Limey effervescence, lacto-fermented tang. Enzymes and culture, whey-sharp brightness, ginger root and sugar, bacterial starter. Lemongrass stalk steeped in Rose's lime juice. Makrut lime leaves crushed between fingers. Raffia tote abandoned, sandals kicked off. Umbrella shade, cold citrus fizz, slow whirring ceiling fans. Paperback novel pages soft from humidity, airport-bought and quickly abandoned. Cafe corner, afternoon nowhere. Electric effervescent amnesia. Fleeting fizzy forgetfulness fun Fun FUN.

A rose I immediately enjoy is a rare creature indeed, and this one conjures the fierce tenderness of Yosano Akiko's verse. I don't know how this extraordinary poet would feel about this fragrance, but I am channeling her spirit for these impressions.

Ancient wood smoke drifts between scattered fog. Morning bell echoes— I taste metal on my tongue, spring's sharp, necessary cut.

Green leaf floating in the temple's shallow puddle reflects my true face. A mantis waves its thin arms in mock benediction.

Thorn-pricked finger traces rose oil, crimson poems on sleep-soft limbs, bitter sutras cannot wash this sweetness from memory.

Ramshackle wooden pier, salt-bleached planks sea wrack rot, shifting scrim of slate sky. Miss Akranes contest, bright bunting wilting in salt spray and sea mist, dripping gown and cracked rubber boots. Icy rain of butter and brine, each drop a tiny oyster on the tongue. Fishing nets of pearl grey silk tangled with kelp and hollow percussions of fish bones; the iodine tang of seaweed rotting in tide pools where lobster traps rust and seashell sibilance gurgles, whispers, salted and cured. Sea glass teeth, crowns of crab shell, scepter of driftwood and whalebone. Something ancient stirs beneath the harbor, pageantry for drowned gods. What the tide brings in, the mayor photographs for the brochure. What it takes away, no one admits to their children. Velkomin til Akranes. Sjórinn heilsar þér svanglega.

A hooded figure watching from beyond the shadows, but shadows of what, and why in a place no shadow should be? The insidious intrusion, the confounding juxtaposition, the thing found in the wrong place. The stirring of things best left unstirred. Resinous orchid musk, feral balmy, rotting-earthed humidity. Milky murk, like looking through the eyes of the dead. Honeyed spices part buried, cinnamon-cardamom-disinterment deferred, the ground is wrong, a terror in the terroir. The boundless and hideous unknown, a carnal effluvium of the eerie and the weird, reinterpreted as a not-too-bad fragrance. Actually, kinda lovely.

Myrrh Shadow 403 smells like the Crypt Keeper's signature ice cream flavor, an inexplicable combination of sour medicinal powders and resinous, demulcent sweetness. Apothecary ice cream served in dusty parlors where softly spiced cola syrup was dispensed by skeletal hands, bittersweet olde-timey remedies dispensed, ironically, in a dusty tomb lined with crumbling marble shelves and cobweb-draped medicine bottles, stone walls saturated with the balsamic phantasmagoria of centuries-old incense. It vaguely recalls the whispery smoke and mysterious veils of Annick Goutal Myrrh Ardente - except Myrrh Shadow 403 emerged from the freezer creamier, sweeter, colder: mystical tree resins churned into midnight, ghoulish horror host gelato.

Incense Rori feels like building an altar to the temple of dreams - not that it smells like any of these things individually, but the way someone in a dream can be your mother even if they look nothing like her, the golden balsamic woodiness conjures walnut and mulberry and rosewood; the creamy gentle spice suggests whipped orange blossom honey, marigold-infused sandalwood attar, ink perfumed with clove and honey and musk. Applied before sleep and still whispering the next afternoon, it becomes a nightly ritual for dream incubation, precious enough to justify its price not for special occasions but because sleep itself is the special occasion, the potent pantheon of dreams deserving its own sacred preparations.

Can an ineffable thing also be a platonic ideal? Tissue-thin blossoms suspended in pale evening light; bees' dreams of endlessly circling invisible nectar sources, the unfurling verdancy of early spring touched with the faintest breath of honey, petals so delicate and precisely what linden should smell like that you can only point and say "there, that." It's everything it should be, and only just that.

Armani Privé Bois d'Encens: A peppery craggle of stones where incense once burned or might burn yet, vetiver roots drinking the ghost of unburnt smoke, cedar planks weathered by ceremonies that left no ash, flint poised, tinder arranged, the space between intention and flame where autumn's last bitter breath meets winter's sterile promise, austere echoes creaking through lofty spaces that know neither warmth nor chill, dusty light filtered through vacant windows, fresh in the way that morning air tastes sharp and sour before the sun softens its edges, the potential for incense hovering like a prayer never spoken aloud.

Though at first glance, it might not be immediately apparent, but Todd Hido's photography comes to mind when I smell this - an atmosphere of ordinary spaces shedding their daytime purpose to become threshold places, a pause in time between being and non-being, a thing neither fully present nor absent.

Fig appearing as quick pencil sketch, half-erased; floating vanilla blossom clouds dissolving in May breezes; soft laundry musks in cotton tees worn threadbare from a hundred gentle cycles; the ghost of last summer's jasmine tangling through the latticework of dreams; cyan swimming pool polaroids, chlorine filtered and faded.

An anemic rose receiving a transfusion from a fainting couch.