MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017--part 73)
I WORE TWO OILS THIS MORNING—STRAIGHT UP NEAT AGARWOOD
scent of the day 1: Suma 2025 (Sumatran Oil), by Yaaseen
Deep wood smoke but without the mesquite-barbecue direction that so often comes with smoke releases: from Akro’s Smoke to TSVGA’s Vicki-Lin to Ensar’s Oud Dhul Q and Aroha Kyaku. If anything it is more, and in keeping with typical Sumatran oils (although this is at the smokey extremes of the mineralic-green style we get there), like Areej’s Oud Taiwan. Smoky forest is big here—none of the fruity sparkle of Borneo or the leathery polish of Malaysian or the barny saddle of Assam or the honey-fruit of Cambodia. It comes closer to the mushroom-mold of Chinese and the swamp-peat of Papuan—only you have to picture extreme smokiness that muzzles such charqcteristics—peat least of all, mushroom most of all—under black char. It is almost as we have these non-barbcure burnt bark pieces soaked by jungle rain and collapsed over mossy stone.
scent of the day 2: Kodo Kanbojia 2020 (Pailin Antwood), by Yaaseen
Very fine Cambodian oud—a bright woodiness especially set against neat oils like Suma (a smoky dark sumatran oil). It comes off very much like a cross between 3 parts wine lees, spent yeast leavings at the bottom of wine barrels, and 1 part raisin. I feel it would take Salute! By Parfum d’Empire, which focuses on that wine lees element, to the next level. It comes off like a boozy honey spread over aged reddish-blonde wood. Or better, and to honor the clear tobacco impressions typical of a Cambodian, it comes off like a boozy honey spread over a reddish cigar like Arturo Fuente Rosado Sungrown Magnum. A honey-woody cigar itself could be considered the representative for this oil. Think a cigar somewhere between the honeyed-bread-and-cedar of a Davidoff Colorado Claro, on the one hand, and the honeyed-bourbon-and-oak of a Cohiba Weller, on the other hand—not at silky as the former but not as robust and full bodied as the latter either. Oiver time the darker honey tobacco seems almost to reverse back in time to a fresher state. In the dry down it is more a medicianl cherry like what I get in my Kamboche version Of Wolves and Men. The sweetness, though, is fermented though or in a tobacco wayu and more like grass. That is whay I say that we are almost in a reversal—the tobacco leaf coming back into life as a plant, indeed, I almost get that sour-green-apple-meets-vetiver-grass like I get in releases such a Bortnikoff’s Vetiver Nocturne Absolu. It’s almost like the more varnishy qualities transform into an apple-sour.
MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017—part 73)
a shit-spit skims testicle hair on its path to toilet splat
scared enough that your hands have no home
thinking about going home while locked away from it will only ruin your day
gun, rope, brick, river
that earnest sightings of Tupac and Elvis still persist—people staking their very reputations on them—might edge us closer to understanding Christ’s postmortem visits to his disciples
“I just stopped loving him”— even as it explains nothing— somehow explains everything
being such a successful BS-er suggests that you may need to hang around smarter people
how many of the most sepulchral rituals were originally no more than trolls to ridicule those ignorant enough to follow them?
dissolution of the self from a life so ritualized, so repetitive each day, like some macro-mantra chant
Whole Foods shoppers asperse Walmart on behalf of the many who—kept alive by it—could not do so in good conscience
the comfort of hearing footsteps in the apartment above, knowing she is there—alone as well
the need to ingest a drug to give order to this day
the beauty of a human is that he may not be “all there” wherever he is
the beauty of a human is that his plans can be tastier than “reality”
blatant peeking during the Holy-Ghost blackout
that witchcraft hysteria had people killing loved ones might help us fathom why the hell the original disciples would wager their lives on the messiah-status of a felon
at least their frustration at having no cellphone reception here gets the dinner guests conversing
feeling that we are having a good time only after checking on social media how what we are doing compares
taking serious in good conscience only some of the mandates issued by a God whom you tell your heart sits infallible
the distance that might have existed between an atom in my left foot and an atom in my right
baking soda hunks he smoked in delusional hope broadcast in the vague sweep between the wildest error in your favor at the Arm & Hammer plant and the brain finding the weak resemblance strong enough to Pavlov out a bit of dopamine
late night melancholy churned up by sitcom theme songs from past decades
watching a movie with drive-bys to motivate you to do the drive-by
mentally segregated from the cosmos by light pollution
wind just right to carry betrayals to ear
figuring that someone else will call about those bum legs sticking out from the curb-box for the last few days
the 50-yard-line at midnight; the classroom at prom hours; the toothpaste among garbage
