doomsday_disco

Polish A mischievous mark: black raspberries, red currant, and rose hip cordial in honeyed cream.

A salty skin musk dusted with pink pepper.

O, who rides by night thro’ the woodland so wild? It is the fond father embracing his child; And close the boy nestles within his loved arm, To hold himself fast, and to keep himself warm. The pale sugared blossoms of innocence wrapped tightly in sleet-soaked arms. Vanilla bourbon, cream peony, and white carnation enveloped in a warm, protective fortress of tonka, white cedar, orris root, red amber, and leather.

Honey Champaca.

Honey Marshmallow.

Honey Dust, Patchouli, and Orris Absolute.

Caramel cream, golden oud, sweet amber, praline milk, hazelnut, and cacao.

Finnish A playful, tidy, sweet bruise: chilled blueberry cardamom cream.

Matcha & Pumpkin Rind.

Spiced Rum & Dark Chocolate.

Folk horror, but make it breakfast cereal: dehydrated pumpkin marshmallows and blackened cocoa corn puffs in sugared milk.

White tea, black cherries, gardenia, tonka bean, carnation, and almond.

An impossibly sweet concoction of green tea and frothed almond milk poured over fresh rose petals and glistening tapioca pearls.

Scarlet silk, sweetened rice milk, ube, peony petals, candied ginger, persimmon, red dates, red carnation, lavender, and red amber.

You also, Hyacinthus, would have been set in the sky! if Phoebus had been given time which the cruel fates denied for you. But in a way you are immortal too. Though you have died. Always when warm spring drives winter out, and Aries succeeds to Pisces, you rise and blossom on the green turf. And the love my father had for you was deeper than he felt for others. Delphi center of the world, had no presiding guardian, while the God frequented the Eurotas and the land of Sparta, never fortified with walls. His zither and his bow no longer fill his eager mind and now without a thought of dignity, he carried nets and held the dogs in leash, and did not hesitate to go with Hyacinthus on the rough, steep mountain ridges; and by all of such associations, his love was increased. Now Titan was about midway, betwixt the coming and the banished night, and stood at equal distance from those two extremes. Then, when the youth and Phoebus were well stripped, and gleaming with rich olive oil, they tried a friendly contest with the discus. First Phoebus, well-poised, sent it awhirl through air, and cleft the clouds beyond with its broad weight; from which at length it fell down to the earth, a certain evidence of strength and skill. Heedless of danger Hyacinthus rushed for eager glory of the game, resolved to get the discus. But it bounded back from off the hard earth, and struck full against your face, O Hyacinthus! Deadly pale the God’s face went — as pallid as the boy’s. With care he lifted the sad huddled form. The kind god tries to warm you back to life, and next endeavors to attend your wound, and stay your parting soul with healing herbs. His skill is no advantage, for the wound is past all art of cure. As if someone, when in a garden, breaks off violets, poppies, or lilies hung from golden stems, then drooping they must hang their withered heads, and gaze down towards the earth beneath them; so, the dying boy’s face droops, and his bent neck, a burden to itself, falls back upon his shoulder: “You are fallen in your prime defrauded of your youth, O Hyacinthus!” Moaned Apollo. “I can see in your sad wound my own guilt, and you are my cause of grief and self-reproach. My own hand gave you death unmerited — I only can be charged with your destruction. — What have I done wrong? Can it be called a fault to play with you? Should loving you be called a fault? And oh, that I might now give up my life for you! Or die with you! But since our destinies prevent us you shall always be with me, and you shall dwell upon my care-filled lips. The lyre struck by my hand, and my true songs will always celebrate you. A new flower you shall arise, with markings on your petals, close imitation of my constant moans: and there shall come another to be linked with this new flower, a valiant hero shall be known by the same marks upon its petals.” And while Phoebus, Apollo, sang these words with his truth-telling lips, behold the blood of Hyacinthus, which had poured out on the ground beside him and there stained the grass, was changed from blood; and in its place a flower, more beautiful than Tyrian dye, sprang up. It almost seemed a lily, were it not that one was purple and the other white. But Phoebus was not satisfied with this. For it was he who worked the miracle of his sad words inscribed on flower leaves. These letters AI, AI, are inscribed on them. And Sparta certainly is proud to honor Hyacinthus as her son; and his loved fame endures; and every year they celebrate his solemn festival. – Ovid Beloved of Apollo, the Spartan prince Hyacinthus was cherished above all companions. They raced beneath the open sky, hunted together, and Apollo trained his beloved in the art of prophecy, the lyre, and the discus. Some say Zephyrus, the West Wind, grew jealous and bent the arc of the throw one day and the shining disc, meant as sport, struck Hyacinthus down. Though he used all his skill in the art of healing, the god could not save Hyacinthus’ life. … when he beheld thy agony Phoebus was dumb. He sought every remedy, he had recourse to cunning arts, he anointed all the wound, anointed it with ambrosia and with nectar; but all remedies are powerless to heal the wounds of Fate… – Bion Apollo gathered Hyacinthus in his arms as the light dimmed from mortal eyes and wished to join his lover in the realm of death, but it was not to be. Where the blood touched earth, Apollo pressed his grief into the soil and from that wound sprang the hyacinth, petals veined with lament, marked with the cry of immortal love and immortal mourning. The flower became a living testament, renewed each spring, a sign that love does not vanish. The Lovers revealed in their most tender truth: that though love and devotion cannot provide a shield from the slings and arrows of the Fates, memory makes love eternal. It is love that refuses oblivion. Blood into blossom, rubedo unfolding in vegetal fire. Beauty bound to mortality, and through that binding made eternal. Golden laurel and sun-warmed skin, cypress shadow and noontide amber, crushed violets, lilies, and poppy, gilded myrrh, date palm, and hyacinth petals.

