Modern Geometry (ROUND 1)
SCENT OF THE DAY: Vetiver Nocturne Absolu, by Bortnikoff
This belongs right there with Sir Winston given its tartness and ambergris glow. sweet grass like in chypre chiam but more tart here /has that green apple and khus combo we get in Qi Nan. opulent twist on vetiver that many will not read as vetiver not only because it it Rhu Khus but also given the white flowers and vanilla and spice (cinnamon cardamom)—extremely different style than Sultan Vetiver or Vetiver Insolent or Sycomore or Encre Noire etc. a strange semi-sweet-meets-minty-ashy oud in here. Experience with Ensar has allowed em to see how oudy this base is whereas before, associating oud merely with barn, I overlooked it. Apple jasmine tea vibes that is soft and round in dry down—the soft and round a combo of the furry-dusty oud and the creamy milky sandalwood. honeyed mentholated green apple from oud and jasmine and vetiver. jasmine here has pissy aspect. As for the green apple aspect, it is not Promise’s synthetic apple. This is more more real and exotic here, which I hard to do with apple. briney-pickly quality of africa olifant here slightly too—a plus. dirty natural peppery grass. diaper peed aroma but amounts to a more unisex vetiver. champaca infused sandalwood oil gives s bit of Chinese incense mall store that sells Buddhas and incense cones. combines creamy and tart and luminous and salty and dusty—a lovely feat. vetiver is dirty but more dirty grass than roots—although in drydown it does seem we get tot he roots. Weird rosey facets come out even though no rose is in here I believe. Boils down to a typical Bortnikoff ambergris scent:sun sparkling on the water ambergris—a great DNA, less artistic but realer than Tauer’s base while less artistic and less real than Ensar’s. The ambergris is beautiful and wonderful to have, but it is quite common across Bortnikoff’s oeuvre. You might say that this takes the ambergris base (think Sir Winston) and infuses it with this element: stewed pulp of dirty-sweet grass. sex and the sea saltiness in 8 hour drydown of vetiver nocturne. Is the Nocturne and allusion to Chopin?
Modern Geometry
Skin oil and fretful friction had teased a fuzzy nap along the spine of his textbook
cover, a brown grocery bag folded with triple-checked tension into creaking sleeves
that required—for he would not cheat the American rite— not a single piece of tape.
“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)
