, that whole mess just seems so intractable.

This week I frittered away my time looking at pictures of places I never knew existed. Rainbow mountains! Who knew? Well, apart from the citizens of Peru and China, obvs. The fact that these two hallucinatory landscapes occur at opposite ends of the Earth blows my mind. I’m not entirely convinced by the geological explanation of oxide and sulphide deposits. Why are the surrounding ranges unicolour, what deposited oxides and sulphides just there? Riddle me that. I love a mystery. You can probably tell that I was one of those ‘why’ children. This is why I love science so much. Needless to say, I refer to real science, not science by committee. My next thing is going to be about cymatics. Cyma who, you say? Just wait and see. It’s fascinating to see how many cultures have a creation story based on sound. My fave (after good old Genesis of course) is the Australian aboriginal legend of songlines. If you haven’t read Bruce Chatwin’s book, you’re in for a treat.

It would not be a post without my fave Tartaria buildings of the week 🙂 Yes, I’m still thinking about that, can’t figure it out yet but I’m puzzling, puzzling….and probably coming to the wrong conclusion 🙂

How much do I love the Chrysler building? Let’s put it this way, my heart has been known to skip a beat when I catch sight of it rounding the corner from Pershing Square. Issues? You bet! It’s weird, I don’t even like art deco generally but this building, wow. I must have a gazillion photos of it by now. Every time I go to New York, I take another twenty or so. Ridiculous. I leave you with a terrible medical joke which will hopefully successfully lower the tone. Have a great week.

A woman in labour suddenly shouted, “ Shouldn’t! Wouldn’t! Couldn’t! Didn’t! Can’t!”

“Don’t worry,” said the doctor. “Those are just contractions.”