Partners in Excavation
Let's workshop this poem about how, in a match, viewing one’s opponent as an opportunity for self-discovery and for testing personal limits can bolster one's grit and heart
scent of the day: Reflection 45 Man, by Amouage. A less-sweet cousin of Xerjoff’s Naxos (especially given its benzoin-reinforced vanilla, its creamed-almond tonka, and its cashmere feel), Reflection Man 45 opens with an array of herbs and spices (licoricey lavender, musky clary sage, lemony cardamom combining to create a camphorous undertone that tightens the Naxos connection; juniper berries bringing a pine-clean coolness to the predominance of ambery warmth; pink pepper infusing a designer sparkle) and then after the first hour give way to sweet and musky florals (powdery iris, dense jasmine, bitter angelica, waxy-citrus neroli) against a backbone of woods (smoky vetiver, pencil-sharp cedar, damp patchouli, milky-sweet sandalwood) and incense (terpenic olibanum and honeyed myrrh)—all these together creating an impression of liturgical vestments fresh from the dryer
Partners in Excavation
Had he seen the man
as just meat-and-bone opponent,
rather than as occasion to learn
what he is made of (the real
opponent being one's own limits,
precisely whose testing
makes matches so exciting),
he would have been canvas-bound
in drool much earlier.
