Midnight Quarters (ROUND 2)
Let’s workshop this poem about the many hips history finds it unsafe to name—hips that, although dressed up in the archives as Wakanda resistance, kicked up wet-ass plumes of climactic fecality.
scent of the day: Hayati, by Amphora Exotica
Quick notes on this
Ambrette is used here instead of deer musk, but still tremendously good / more elegant and feminine than Vespers but less immersive (perhaps largely because of the missing waxiness fo the bushman candle) and definitely less carnal / Saffron is toned down here too / this is sweeter than vespers / the oud quality (Kinam, even if plantation) here is better than Vespers, but I have come to a similar realization that Russian Adam has: for all my desire to have the highest quality oud, I do like the rank barny ouds along with the cheese rots ouds, which are often associated with inferior material and inferior distillation. / I think the price is decent for the product and does reflect the higher quality than Vespers, but as of now I prefer vespers. / There is something magical—heart and soul—in vespers / still both have a lovely radiance from the ambergris, and her especially—because there is none of the Hindi oud—is shines remarkably, like the best of Bortnikoffs like Sir Winston with its bubblegum vibe. / Withouyt doing a check (my collection is huge), this is very similar to Sir Winston / Vespers yesterday, while muted after first three hours, lasted a very long time / This lasted long too, however less long as Vespers and more muted /
Not as dense as vespers, but even though ti is more luminous it is still very much resin-backed—the effect being a weighted glow, like sunlight refracted through yellow amber beads / the top is golden and oily with bitter-orange peel rubbed raw against cardamom pods. / The citrus—more peel and pith than flesh—is twiggy, sort of like pettigrain / Cardamom cuts green-spicy, resinous, with its coolness that falls short of mentholated (at least compared to what I am used to in my beloved Prin) / Orange blossom blooms but waxy rather than fresh: a creamy floral that immediately folds into the base resins. / So yes, I get a halo of brightness over depth
The roses dominate in first few hours, lush and wet-petaled, both honeyed (Bulgarian) and drier, tea-like (Kashan). / Boronia, a small flowering shrub native to Australia (very expensive, which is one reason along with the kinam this si more expensive than Vespers), adds a leathery-green depth, keeping the roses from feeling purely romantic./ Jasmine (grandiflorum, with the same indolic creaminess we cget in vespers) hums under the rose, not heady-white but golden, binding seamlessly with the orange blossom up top./ Saffron here, again, is mineralic and bitter—a good contrast to the florals—but it is not cheap smelling / Less so than vespers, here stilll the florals feel less like a bouquet than a compressed floral resin—chewy, especually considerign the elegant woody base
Kinam oud gives a bitter-chocolate, cooling camphorated oud note / Cambodian oud contributes a syrupy, leathery sweetness. / Together they balance between ascetic smoke and carnal warmth. / Mysore sandalwood is a creamy incense, like in Bvespers / benzoin gives a vanillic glow, while labdanum reinforces the saffron’s leather associations / Sumatran vanilla is not cupcake vanilla but smoky, woody, with a dark-cured quality: it folds into the oud rather than sitting on top. / Butter and beeswax together give edible-pollen thickness but nothing as waxcy as the bushman candle in Vespers—an amazing note / Oakwood is tannic, dry, like stave-soaked wine casks—but nothing as extreme as the crocodile wood of Sans Fluers / Ambrette gives a pear-seed begetal muskiness whose subtle saltiness is boosted by white ambergris’s salinic radiance, which adds diffusion and glow.
Thge overall effect: layered amber-oud resin (chewy, leathery, salty-sweet, mineral, floral-smoked) that seems ceremonial to me, like what the heros at the edn of the story (think Star Wars or Lor od The Rings) when they are getting there medals of distinction by the king or whatever / Every floral is folded into resin and wood, nothing stands free. / It is more luminous than tarry and more, sacred than bodily, but even these minor elements are there / bitter-bright spiced citrus and orange blossom moves to floral heart glowing with saffron and then moves to resin-oud-ambergris base that lingers for hours with a salty-musky glow.
Midnight Quarters We lie too hard to face those shame-sweet occasions when teen slave ass—treacherous in response to master thrusts—quickened, under the fooling-nobody theater of “No!” into a pissy gallop, indolic fury historians tidy as “defiance”: “Uh. Lawd-a-massi. Uuhn!”