Su Hija Esta en Buenas Manos (ROUND 3)
scent of the day: Kyoto, by Comme de Garcon
Kyoto is a mystical-mediative vetiver dominant akigala-like fragrance—radically bitter, and as desiccated and barren as a Martian plain (were it not for its slight touch of maple-syrup immortelle)—whose four central elements evoke the austere ethereality of a Japanese rock garden: incense (olibanum and elemi giving subtle mineralic smoke, like the lasts wisps of an incense ash heap, and soft hints of gingery bitter citrus, yuzu-grapefruit like at times but more so medicinal and cintronella-bug-spray reminiscent like lemongrass); earthen roots (vetiver and patchouli giving a cold hard soil with mild camphor elements); coffee (grinds used and musty, not Folger’s fresh); dry woods (cedar and cypress along with a teak wood that comes off, especially in deep drydown, like peppery-mineralic akigalawood, a Givaudan-lab fractionated patchouli meant to capture the essence of woods like oud and teak with its own spicy and smoky twist as we see in other fragrances like Amouage’s Purpose.
Akilgala is like patcholi turned into a magnet. Very much a bitter Martian meditation scent. mild touch of sweet from the yuzu-like bitter citrus (perhaps this is elemi). Kyoto is a Vetiver plus stale-sour coffee grind incense. hints of citronella bug spray like in Tobacco Blaze. We might consider this the luddite cousin to Purpose because of that peppery-mineralic Akigala feel. Dry and bitter incense in Kyoto is actually similar to amouage purpose, only in Purpose the akilgala takes on a futuristic high tech angle, like the Sheika clan in breath of wild. Purpose is like one of those lightsabers whose hilt is made of the teak we find here in Kyoto. This connection to Purpose is not a bad thing. Strangley enough, for all my dislike of certain Oded synthetics, I really do like Purpose and I like Kyoto as well.
I can almost see Kyoto as the incense of the Northern Japanese temple outside of which is the mountainside coy pond that gives off aromas similar to the Mystical Lotus Jiaozhi. To me this is somehow part fo the same universe as Amber Kiso, Mystical Lotus, and Kuru Kawa. That might just be all the narrative but it does fit together in my mind. Kuru the leather armor, Mystical the koi pond, Kyoto the incense, Kiso like the whole picture—albeit in a cyberspace-hologram rendition. Other frangrances also belong in this fantasy land I created. Tigerwood 91 is a zoom-in upon the wood of this temple. Sultan Murad is that same wood splashed by frigid sea water.
This was a love at first sniff (although it transported me right away for some reason to meets a direct-sales business, Kirby vacuums, that my mom used to work at, perhaps because of the sterile smell of that place and its low pile carpet). Because of the commonality in bitter acrid Vetiver between fumidus and Kyoto, it makes you almost think of how a Scottish peat whiskey person and the shibui aesthetic (restrained elegance and unobtrusive beauty) can meet together and have something in common (a basis from which to share). In here we definitley get olbibanum, elemi, cypress, coffee, teak wood, vetiver, patchouli, labdanum, everlasting flower, cedar. Kyoto in deep dry down is a cedar that actually is quite reminiscent of Mississippi Medicine. All yes have that sauna-wood ethereal feel that, for all its evasive thinness, remains reassuring all the way through.
*Let’s workshop this poem about how the foundational tales of Christianity and Islam, despite encoding a similar power-asymmetric relationship with kid brides, differ in terms of freak-off consummation
*Metaphor better fits now. The camel needed to be, of course, a humpless helpless calf.
Su Hija Está en Buenas Manos
Christ arose from a relationship marked by an infinite gap in age and power, holy dew
pearled at dawn with enough rico suave to make Mohammad’s manhandling of Aisha—
portable pocket pussy— look like a spastic mongoloid creaming a hogtied baby camel.
“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)
