On Moleskines that smell of BPAL—sometimes it's the little things.

I have a habit of scenting the cloth bookmark of my Moleskines with BPAL. I'm about ten pages way from filling up my 3.5x5.5 pocket ruled notebook (and therefore am in need of another, sometimes soonish—because the size is so convenient to carry, and because I'd like to stockpile a few backups) which I've been using on and off for about two years now. The ribbon was scented with Haunted (soft golden amber darkened with a touch of murky black musk, my amber holy grail), and the scent has lasted these long two years—perhaps because the bookmark is often tucked in the book—a persistent, gentle thread of soft and powdery golden amber.

Its replacement is a 5x8.25 large ruled notebook, which I hope will be easier to write in (my scrawl gets even messier at the bottom of the pocket-sized pages) and hold more text—because I've been chewing through pages these days, since I've started using it to handwrite just about all my drafts. The scent, this time, is Boomslang (Snake Oil with cocoa, teakwood, and rice milk, my most beloved cocoa, my favorite non-skin scent)—in part as a simple celebration of the oil because I now have a backup bottle (from century_eyes) and so can use it with abandon, in part because there are fewer delights as simple, as pure, as ever-welcome, as the dark dark heart of cocoa absolute.

Somehow, the fact that I have enough content to write a post about Moleskines and BPAL brings me as much joy as the scent of cocoa wafting about me right now.

(Now if only I were well enough to take my lovely cocoa notebook to a coffee shop and get some use of it, but no—I have taken a turn for towards snuffly and stuffy, and I wouldn't be polite company for the world at large. Devon can put up with me instead, while I finish reading a subpar book.)