Top Notes 
Musk
Sandalwood
Tonka bean
Amber
Heart Notes 
Marine notes
Iris
Jasmine
Rose
Base Notes 
Lemon
Lily of the valley
Bergamot
Citron
Galbanum
Cardamom07/16/2025
Catodon
24 Reviews
Catodon
2
Phenomenology of a scent
Phenomenology of a Scent
(aka: when I became part of the perfume itself)
The abstract concept that gave birth to this fragrance?
The parable of the ten virgins.
The philosophy of fear.
Time.
Tension.
The human.
The bottle: a threshold.
And the threshold has a veil.
And the wearer, to cross it, must tear it with their own hand.
Because fear is performative: it dissolves only through courage.
So far, everything makes sense. So far.
Then comes the scent.
I brace for an assault — an olfactory cacophony, an apocalypse of notes —
and instead, no.
I find myself in an abstract cabin, suspended in nothingness.
I smell myself.
There are green saps, with a gourd-like tang,
there are flowers — blended with salt,
soft mosses beneath me,
and there is my skin, so vividly alive.
It’s an idyll. But it’s unreal.
It feels like a dream.
A common scent, human.
Too common.
Too human.
Too… standard.
Is this a joke?
I feel fine. It feels good.
It’s home.
It’s family.
It’s memory.
… Filippo?
Is this a UNUM creation, or is it a deodorant?
What is this lightheartedness? Why do I smell like a human who’s rolled with joy through grass and sand?
Where is the catastrophe?
Where is the fear?
Filippo, when does it arrive?
I don’t want to settle into this warmth.
Tell me when, Filippo.
Or did you really create something so innocent and light?
Light like time that flies.
Light like the human condition that burns down like a candle and then — smoke.
When is the moment, Filippo?
When do the notes come that change everything?
€220 for this?
… Wait.
Why do I feel — more and more distinctly — my sweat threading its way into the fragrance?
Why do I keep asking when it arr—
What did I just say?
There it was.
The fear.
Not in the fragrance, but in me, in you, in us.
In my waiting, in my need for rupture,
in my terror of recognizing myself too clearly,
of no longer being a spectator,
but an actor. Of living in an idyll at the mercy of an abyss. That carefree ecstasy will end, just as my childhood once did.
I find myself an active participant in the very meaning of the perfume.
And no one ever understood that.
Except those who waited for death
in the perfume,
and discovered, with horror and tenderness,
that it wasn’t there — or maybe had always been there — in our lives, in the waiting: but when? When, do you know?
— as the parable teaches — be ready, we do not know, and we will never know
neither the day, nor the hour.
(aka: when I became part of the perfume itself)
The abstract concept that gave birth to this fragrance?
The parable of the ten virgins.
The philosophy of fear.
Time.
Tension.
The human.
The bottle: a threshold.
And the threshold has a veil.
And the wearer, to cross it, must tear it with their own hand.
Because fear is performative: it dissolves only through courage.
So far, everything makes sense. So far.
Then comes the scent.
I brace for an assault — an olfactory cacophony, an apocalypse of notes —
and instead, no.
I find myself in an abstract cabin, suspended in nothingness.
I smell myself.
There are green saps, with a gourd-like tang,
there are flowers — blended with salt,
soft mosses beneath me,
and there is my skin, so vividly alive.
It’s an idyll. But it’s unreal.
It feels like a dream.
A common scent, human.
Too common.
Too human.
Too… standard.
Is this a joke?
I feel fine. It feels good.
It’s home.
It’s family.
It’s memory.
… Filippo?
Is this a UNUM creation, or is it a deodorant?
What is this lightheartedness? Why do I smell like a human who’s rolled with joy through grass and sand?
Where is the catastrophe?
Where is the fear?
Filippo, when does it arrive?
I don’t want to settle into this warmth.
Tell me when, Filippo.
Or did you really create something so innocent and light?
Light like time that flies.
Light like the human condition that burns down like a candle and then — smoke.
When is the moment, Filippo?
When do the notes come that change everything?
€220 for this?
… Wait.
Why do I feel — more and more distinctly — my sweat threading its way into the fragrance?
Why do I keep asking when it arr—
What did I just say?
There it was.
The fear.
Not in the fragrance, but in me, in you, in us.
In my waiting, in my need for rupture,
in my terror of recognizing myself too clearly,
of no longer being a spectator,
but an actor. Of living in an idyll at the mercy of an abyss. That carefree ecstasy will end, just as my childhood once did.
I find myself an active participant in the very meaning of the perfume.
And no one ever understood that.
Except those who waited for death
in the perfume,
and discovered, with horror and tenderness,
that it wasn’t there — or maybe had always been there — in our lives, in the waiting: but when? When, do you know?
— as the parable teaches — be ready, we do not know, and we will never know
neither the day, nor the hour.
thisma
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Bdrl
MagicMeiko
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Jeob
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