Leak in the Attic (ROUND 1)
SCENT OF THE DAY: Naruemit, by Prin
Synthetic civet, synthetic deer musk—and still this defeats many of the aetisinals that use the real thing. This is right on up there with Homa and Arsalan and Burmite Honey—but taken more in that Chinese apothecary vein and so belongs, in my categorization scheme anyways, in the Big Trouble in Little China universe.
Peach You got a chypre core here: You got all these lovely citrus elements (bitter-rind yuzu, lemon-leaf verbena, earl-grey bergamot) whose greenery is amplified by vine-juice galbanum and musky-root angelica. But all this—bridged by inky-leathery oakmoss—is pulled down by dark earthy elements (fungal-musty jatamansi, chocolate-medicinal patchouli, fruit-rot trat) and peppered with spices (sweaty-animalic cumin, nutty-herbal caraway, creamy-piney nutmeg, barky-dusty cinnamon) that add up to the chinese apothecary feel I adore in Prin especiually with the help of tiger-balm camphor and berry-Halls Sugandha Kokila. The result is clearly a chypre. Yes it is southeast asian in vibe. But Prin through in the classical notes to link it to classic chypres of European perfume too, like Femme and Mitsouko: peach, rose, carnation.
It settles down a bit too quickly perhaps but that makes it wearable. While not as rich and antique feeling as My Antiquity or my War and Peace (which do bring even greater gravitas at least in the European sense of Mozart), this makes a joke out of my mitsouko and my portrait of a lady. This outshines all almost just in rose alone (although that is hard to say with Portrait).
Cumin and aldehydes and apothecary glow (which links this tightly to Rattikarn and Dunhaung) and stinky oud (corrupted and second rate, no doubt, compared to the artisinal hits I know and love)—these facets make Prin so good to me.
I will do a comparison with the other apothecary Prins (Dunhaun, Rattikarn). Nbut I will say off the bat that this is the most erotic of the bunch—more getting into the hours when the herb hermit is enjoying a bit of self love.
*Let’s workshop this poem about the persistence of memory and emotional habit, where a man’s revisiting of a letter dredges up nostalgia for a stretch of time he once believed would be the worst.
Leak in the Attic
You unfold the letter, browned tape cracking, and so too the longing, tea at your elbow
long bitter, not for her but for that dreaded stretch right after, all your own—years
spent, morning and night with it in reach like the car keys, thinking you were too old.
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right)
