Owed to a Sick Friend
scent of the day: Bilal 2, by Yaaseen
The rose here is a buttery-spicy rose like I find in Ensar’s Sultan Rose Attar. Indeed, in both I get hints of lemon and clove and wood and stem and pepper, which is typical of rose ottos (steam distilled roses that both fragrances use). The Ensar uses bulgarian rose otto though where this uses persian—and the main difference, which I thibnk is typical of the regional difference, is that the Ensar is even more buttery (even before beign enhanced by the sandalwood) whereas Bilal is tilted more green and more like the rose-water style I get in Sultan White Rose Afganissimo (only the green frankincense of Sultan White Rose enhances the lemon-pine of that rose into a metalic sheen whereas the myrhh and the orris and perhaps an unstated chocolately patchouli tie it down to the earth in Bilal. Bilial, in effect, takes this quintessential sacred crisp green rose and ties it back to the earth, a poetic tension that melds together into a boozy-moldy rose that actually comes of as jammy / the dry down is a leasthery oud—seems like an unstated labdanum was at play the whole time to boost the myrrh’s resinousness / this triggers mouth-watering reactions—perhaps it is from the tartness of the rose. The mouth-watering reaction is not my metaphorical way of saying this is so yummy. No, II am talking in the literal physiological way. It is as if I had something sour in my mouth—back of the tongue, on the side. It has lasted for hours now. This is surely a cool phenomenon but what makes it unsettling is that this salivation reaction and sour feeling the back sides of the tongue is nearly indiscernible to what happens before you throw up.
Owed to a Sick Friend
Having scoured every cabinet— freezer too—and not one single orange promise rattling
even cut codeine, Nosferatu rises among dumped dresser drawers and leans the pillow
into that same slack face from sleepovers too long gone— breath too cruel in its peace.
“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)
