The Hegemony of Perfume
Looking Back, Flacon by Flacon
A crew of ladrilleros is at it again, fanning the flames, as it were, of the unstated agenda borne out by the quema.
“Of perfumes in Nature, the early intervention involved their interception, then eventually their extractive separation, and then, to secure human supremacy by way of chemistry, the extension of separative conventions in favor of conversions and inventions,” Saffron would explain.
And now, this smoke disperses as if to display domination with a demonstration of combustive oxidation.
Background Notes Concerning Brickmaking in Central Mexico
“Presently it’s the dry season, so ladrilleros are working around the clock to manufacture bricks, and collecting different dirts along with organic matter such as sawdust or cow or goat (not horse) manure to reduce the weight and limit cracking of the molded forms, which are baked thousands at a time in large subsurface kilns,” Saffron explains.
“But there’s not much wood around here, so the brickmakers burn what they find: electronic equipment, old computers, dirty motor oil, anything to entertain the quema for a while. This includes refuse from garbage trucks bound for the landfill, as the drivers save money when their trip to the dump is diverted. Yet that arrangement isn’t ideal, insofar as the ladrilleros can’t process the entire mess of organic debris.”
“The brickmakers pick up tires from local vulcas, and the nylo (nylon) imparts a desirable reddish hue to the ladrillos, they say. Whereas the good color is also obtainable from sawdust, the truckers hauling alamo (cottonwood) construction waste from Michoacan sawmills have lately raised their prices, on account of cobros de piso (extortion payments), they say.”
The fires go for fifteen hours or more, but the toxic vapors early on are most violently combusting and visibly flaring up, thus the burn is ignited soon after sunset. At the outset, packaging for kindling and other various combustibles are piled up beside the horno. The rojo vivo (denotes the degree of redness indicating optimal heat) marks the initiation upon which plumes of black smoke are generated under cover of darkness.
“Nighttime burning is the worst, as the discharging fumes leave their point of origination and flow like a river, near the ground because of nocturnal temperature inversions, meandering about the very places that animals and people dwell, which is unfortunate since the streaming gases are often poisonous combustion products of perfume incineration.”
Noxious vapors aside, these boxed flacons of mephitic fragrances in alcohol are hardly well-suited as fuel for brickmaking ovens since they become pressurized because of the tightly fitting caps, which eventually propel off with explosive force. But the options of ladrilleros are limited, we suppose.
“She stares, and stares, into the embers, and remembers,” Licorice would recite.
Into the controlled burn, box by box is introduced, flacon by flacon is tossed. Classic and floral, woody and chypre, citrus and Oriental, mass-marketed and niche. One after another, the perfumes are thrown into the horno. Any foils and paper wrappings are first to combust, then the labels and cardboard. Then, the contained flammable contents of each flask become superheated under pressure owing to the tight-fitting stopper, which eventually yields the building energy with a violent burst. The fumes darken to black and fan out.
The desecration of Creation is an ongoing process, and it seems like each deposit of perfume into the oven marks its progress. As each bottle is cast inside, Earth becomes a share less bearable for those who take up residence here, a little less like home. Generosity yields some animus, caring goes down as abuse goes up, and ugliness gains some ground on beauty. Native riches fall further behind blight as Nature is made a grade more degraded, and Life becomes a shade more negated.
As L’Heure Bleue by Guerlain (1912) is pitched into the fire, specific practical human skills gained from experience are replaced by order power and predictability — with L’Air du Temps by Nina Ricci (1948), street smarts and playful thought are replaced by theoretical knowledge and power thought — with Youth Dew by Estée Lauder (1953), frogs forests spices dancing prairies weeds and crying are replaced by databases and disembedded computation and symbolic representations of structures and relationships — with Pour Homme by Paco Rabanne (1973), dimensional evolving communities in unhurried flux are replaced by those intentional idealized monotonous and situation-free — with Polo by Ralph Lauren (1978), fascination with the pollinating mechanism of a salvia blossom is replaced by fascination with the birth of stars in our galaxy — with Drakkar Noir by Guy Laroche (1982), the elaborate variety of things private singular contingent and emergent is replaced by coordinated common denominators and quantifiable samples and derivatives — with Coco by Chanel (1984), flowers cats butterflies and breasts are replaced by models quarks numbers quasars and photos of breasts — with Cool Water by Davidoff (1988), knowing a little about a lot is replaced by knowing more and more about less and less — with Red Door by Elizabeth Arden (1989), feelings and adaptable practices of particular craftspeople and artisans are replaced by mechanized account-keeping time-keeping and space-measuring — with White Diamonds by Elizabeth Taylor (1991), whatever is irreplaceable is (nevertheless) ticketed for replacement by whatever is interchangeable — with CK One by Calvin Klein (1994), things terrestrial organic unforeseeable and non-repeatable are replaced by things virtual prosthetic consummate managed and mediated — with Happy by Clinique (1997), finders and collectors of generated asymmetric things are replaced by fabricators and manipulators of extrinsic flawless things — with J’Adore by Dior (1999), foresight and feedback and natural limits and slower paces are replaced by means that are bigger and faster and context-free and farther away — with Terre d’Hermès by Hermès (2006), gaining and losing ground in conflict are replaced by genocide and biocide — with Guilty by Gucci (2010), gardens laughter snakes feasts roots cacti feathers and singing and planting and harvesting are replaced by manifestos hyperlinks postulates demographics webcams franchises algorithms guidelines and administering and producing and blogging — with Acqua di Giò Profumo by Giorgio Armani (2015), the aimlessly intricate splendor of Earthly Creation, undeniably yet elusively vital and alive, is replaced by mathematics imagination connectivity information and the proud prosecution of purpose-driven missions.
