Markets and Sensuality

But a small excerpt from a travel piece built around enumeration, Anaïs Nin "The Labyrinthine City of Fez" in the section "Enchanted Places" in In Favor of the Sensitive Man and other essays

After color and the graceful sway of robes, the flares, the stance, the swing of loose clothes, come the odors. One stand is devoted to sandalwood from Indonesia and the Philippines. It lies in huge round baskets and is sold by weight, for it is a precious luxury wood for burning as incense. The walls of the cubicle are lined with small bottles containing the essence of flowers — jasmine, rose, honeysuckle, and the rose water that is used to perfume guests. In the same baskets lie the henna leaves that the women distill and use on their hair and hands and feet. For the affluent, the henna comes in liquid form. And there is, too, the famous khohl, the dust from antimony that gives he women such a soft, iridescent, smoky radiance around the eyes.

The smell of fruit, the smell of perfumes, and the smell of leather intermingle with the smell of wet wool hanging outside the shops to dry — gold bedspreads hanging like flags in the breeze, sheep's-wool rugs, the favored cherry-red wool blankets, and rose carpets, like fields of daisies, lilies, apple blossoms.

She goes on to state that Fez is the city where one rediscovers the meaning of the word "azure" by contemplating the sky. A nice break after the riot of sensation and always at hand to provide surcease to the palate.

And so for day 524
20.05.2008