MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017--part 88)
scent of the day: Triad, by Bortnikoff
Triad (2020, Dmitri Bortnikoff)—a woody-floral fragrance that, through its celebration of pink rose in all its fruity-sour-green (and later soapy-sour-green) glory, is one of the better animalic rose-ouds in my collection (not as brutal as Beauty and the Beast or as deep as Malik al-Taif but right up there with Jinx’s J-Musk Zabad Boy, a vintage cousin that moves away from Bortnikoff’s fern-wiped mildewed crotch into a soap-sudded musky crotch)—
gasses the nose with a nectar-grass merger of leafy-lychee May rose (buzzing with Spring vitality) and several oud varietals that, although high-potency and dosed with quite a heavy hand (in a good way), could make those who associate oud with the cowpat-barnyard aromas characteristic of unaged Assam oud think they have been shortchanged since they each tilt deeply into the vegetation-apothecary territory (especially by the lemon-eucalyptus Sri Lankan oud, which brings facets of honey tea and even coffee bean, but also by the tonka-reinforced mildewed-tobacco combo of mossy-fungal Thai oud, which brings facets of fruit rot and even root-beer sarsaparilla, and—in what needed to be included if only to honor the Chinese Mafia the fragrance name calls to mind—herbal-camphor Chinese oud, which brings facets of green peppercorns and wet stone and a mushroom-moldy element that is more subtle than what we get in Yaaseen’s 2023 Chan Hainan oil or Areej’s History of Chinese oud spray but I feel is the true shining star of the oldest editions of Triad),
this mutually-reinforcing rose-oud interplay (both reinforcing especially one another’s vibrant stemmy-green aspect) scattered into immense projection by a lemon-leaf magnolia whose fruit-spritzer effervescence plays a big part not only in reinforcing the white-grape sparkle of the May rose but also in making Triad—in all its editions (the newer screwcap edition of a wiseman’s smoke and ash, the older flush cap edition of an artist’s herbs and mold, the middle-child plus-cap edition of a colt’s bright diesel gas)—both highly luminous and projecting (one of the strongest projectors in Bortnikoff’s lineup, in fact)
and yet anchored in a phenolic-astringent aura that perhaps contributes the most to the gasoline facet I pick up especially in the plus-cap version (rubbery-industrial Sumatran benzoin, a form of benzoin—one Gardoni highlights in much-more-synthetic Risk—whose vanilla-almond facet is recessive and whose styrax-varnish facet is prominent, plus wine-barrel crocodile wood, a lacquered-parchment oud-adjunct—also known as Indonesian Bouya or white oud—not to be confused with the less-valuable oud filler Gaharu Buaya that sometimes gets called “crocodile agarwood,” plus musky-leathery hyraceum, mineralized excrement that tilts more in the creosote and burnt plastic direction than in the poop and colonoscopy direction)—
the overall result being a gasoline-and-mold rose fragrance that, although more celebratory of rose than even the rose-richer Oud Maximus (which, tangled in orange-spicy-skanky complexity, lacks Triad’s dialed-in purity of focus, where a busybody plurality finds itself corralled into a minimalistic-seeming unity that would make Raymond Carver proud), does not relegate the ouds to second-fiddle status, a fact that (as I suggested above) could easily go unappreciated given that the green presence of the oud (bitter, vegetal, herbal) carries the whole (so long as you bracket off the suggestions of rot and mildew especially in the old flush-cap version or the smoke and ash of the newer screw-cap version) closer than you might think to leafy-twig staples like Amouage’s Beach Hut Man (a fragrance that even those informed enough to know about the various species of oud, such as the sinensis and crassna and perhaps subintegra species we get here, and those careful enough not to build a monolith of oud around the Assam-malaccensis variety would never associate with oud);
the overall result being, in other words, a wood-smoked rose fragrance that, although convenient (and not wrong) to describe as a hyper-detailed 8K zoom-in on May rose (resolution so crystal-clear it is like seeing the borders of contact lenses against the film star’s sclera), is in reality a mutually-reinforcing oud-rose interplay in which the various bitter-botanical ouds (second element in the triad) amplify the May rose into Taif-rose intensity without spoiling its distinctive delicacy or creating some synthetic caricature (a feat achieved through the tension between the airy sparkle imparted by the magnolia, which together with May rose constitutes the first element in the triad, and the tarry-ferality of the hyraceum-bouya-benzoin combo, which is the third element and root of the smoked aroma not far from that you can find on an uncleaned vibrator head weeks after the ultramarathon),
