Chris Rusak’s 33 was perhaps conspicuous by its absence in the previous “I love all the vetivers” post…but that’s because this new love gets a post of its own.

@chris.rusak.perfume very kindly gave me some samples when I bought a wee bottle of Io last year, and though I really dig the wayward grandchild of L’Heure Bleue known as QUA, it’s 33 that is making me crave a bottle to wear over and over. In just three wears it’s got right under my skin, and started to make those pleasing little scritches just where brain and feelings meet.

Sure, that might have been intensified by wearing it on a strangely emotional day–revisiting where I lived as a teenager, taking a bus ride between the mountains to the beach, through the green, curving past stacked high rises and steep cliffs, crashing into waves of sensory memories. But the scent itself is lovely: a crisp green vetiver and angelica, with a smooth orris playing hide and seek between them, chewy and herbal underneath, with a warm hint of skin to balance the dryness.

It was perfect on one of those days of cool humidity where the breeze gives you goosebumps, but you’re still comfortable with bare arms, the sun is out but the sky is dark with the threat of a storm, and the distant ships and islands are pale hazed ghosts.

Though I imagine it will be just as good when I’m not shifting between past life and the present, my feet in the gritty sand that pulls away with the waves, and my memories all over the place. It’s got enough intensity all of its own.

originally posted on 15 April 2019, later SOTD story photo from August 2019