Letter to an Oud lover

Dear friend,

To quote one of my scent mentors’ words of advice to me when I first embarked on my Oudissey:

In the end, your nose will educate you profoundly. You will not be able to bear the smell of anything compounded of synthetic chemicals. They will stick in your nose like glue and create a really uncomfortable feeling. They may smell good for a minute or two but then they begin to fall apart. A true essence is a harmonious unit from beginning to end. Each one has a unique personality which you often have to study individually over the course of many days. In the end, it really depends on the purity of your own understanding and heart.

I am now so sensitive to scents that even the lingering fragrance of a honey hand soap makes me cringe. I cannot bear the scent of almost anything. Like you, I have migrated to the prophetic scents of the wild or highly matured varieties of Assam Oud…

A new source of delight to me is the new Oud Mostafa. It smells like a stable of horses.

It is better than the old Oud Sulaiman only to the extent that it is more fecal, more pastoral, more archetypal.

It is the most comforting, soul-easing scent that I have ever savored. The Kyara Koutan is sublime, but the Mostafa is serene. Rather than perfume, it is medicine. It is the soul’s aspiration. A hint at what is to come… I dab it lavishly on the inside of my wrists, and on both sides of my neck, right underneath the chin.

I observe the changes with the greatest alacrity in my Ouds on a daily basis. Most of the time, I find myself awaiting or predicting a change in any given oil, before it actually happens. I live with each oil in the future tense, predicting, expecting, hoping, rather than experiencing it the way it currently smells. At the same time, I understand that these changes must necessarily occur in me first and foremost. It is the change of intimacy. Like two newlyweds who need a few years before they fully get to know each other, so the Oud and its wearer puzzle and mystify each-other upon first acquaintance.

In a very weird sense, Oud has a consciousness. It knows what you expect from it, and it changes to reflect your expectations; or does it? Berkeley would say the entire thing happens in the consciousness of the perceiving subject, without any objective reality. I say the Oud is alive. With the spirit of the One who created it; the Unchanging who effects every change.

Fragrant greetings,
Ensar

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