MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017--part 82)
scent of the day: Blue Civet Dream, by Pinoy Sirun
My benchmark tangy civet alongside Civet Regale and of course the pure paste: Civet Royale. This Pinoy is very much like raw civet—unaged civet paste in a spray form. It is so bright and sour it gives the impression of citrus rose. Because this zooms in so much on civet, it surpasses Murasakino and even Civet Regale as a reference civet—or at least a reference unaged civet (the agred reference must go to Russian Adam and Sultan Pasha’s Civet de Nuit). The Elkahldi paste, however, must be the ultimate benchmark since it is not blended with anythign to my knowledge—it is just pure 30 yr old civet.
The Pinoy Blue Civet Dream civet is queasy just like both Elkhaldi’s and very naturalistic. But unlike the other two it goes in a soapy direction, a soapy blue direction because of the Lotus whereas the Elkhaldis—yes, even just the paste—go more in the stewed fruit rank rot direction: civet plus stewed fruit stink rot that is very thick and nasty. Elkhaldi’s paste is all-the-way nasty. It is the sort of nasty that eposes the true civet groupies from the fake. Just like a 13yr old rap or rock groupie might talk a lot of junk and even throw panties onstage or flash a tit but cannot hang when it comes time for the tour-bus needs (multiple needs: manager, audio-and-sound guys, waterboys, and all the fine people ensuring a successfgul show night after night), many might say they want more and more aggression with their animalics and that they “just love-love-love civet” but retch when they take a whiff of Elkhaldi’s black carmex canister.
This is not to say Blue Civet Dream is not nasty. It is, and in a much sharper brighter way reminsicent of vintage masculines (from Kouros to Boss) and their beloved withered-urinal-cake-at-a-baseball-stadium accord. Think of it more—and this is perfect for the baseball stadium image—more of a summer based intensely animalic. With the Elkhaldi, which is much farther from toilet bowl, the stewed density makes it more appropriate—if you are one to think in terms of seasons, which I am not—you would think for winter.
Here is another way to state the comparison. The Elkhaldis—yes, even the spray blend Civet Regale despite its rosy florishes (in fact, it is only nastier because of those flourishes)—are all funk funk funk. Pinoy, however, comes off much more like a caricatured version of soapy-skanky American powerhouse masculines from the 70s and 80s. I say “caricatured” because—like your blown up head drawing at a carnival, which is not really that big but still highlights who you are as if for the first time—no vintage really ever smelled this damn urinal skanky. If we consider this fragrance an ode to the 80s, then it is the sort of ode that exaggerates—like, for example, when you have a movie today about the 80s and we get synth and neon taken to levels beyond what was true of them. In that way, Blue Civet Dream makes a lot of the talk—and by the way it is by no means empty talk (Kouros, after all, is funky enough for most people)—a reality.
Yes, Blue Civet Dream brings the mythology around 80s perfume much more to life than any 80s perfume ever did. And it does so with a cool artisanal twist. The twist is mainly a function of including a glut of blue lotus. That lotus, water lily, reminds me a lot of Ensar’s Mystical Lotus—in fact, Blue Civet Dream is like if you took part Kouros and part Mystical Lotus (which, given some of the rumors spread about the perfumer, might be in part true). The Lotus also has this berry brightness that, especially with its subtle fermented muskiness, is synergistic with the civet. The lotus also brings a hypnotic-dreamlike feel and sense of water—not the ocean-spray of synthetic waterlily but rather, and just like in Mystical Lotus, deep and still and ancient pond water with facets of mud and roots.
MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017—part 82)
drinking on your shift
home fries
botched fresh starts
a flight to Turkey for a hair transplant before cremation
a clitoral hood with a hang time that would make even some tits jealous
a lover with one eye on you and another watching out for something promising
selling crack to the parents of your classmates
giving him praise, obviously gratuitous, to make him feel how piddly he really is
happy birthdays received only from companies: generic, automated, but welcomed
the mall photo-booth shoot with your new girlfriend to see how you are together
having to be reminded, again, not to eat your kid’s school lunch
Satan is a theist
the inefficient way might just be the meditative way, a me-time breather that in some cases prevents the place from becoming all bullet holes and brains—so pause a beat before you ridicule
opposing your conscience to hurt yourself— now an end in itself as opposed to what it used to be: to hurt others who cared
does it make much difference now if the memory was due to reality or dream, story or song?
what does it say about “legitimate” gods and religions that people today go to Jedi Church or sincerely pray to Spiderman, a symbol widely known to be fictional?
it is logically impossible to love machines more than ourselves—you know why
at the age when it is clear that this all is winding up, you say “in a way, it is not”
the half-done crossword puzzle of the dead
give the children more—or is it less?—credit: when they implore their mom to eat the marrow in the KFC bones “because it’s good for cancer, it is not as if they do not realize this is too-little-too-late
to bring into the convent earthly authorities with their forensic kits would only cloud the matter: it was an incubus who creampied the teen postulant during her absolution, taking the form of a hairy-eared priest framed thrice now in Satan’s anal-fissure game
nothing seems more valuable than intelligence, except when it is antagonistic to survival
negotiating a ceasefire to break for lunch in digestible peace, and even have a little soccer game—when you factor in the head shots to come, such a tear-jerking sign of humanity horseshoes back into barbarism
rhythm lost being out of the gutter so long
two-hand touch abandoned for tackle when beyond the gaze of the recess monitor
a child first hearing about God’s dark side
on a first-name basis with homeless people
likable only in the first stages of acquaintance
concluding with unquailing conscience that the other religion is false on grounds, yep, that it so readily contradicts scripture
the go-to temptation of grade-school evangelicals, corny as hell: making whomever they might bully carry out the most relevant stations of the cross
to insist that their violence is not due to the violence of their archaic scripture threatens to make their violence innate
to her daughters (“creeped out” by her new boyfriend), she says—smelling, herself, the gaminess of their trails— “Tch. That nigga ain’t used to closed doors and shit”
such conspiracies involve secrets too succulent for so many humans to keep
his itch to know—at heart, nothing more than an itch to discredit someone
is your faith so entrenched that when Christ fails to return on the slated stroke of midnight, you rouse your sleepy children with: “Ah! Another time zone!”?
proving that death is not bad by blowing yourself up
poorness in faith indicated by funereal despair and fear of death
significant in virtue of the vastness of our insignificance
owning up to her that she is too sick to live would open up needed conversations— but who are you to be so burdensome?
beware of activists who strive to prevent their own irrelevance
banning verse composed in the manner of the metronome is like banning the jazz drummer
turning reductionist moves on their head: x-y-z neurons firing are nothing but love rather than the other way around
