Ashes to ashes, musk to musk

I've been wearing the same two scents for weeks. With all my samples, I figured it was time to try a new one. I had remembered liking Montale's Musk to Musk when I tried it once. I either put the tiniest amount possible on or was near brain dead the last time.

So far, I can stand it enough to wear it while I write this post. I'm not feeling ill and heading for the scrub routine. In fact, I find it rather intriguing in its awfulness. There's a note somewhere in this mess that's truly wonderful. Unfortunately, I can't place what that note is (I can imagine a reader saying "geez, write about something you know!")

I include Rembrandt's "The Anatomy Lesson" for it somehow feels like this scent. A dead body and a group of supposedly learned men who don't have a clue what they're looking at. I can imagine Musk to Musk's odor to be that of a strong perfume, combined perhaps with formaldehyde, on a body in the morgue. All the notes that might be pleasing to the senses linger still, but they are drowned out by death. The forensic pathologist wants to know what the scent is, for it might be a clue to the identity of the John Doe. He is thinking he'll call in an expert.

I wonder if that's ever been done, identifying a perfume to help in a crime investigation. I suppose it has been for some reason or other.

I'd prefer these macabre associations to a screeching floral any day of the week.

I'm still smelling my wrist. On one hand, there's a woodsy note I love (sandalwood, perhaps) and on the other, there's a sharp, almost medicinal smell (which probably is the one that made me look for an old painting with doctors in it).

It doesn't matter, really, for as soon as I'm done posting, I will go wash this off.

PS. Even after washing with an outrageously strong cypress scented soap and applying a bit of Serge Luten's Chypre Rouge, I can still smell the offending note on my left wrist. I would love to place this odor. It reminds of something awful from childhood, but what it is will probably puzzle me forever (or I'll just forget about it).