Pleasant scents

Now burning: green tea-scented Japanese incense I found in a little shop in one of those outrageously overpriced hippie towns on Maui. My room feels like a different space. Once in Providence, I proposed an anthropological project on comparative cultural placements of particular scents: e.g. blood, earth, fires, notions of "perfume", the open sea. There was probably a lot of not readily identifiable reading to be done for such an undertaking... Maybe later when I am a fully-fledged disgruntled academic with holes in my pocket under the long yoke of tenure, I can embark on such a presumptuous journey.

I could interview people with my petite Radioshack dictaphone: "So, what do you think of this one?" [Pull out stopper to some scientific-looking bottle, watch reaction intensely--grimace, wince, pleasure, surprise, bewilderment, devastation? Record both vociferations of subject and self on tape though the commentary would be in encoded field jargon mixed in with bastard children of various languages I have farmed with varying degrees of love.]

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The green tea incense has become ash, but retains its twiggy form. The room is a bit smoky and I am reminded (as I was mending some long-neglected shirt collars and buttons last night) of a folk story where a mother, a seamstress, embroiders the magical/mythical journey of her son the hero as he conquers spirited evils and passes through flames on his snowy steed. Her eyes eventually become blinded by the fumes of her pine-oil lamp.

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There were two things to be excited about today and they're both names. It's great when your characters suddenly gain a face with an apt name. I'm itching to script a new story about a box, but in the meantime, there are exams and translations (one could do much worse than working with elementary Zhuangzi, he of the butterfly-philosopher-butterfly fame) to hammer out.

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Christmas wish list so far: a dressmaking mannequin in my size, less aggro in the world (taking cues from Mozi), and (coming full circle) a small vial of Black Vetiver and Cafe.