Gigil. I don’t think there’s an exact translation for this in English, but this is basically Cuteness Aggression, Filipino-style. Good gigil is the feeling of being absolutely overwhelmed by cuteness – VIBRATING because of someone or something’s intense cuteness – like you JUST CANNOT HANDLE THIS LEVEL OF CUTENESS. It’s a feeling somewhere between adoration and agitation? The uncontrollable urge to squeeze someone’s cheeks? Clenching your teeth because you cannot handle the cuteness you are experiencing? The feeling you get when you see a puppy or kitten so cute that you want to cry or scream? I know y’all know what I’m talking about. So, what does nanggigigil ako sayo translate to? It’s sort of… I CANNOT HANDLE HOW CUTE YOU ARE. IF I DON’T SMORSH YOUR CHEEKS I AM GOING TO LOSE MY MIND. Ok, that’s not the literal translation, but you get the gist. (Bad gigil, on the other hand, is when you are about to go volcanic with irritation. When your eyes are watering and your hands are clenching and your teeth gnashing because you are frothing with frustration. There’s too much of that in the world right now, so we’re not going to go there. I’m all bag gigil’d out. I’ve had enough bad gigil to last me a hundred lifetimes.) A scent for all of us who have been exploded by someone else’s cuteness: ube candyfloss and rice paper-wrapped red bean custard candy.

The ultimate personification of the Lovers, the crowned White Queen and Red King appear as personifications of solar and lunar forces, opposing currents poised before their great meeting. Here the King extends his branch and the Queen hers, and in the symbolic imagery the sun and moon stand beside them in the watery vessel where their union will be enacted, reflecting the ancient alchemical principle that the opposites must enter the prima materia if transformation is to occur. In the illuminated plates of the Rosarium Philosophorum, the crowned King and Queen stand facing one another beneath a descending dove, sovereign and sovereign, fixed and volatile, their bodies poised at the threshold of sacred union. He burns with solar tincture, sulfurous and red, the embodied heat of will and form; she gleams with lunar pallor, mercurial and receptive, the shining mirror that receives and transforms. Their meeting is courtship through coniunctio, the deliberate joining of opposites beneath divine blessing. They are the Lovers stripped to archetype, the sun and the moon brought into perfect equilibrium. The King must surrender his isolated dominion, the Queen her cool separateness, and in their embrace the sealed vessel becomes a womb of transmutation. Above them, the spirit descends; below them, the bath and tomb await. What appears as union is also dissolution, for each must die to solitary sovereignty in order to be reborn as unified essence. Alchemically, their conjunction generates the Stone, the filius philosophorum, the radiant third that arises when polarity is neither denied nor allowed to dominate. From red and white emerges the tincture that perfects, the hermaphroditic child crowned in both suns and moons, embodying the reconciliation of sulfur and mercury within a single body of light. The Lovers here transcend flesh and narrative, becoming emblem and equation, the purest symbolic revelation of the card’s mystery: that true union is the marriage of contraries under spirit, and that from such sacred joining comes incorruptible gold. Crimson musk and white amber twined with solar frankincense and lunar myrrh, warm saffron steeped in cool iris root, gold-threaded honey darkened by silvered benzoin, a marriage of fire and pearl beneath a rain of distant stars.

Peru balsam, champa absolute, sugared patchouli, toasted cardamom, black pepper, labdanum, and coffee bean.

Tagalog Nasa’yo ang puso ko! Strawberry-swirled halo-halo with a dollop of black cherry cream and mango puree.

Blushing ruby chocolate swirling with vanilla, spices, and the dark, silky sweetness of Snake Oil.

Polished santol wood warmed by sun, the faint sweetness of coconut husk and rice powder, crushed sampaguita blossoms, pandan leaf, and a touch of palm sugar, oud, and chocolate suman.

Estonian The fleeting sweetness of a stolen bite pressed into sunlit skin: wild strawberries and sweet apple dipped in sweet cream and blush amber.

Bittersweet cacao drifting through the aromatic warmth of freshly brewed black tea.

These are dark times indeed... so here's a gourmand for the brooding scholar. The warm, nutty richness of roasted macadamia folded into the dry papery musk of time-worn tomes bound in crackled leather; golden drips of beeswax candlelight flicker against polished teakwood shelves, while the smoky warmth of fireplace smoke lingers in the air. (Nutty portmanteau absolutely intended. Don’t @ us.)

Cognac, sweet rum, plum skin, rice milk, salted prune, Haitian patchouli, matcha, and cistus absolute.