FOSSILS ET AL
Damascena Rose Oil: a Beau Ideal Perfume (Not)
“By popular demand we revisit this second time an authentic crown of Creation that comes to us from Bulgaria,” Saffron sets the stage.
Tulíp has asserted that damascena rose oil is a beau ideal perfume, but from this premise it would seem to follow that the source plants must be pinnacles of evolutionary flawlessness, and so her assertion strikes me as inattentive to the crazy mazy continua of biocultural variation expressed within and between kinds of roses.
As if … evolution proceeds toward an apex or goal? or an apotheosis of some defining tendency? a culmination of some central thrust? an end result of some predictable generality?
“No harm was meant, just effusive praise for roses,” Tulíp says, “shortly we’ll sample three distinct hydrodistilled oils, none of which are expressions of biological consummation.”
The concept of progress toward a state of perfection doesn’t square with Nature, and it’s dangerous too, trumpeted by those who consider humanity a zenith of organic evolution, an ordained apogee of design, superior to other Life forms.
“Next up for humankind, divine consciousness.”
Yet we hominids made our entrance to this razor’s edge of a biosphere rather late in the game, as if in the final inches of the stellar mile, or the last minutes of the cosmic year, truly a geologic moment of planetary time, and we came into being fortuitously, our appearance was never foreordained, rather it was unpredictable, even improbable, contingent upon countless aimless evolutionary steps that came before, among which a tiny modification would have changed the asymmetric history of Life to cascade in a different direction, never to give rise to our species … we animals who we call people.
“Then you’re pleased with how haphazard Nature has unfolded? grateful for the forged compromises, the settlements and solutions? notwithstanding that your two useless nipples and bad knees and back suggest some body-plan engineering flaws?”
Neither Darwin nor his intellectual heirs provided for schemes or purposes or prior plans, and natural selection hinges upon what came before to build upon. Genetic variation too is limited, and there are other developmental constraints, not to mention the role of random events.
Saffron recites from her journal of clippings, “Teilhard de Chardin wrote, the phenomenon of Life is finally and fully realized in the form of man. Mind you, as it happens, the form of man is also the form of Teilhard de Chardin.”
Life forms, living organisms, are what they are, not perfected, not by any divine power or natural mechanism.
“So volatile oils are not astounding by any directional design,” she turns to retrieve and ready several rose extracts for our beholding.
Whereas botanical aromas aren’t foreseeable outcomes of a universal drive, not intended destined or devised, thanks to no general law or principle or encompassing force or effect, they are not entirely attributable to natural selection either, not simply functions of competition for reproductive success. Rather, any given organic odorament is the outcome of a complex suite of influences, some evident and some abstruse. Which is to say that such an expression could have easily never emerged, but did.
“So ladders of evolvement don’t lead to plant perfumes at the height of their refinement.”
Male nipples are homologues of female nipples, a result of unlikely contingency, just as the number of fingers and toes we have are real-World character states shaped by the dead hand of Life’s history. The scentful vapors that lift from rose blossoms are subject to the same chance hand.
“So arrows of evolvement don’t point to plant perfumes at the height of their sublimity.”
The entire kingdom of plants is like a small twig newly borne by the vast arborescent shrub of Life, which would never produce the same phyletic branches if regrown from seed, which is to say that each inimitable single-origin dispatch of perfumed metabolites has arrived by an accident of the draw, one eventuality among millions of unrealized alternatives.
“So rocket ships of evolvement don’t soar toward plant perfumes at the height of their beauty.”
The panel commences to review a Bulattars extract from the Struma Valley, “Bitter peach-leafy elements are surging past those less vegetal and more herbal with a serving more earthy and stone-fruity accents concurrently emerging — an ylang-muguet-like drydown after a time comes to the effluvial forefront … the supple resinous undertone unobtrusively radiates depth of seamless complexity — the floral ambery heart-chord yields to fatty caramelic narcotic base-notes exalted by shades of balsamic buttery wax-n-honey — flourishes of cinnamon and clove seem to pour forth as fumes of labdanum-treated leather teem to seep out — there’s a reference to blackcurrant-berry-wine issued — and another fruit odor that’s off to a degree … apples that are musty is what it must be — what quality is not expressed by this magical matter? this olfactive Rorschach inkblot test? — like a delicate yet diffusive blanket of drupaceous character folded among signature rosaceous layers reflecting geranium metabolites enriched by sprigs of lavender upon bedding of plum-infused tobacco.”
There are no fragrant epitomes, no ideal types, no gold standards, no standards at all, nothing to be perfected, no essential oils that are essential, nothing like that, only space-and-time-specific molecular signals embedded in the impenetrable cloth of Nature woven from threads of fluxing differences and shifting interfaces.
“And what’s worse, the notion of perfection is an existential curse, which, I see, is like a scab for us to pick at, by means of metaphor and verse, for better or for worse.”
Endless variation is the fundamental reality of Life. And natural historians, who study large heterogeneous samples to measure wide variety, most naturally discard the notion of immutable essence in favor of anti-essentialist thinking.
“There is no normal.”
In our line of endeavor, we’re forced to reckon with the wide-reaching brokerage of industrial aromatic materials, fragrant formations of metabolic improvisation that have been reduced to commodities. These substances are no longer relevant to Living Nature, except as undermining agents. They’re measured by standards that are concocted and imposed by people, the kind who would disregard a flower and pander to power, answer in the language of numbers and abide the abstract idea of the norm (or average or benchmark or model).
“The Fraternal Order of the self-satisfied Sons of the narcissistic Knights of the biophobic Brotherhood of promiscuous Perfumers.”
It’s a loose-knit fraternity that is nonetheless tightly bound by a common investment in the principle that they are lords of Nature. No matter how ester-rich their lavender or floral their neroli, in terms of the Natural World, their standardized soups are scrambled and foreign, the messages corrupted, the rich ecological fabric of situational infochemical interactions subverted, the matchless diversity flattened to become dependable hence predictable and repetitive.
The next sample absolute circulating, questionably referred to as Provence or cabbage rose, which comes to us from France, is labeled rose de Mai.
Published in Fossils et al. Follow to learn more about Paleontology.
