12/3/10 Freshly ground cloves
My hair would have been this color, if I had henna'ed it in college, like all my friends were doing--dark brown with an almost iridescent auburn layered on top. A bay horse in the sunshine. These cloves came from the co-op and I've never had them this moist before. It's like the difference between dry sand (most cloves you get at the store), that pours methodically like it's in an hourglass to measure time, and damp sand (this batch) that clumps together and wants to hold a shape, maybe the shape of a dark moist cake. And the smell, with a wood, almost sandalwood undertone, with fruity flecks in the middle, and a top note a little jasmine-y. Cloves like this you want to make something out of, add to henna to color your skin, you hair, you want to bathe in it, soak your bedsheets in it, dry them and toss around a bit in them. Cloves like this you want to dance to, to drop grains of it in peace talks between warring parties, and have the old soldiers suddenly remember the touch of their grandmothes. Cloves like this you want to cast in a subway tunnel so that the mindless commuters will think suddenly of a splinter they tried to suck out of their thumbs when they were eight and had been digging in the dirt. Cloves like this should be carried in a small pouch into banks, so that everyone there remembers the fragrant wooden blocks and carved cars of their youth, their own "Rosebud" beloved as they are worrying about the numbers on their pieces of paper. Cloves like this should be dropped by pinches into rivers to bless and consecrate them with the blood and sheen and fragrance of other places.