Parthenia Spring (ROUND 3)
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 to my liking, even if it is of inferior quality. SWR is good, although it is easy to get bored by its lack of development and its perfection. Some things are so pure and perfect that they are alienating. It’s the reason why lo-fi music has an appeal: we often like things rough around the edges because it is more human and relatable. This, however, is more at a divine level.
SWR is pure vegetative stem cut under water with an interesting mouse-illuminée-like drydown. Costus in the drydown has a wet-moss vibe that I think brings out that mouse-illuminée 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 chocolatey-patchouli direction—and, with its myrrh heart, much more resinous and syrupy. SWR, on the other hand, is more metallic and ethereal-like an 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.
The rose, I presume, is Damask rose: green and raw (think crushed stem as opposed to the metallic terpenics of rugosa) compared to the citrus-honey of Taif (Saudi Arabia), the pear-skin of Bulgarian (Rose Valley), or the spiced-syrup of Turkish (Isparta). That is the style in the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains where I believe this was gathered.
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. Although another good candidate is Lucifer, the very angel that Michael opposes—Michael’s name being the very question he raised to Lucifer: “Who is like God?” (Mi-who, Ke-like, God-el). Lucifer is a good candidate for such a sunlit fragrance because he is light-bringer, the morning star, the angel of light.
Since both angels are associated with light, the question is whose form of light better matches this fragrance. Michael’s light is hard, sharp, edged, and structural, like light glinting off cold steel, or aldehydic, like the sky parting—only without the sandstorm confusion, that feeling of being lightheaded and turned around that I often get from aldehydes. Lucifer’s pre-fall light, on the other hand, is usually described as radiant, ethereal, fluid, and atmospheric, like Venus or clouds backlit into a glow: light that is so diffuse it lacks an edge. To me, this fragrance seems much more like the blinding cold light you get reflected off polished chrome, or the lethal spark at the tip of a spear. For that reason, I go with Michael.
This is not an easy conclusion to draw, though, because there is a lot of overlap between their lights, since these are archangels after all: pure, perfect, overwhelming—indeed, to the point of being impersonal and almost sterile. Lucifer’s light is radiant too, and what almost tips me toward saying he is the image is that the beauty of the light points into abstraction. I do here, as with Bisch’s Purpose or Schoen’s Isfarkand Elixir, get that abstract, impersonal feel. This splits in such an interesting way, because all of the following belong to the fragrance: “blinding,” “monotone,” “pristine,” “metallic sheen.” Metallic plus citrus plus lemony-incense sharpness points to Michael, while monotone plus blinding plus perfection plus flattening belongs a bit more to Lucifer.
It might sit between the two because (1) it does feel like Michael—a blade of light, cutting, precise—and yet it does feel like Lucifer: enough light to erase edges, almost to the point of logical abstraction or base-code light. And plus there is this subtle sense of smoke, like I get in Dia Man, of a candle that has just been put out (and that, one might think, would be a point in favor of Lucifer, if only because it seems to add an edge of impurity). But in the end, because of the metallic “shing” I hear with this fragrance (and because there is such a contrast in Michael himself who can make the motherfucking whole world burn in fiery Armageddon), I give the edge to Michael.
I also have Taifi Misk. That is pretty much just SWR with a Mongolian musk and spices. And I also have The Rose of Sandzak, which is SWR plus SRR, albeit more bent toward the latter, at least in intention.
*Let's workshop this poem about a boy (unknowingly) following in the footsteps of the Tonkawa, the Apache, and various other tribes by holding a heavy rock to remain underwater at Barton Springs Pool
Parthenia Spring —to my life in Austin, TX (2013-2021)
Stone ballast cradled at heart, a boy moonhops (as natives did) in a clearing of eel grass
and lies back under its calm heft in the frigid gush of the headspring— verdure pulsing
like surface-treading limbs in his goggled eyes, drawn up to that quivering smear of sun.
“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)