a feat that for whatever complex tricks of the mind evokes an array of visuals from the Pak Chong shooting location of Bruce Lee’s 1971 breakout hit The Big Boss (cloudless skies of washed-out blue stark against background Sino-Thai mountains; dusty ochre roads lined by the wooden carts and makeshift stalls of Chinese-emigrant vendors under the meager shade of swaying coconut palms; sun-drenched sugarcane fields and the expansive green exotic lawns I get from Dia Man; Theravada monks bowed in robes of saffron orange; bleached Thai temples of breezeblock ventilation; tropical florals tucked behind ears and woven into hair) and particularly to the end fight scene on the manicured grass lawn of his enemy’s compound (only here, given the impact of the magnolia and May rose, Bruce struts in not while eating what seems to be pork rinds out of a brown paper bag but rather while sipping a BoKu, a now obsolete white-grape adult juice box from the baggy-suit nineties of Richard Lewis shoulder pads).
*Note that my screw-cap bottle (darker juice) is more fruity and boozy and tannic and smoky and ashy (I suspect it is from the smoky-tarry benzoin working with the oud) whereas my older formulations (the flush cap bottle and especially the very light juice I have in a travel decant from a plus-cap, which came out right before the screw-cap and right after the flush cap) is more green and bright and robust and gasoline like (I suspect because of the emphasis on Chinese oud and Sri Lankan oud as well as the industrial-rubber elements of benzoin). We can draw further distinctions here. The flush cap one is the most herbal and moldy—making for a camphoraceous mildew impression—than the others. I see now, smelling them all together and also given my experiences with Chinese oud from Yaaseen (Chan Hainan) and from Areej le Dore (History of Chinese Oud and Chinese Oud 1), that the flush cap Triad ramps up the Chinese oud the most of the three. Indeed, I will say that it is the centerpiece of the whole composition—arguably overtaking the rose (swallowing it with fungus), the rose staying prominent for much longer in the newer screw-cap version (floating above the ash) and more integrated in the middle plus-sign version (synergizing with the bright gas to make this sour-green fume). Yes, the plus-sign cap one is way diesel—bright and industrial fuel. I usually prefer the smokier stuff. And I also really have grown fond of Chinese Oud. I do like the raw young stallion ebullience of the plus-sign version too though (it has that Muraskino bright kick). So sometimes I might prefer that. TDLR: Smoke and ash of a wiseman (horizontal cap), herbs and mold of an artist (flush cap), bright diesel gas of a fiery colt (plus cap).
MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017—part 88)
sensing the dinosaur in the parrot eye
apologizing to people for crying in front of them
sick of seeing family since they mourn you as if already dead
mothers inking names in their children’s clothing for body identification
trying to talk to your father in that half-hour window before after-work stupor
extending forgiveness less because he deserves it than because you deserve peace
simply raising a few fingers from the steering wheel to the man on the corner
staged yawning spreads into genuine yawning among most witnesses
mousetraps and testicles
a Chinese food deliveryman disgusted by the thought that the pizza deliveryman now at his door, dreck of the American Dream, is making eyes at his daughter
deciding what to purchase perhaps is one of the most powerful ways for citizens now to cast their votes
a cigarette after mouthwash
the shock of obese make-out sessions
in love it is not obscene for an imperfect being to expect being taken as perfect
distracting the kids from daily bomb sirens added to the besieged mother’s duties
a hobo squatting out shit in an alley, his great-white-shark eyes unfazed by high beams glowing them like road signs
even more concealed it seems, now that we abandon the distinction between man and deed, is that abyssal stratum in which we are one even with our antipodes
social-media-linked phones in everyone’s pocket reveal not only how brutal and cold police can be but how playful and cognizant dogs and cats and squirrels, even turkeys and spiders, can be
from delusions of patheticness to delusions of grandeur in the span of minutes
denial that your kind has simply edited out the inconvenient parts of scripture
putting the ultimate goal out of mind lest its magnitude stop you in your tracks
let your dying be an occasion to bring out the best in onlookers
prison guards tearing apart your only sanitary pads during a flash cell check
never allowed to offer unsolicited advice to you, even when it comes to protecting you from going a bad way— if he better respected his boundaries, that would a deal-breaker
especially since we are always already shifting our vision to fit the masses, what serious artist would ever decide to shift his vision to fit the masses?
