Communion with Temporal Echoes (ROUND 2)
Let’s workshop this poem about how gestures of self-love, imagined as reaching across time to past or future selves, might ripple out through our presence to uplift others navigating similar struggles
scent of the day: Megamare, by Orto Parisi. As if delivering a resounding “fuck you” to mass-market aquatics clogging every Ulta (fragrances that are to perfumery what formulaic acts of vapid commercialism like Lil Pump or Katy Perry are to music), Megamare—within an hour plunging from an aquamarine shore into the cold callous depths of the North Atlantic—tows all the marine tropes of sheeple aquatic fragrances out to a breaking point of unyielding psychosis: no fruits or florals to lighten matters (at best, especially in the drydown, seaweed driftwood lost in the grayness of storm), we find ourselves bobbing in a mussel-musk brine (navy blue, prussian blue) of such umami-concentration that it evokes soy tare—an MSG tare overloaded with konbu (dried kelp), niboshi (dried baby sardines), Katsuobushi (shaved bonito flakes), gyofun (powdered dried fish), and yet also with metallic hints of rust and diesel fuel from industry’s cold machinery.
Communion with Temporal Echoes Speak to yourself across time: even if there is no literal loop (where that gray attic specter, intoning “It’ll be okay” just before the blindsiding divorce papers, turns out to be you), traces of such reach—rippling out through posture and gait— might lift those in need.