MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017--part 95)
scent of the day: Oud Monarch, by Bortnikoff
Oud Monarch (2020)—a tropical-cacao oud fragrance that tilts greenhouse florals toward an edible opulence of Cool-Whip-chocolate-rose sensuality with just enough watercolor understatement to make this an ideal Valentine’s Day fragrance (although less for the down-low high-school fling in a pleated skirt, her teeny-bopper friends—asking for it too—giggling by the school bus as you sit low in the car—back again after another pregnancy scare—bumping the “Saweetie” she likes, than for a more-rose-bud-prolapse-prone MILF with sagging gravity and a gap like Beldar Conehead at the dentist and Melody Gardot queued in her Spotify)—
opens with a medicinal red carpet for suntan-vacation florals that would drop Francesca Bianchi’s panties (nectarous-apricot frangipani, which imparts a texture-aroma of whipped-butter cake mix, blonde batter just starting to fluff out almondy smells in the oven, and fruit-spritzer magnolia, which imparts a texture-aroma reminiscent of waxy lemon leaf that seems to radiate, strange at it might seem to say given its cuticle feel, a sea-breeze ethereal quality not too far from Bortnikoff-style—even Tauer-style—ambergris were it not for a shroomy nuance as if of garden hands lathered with bar soap),
the sun-ripe lushness of this banana-coconut bouquet (a white-yellow bouquet that, although not at the Christian-Bale top of the marque, I am starting to see as the true Heath-Ledger star, the true magnetic center, of this Dark Knight) given—by means of musky-pissy civet and sour-metal rose (breezy herbal-tea Himalayan rose, dewy grape-stem May rose)—not the fuck-your-lights out hit that we get from a Liz Moores feline perfume or a Cecile Zarokian feline body but rather a more-sparkling-than-scuzzy quality that makes me think of the Far-East sun trope of Gung-Fu-cinema from the early 70s (a closeup on a diminutive dawn sun rendered even more diminutive by a jerky crash-zoom pullback meant to highlight the immense distance of the sea horizon)
and yet, for all its morning-centering sunshine, dimmed—as if you are seeing the dawn scene through cheap sunglasses—by several darkening elements (elements that give a shade feel but without going as far as to seem like those early-60s Bond movies and Gilligan’s Island episodes where the nighttime scenes were really shot in day but given a moonlight tint through a combination of blue-blocker lenses and underexposure of the film):
(1) the box-office-draw combo of roasted-nut cacao, which brings a bitter-coffee nuance as well as hints of florals (jasmine, violet, rose), plus several tropical-green ouds (root-beer Co Chang oud, a Trat oud from Co Chang Island that imparts a medicinal-sarsaparilla edge of decayed tobacco and moldering mango skin, and mossy-mineralic Merauke oud, an Indonesian oud from the Papua province that imparts a medicinal-fungal edge of bitter myrrh and a galbanum-jungle edge that goes more dank and peaty and rubbery than the more ferny and citrusy and airy Sri Lankan oud of Oud Sinharaja and Triad), a baker’s-chocolate cacao plus fern-rot oud that together constitute the main source of the hobbit-shire earthiness (corduroy pants, earthtone Wallabees);
(2) the dusty-desiccated blend of barn-cured tobacco (hung leaves whose raisin-leather nuance, amplified by musky-tar combo of labdanum and castoreum, seems activated by sun) and stale-raisin cinnamon (sweet bark whose clovey warmth, amplified by the ambery combo of labdanum and vanilla, also seems activated by sun), a tobacco and cinnamon whose pipe-ash quality works with the heavy exotic florals and the light castoreum-civet carnality to bring to mind the animalic-bubblegum aroma of L’Heure Exquise (a Bortnikoff release underappreciated even by myself)—
the overall result being, despite containing varieties of both notes, not a rose oud but rather a sunny white-floral chocolate oud that we might see as a tropical-truffle-meets-jungle-bubblegum spin on the woodier-earthier-nuttier-boozier Tabac Dore, whose own chocolate-cinnamon-tobacco-trat concoction (where damp forest-floor Merauke oud is swapped for the fruiter and cheesier fermentation-focused Vietnamese oud) creates a more aged-antique aura (more jagged and charred and musty cigar box in a dusty study than smooth and sensual and bright ganache in a confectioners display window) due to the lack of velvet-robe florals and their smoothing effect.
MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017—part 95)
filching from the lemonade-stand as you help the little girl make change
lovers exploring positions
fathers who embolden us to steal from our employers
grandfathers who give us pain killers to sell to high school peers
appearing happy from far away
only concerned with learning how to take off and fly, never how to land
equipped with a rich database of common concerns, the psychic blitzes you with observations from leading questions—but you only attend to the rare hits
retirement as loss of the busy work that helped to block out the pain of not going after our dreams
confronted each and every day with either the pain of discipline or the pain of regret, the lure of drugs and divine providence is clear
fantasy conversations with your crush
taunted, and groped even, once the delivery uniform is on
doing something you hate with someone you love
thankful for the disease for helping you prioritize
female suicide bombers cloaked by their babies
actionable intelligence
having features that you dislike in yourself makes him worse
local bank loans, big ones, where all you need to bring is a white handshake—that is not as horrible as it might seem when you consider the solid cultural reason for the profiling
neither loving who you are such that you fail to strive for those goals nor loving who you are only once you achieve those goals, but loving who you are at every step as you strive for those goals
your face buried in your hands even in public—how did it look before you were born?
the surprise of hearing the doctor announce that you are dead when—brain overwhelmed with electricity—you feel so alive, so aware
coming across a rock jam, electric guitars shrieking, in a jungle village
the bliss of losing control
so many of the things to which we cling in our lives (toys from our youth, say—at the time, our whole lives) become irrelevant to us—and so will our whole lives
everything a man does—just “Hello,” even—is a candidate nanoaggression, but is that so bad given history?
what hint might we take from seeing all these slouched over men in hats who look just like our dead fathers?
all those moments so memorable to the parent, disappearing beyond the child’s recall
the rapey factor of so much animal sex
the danger of loving utterly
is it that you are glad to see the loved one released from suffering in death, or more that you are glad to be released from the chore?
to avoid being racist you must strive to understand the lived experience of X people, and yet thinking you could really understand such a thing is one of the most insensitively racist gestures a nonX person can make
able to masturbate because of them, hands free us from the raging drive that allows little time to name things
mothering the dying
a flipside of sorrow in the delightful solitude requisite for so much art
is your first reaction that funereal makeup humanizes or dehumanizes the dead?
the same mom who would be jailed in our clown world for letting her sixteen year old date his former teacher (only after several serious sit downs)—she would be venerated with tears for her “bravery” if she “affirmed” his decision to get his penis chopped off
social-security benefits in near reach, but still playing I’ll-show-you-mine with little girls in the neighborhood
Kevlar dashikis
Santa drooping in deflation on the lawn
threatened to be left because of your affair, only then do you see that your affair was mere dessert unable to sustain you
the superstition, the madness, of opening the fridge expecting a different result
flies in outdoor porn
paper hoods for the rap video shoot
wondering whether the kid is going on and on simply because he is a kid, or because he senses our desperation for some sort of distraction
employing for the phone sex line only those who can make their voice the default: white
parents who push a dogma on their kids with such desperation and yet who say that they love them unconditionally
citing spanking as integral to black culture as grounds for it not counting as abuse
losing touch with all hobbies
a green card marriage blooming into love
braingasm
the key to someone’s heart can break in the lock
should we even call it “determination” if rain washes it away?
it was a scheme, crunching parking lot ice like the crème brûlée after our first dinner, to ensnare you with childhood nostalgia
defending their nude shots on grounds of being proud of their bodies, even though they are proud only under circumstances outside of which they would feel shame
launched into a dimension of trauma and dying, should we not be more loving of ourselves (even of our faults)?
not knowing how real your good health is
within temples of worship, rare places where each face is empty of demand upon one another, each face is full of demand
reunions—high school, sitcom, whatever—to learn how your other selves are doing
occasions where it would be too blatant a falsity to say “Everything will be all right”
the feeling of having failed as a parent in not having protected your child from such blatant sexual molestation
sleepwalking through life at least ensures a contrast against which even the quotidian can flare—call out—its stupendousness
the fuzzy line between what you want to see and what you see
that people do not wish for a million on their deathbed does not mean that having it during life is empty
in the last day of freedom between sentencing and incarceration, how does one pretend to have a good time?