so focused on making a good impression that they repulse others, the lonely further manufacture their loneliness
what do we hope to avoid by labeling all suicides “cases of mental illness”?
exhausting the emotional juice of his bad-touch childhood by writing about it
being stuck up for your cross piece, unsure if it will even help to yell out, “Yo dad—dad it’s me, bro: Mikey!”
the rescuer risked such a risky rescue only because at the time he had been in the process of rescuing himself
too gutless to get on heroin
privatized public spaces
how much others could grow, shake at least that intergenerational grudge against life, seeing a dying done well!
no wonder their self-hatred now: their slogan, fifty years back, was “Never trust anyone over thirty”
the real-life telenovella of our monkey world where encouraging men to express their feelings (fear and love) requires shaming them for being stoic
all the eye-rolling in church—most of us are not stupid, just at bottom pragmatic
with cooperative parenting, the mom is no longer screwed if the man leaves her
worrying about whether our children, away from us, are okay more so because we would feel bad if something happened while we were not worrying about whether they were okay
disincentivized from striving for heaven after it dawned on you that your nagging wife had been dead set on getting there herself
but even a one-year old is going to die anyway
regard the patient more so as a collaborator
having the money to be a functioning addict
do not go to your death as an amateur: attend to dying for the research
the son playing alone at her feet is a call to put her work aside
the more death-phobic the more enticing euthanasia
straight-men pants bulge with subtlety watching gay porn
aggression, at bottom, is not wanting to be where you are
hungry enough that you await not the film’s love or chase scenes but its meal scenes
makeup even after days of no shower
microbial stowaways in space rock
only whenever the parents left his bedside was the child allowed the knowledge that he was dying
looking for an undue button— on the counter, on the floor— after accidently breaking the mug
even though we can never know what is going on in the mind of an other, it still makes sense to ponder what might be up there if we want to influence it
grieving as a way not to hate ourselves for having made this place inhabitable
so much dying, but still no dying-literacy—dying-literary, in fact, dying
anti-anxiety meds for orca mothers when their calves are taken
waiting for the subway rumble to cover the sound of the deed
that cross-century urge to stick nose-and-ear gunk in books
broken-heartedness can signal that you get it, that you are tuned in
so many elders, but tucked out of sight
much more sure that it happened after retellings too many to count
“patient not to be informed of diagnosis”
in the grand theater of fake fury over the president’s hot-mic boast that he “grabs ’em by the pussy,” she recast her soirée flex—worn like Cruella fur over years of milking envy from starstruck primates—as mascara-tear MeToo (ripe with anal embellishment)
living in the time where humans are becoming outdated need not mean living in a time where they have no purpose
perhaps the one who quotes random scripture, as if somehow pertinent to your situation, expects you to read pertinence into it—and so can afford to be random
secrets confessed during the nursing home visit, where mom will not remember
psychotropics open you to the implacable automaticity of inner speech
junk food craved by the junky for being cheap and yet high calorie
people around whom special sides of you come out
comforted to be annihilated before the rest
mere advocacy statistics
sex awkward because you already sexted
father’s hands sudsing your own at the sink
banking on a terminal diagnosis to unlock your inner saint
that age when a child in the antebellum South had to face that some of his best playmates are just commodities—indeed, his very own
king-of-the mountain on dirt mounds excavated from a mine, draglines paused in the air for the holidays
