Mistaken Identity (ROUND 1)
Scent of the day: Sultan White Rose: Afghanissimo, by Ensar
Pristine white rose—I gather not as translucent as other versions. I find the Sultan Rose Attar more my liking even if it is of inferior quality. SWR good although it is easy to get bored by its lack of development and its perfection. Some things are so pure and perfect they are alienating—its the reason why lo-fi music has an appeal: we often like rough around the edged because it is more human and relatable. This more at a divine level.
SWR has an interesting mouse-illuminee like dry down. Costus in dry down has a wet moss vibe that I think brings out that mouse illuminee effect. This is definitely a rose-water style rose. I get this from my Bilal 2 as well. Both share a rootiness too, which is cool. But Bilal is rootier—going into a chocolately patchouli direction—and with its myrrh heart much more resinous and syrupy. SWR, on the other hand, is more metallic and ethereal like and archangel: the glut of bright citruses (neroli, mandarin, yuzu) plus the green frankincense, not too dissimilar from what I get in Spell 125, enhances the lemon-pine of the rose into a sun-glinting sheen. I would say that this would be the smell of an archangel—one, like my namesake Michael, with a big glinting sword to cut down evil and falsehood with divine authority.
*Let’s workshop this poem about catastrophic misidentification, delayed comprehension, and the almost unbearable recoil from grief into reprieve.
Mistaken Identity
The sharpest whiplash, perdition to paradise, is hearing “Your child has died”—only
then, after enough minutes for that news (beaded at first, like water on houseplant soil
hardened by tragedy) to reach the root ball, hearing the choked apology: “Wrong girl.”
“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)
