Cognitively Impenetrable

The taste of Coke is, and a lot of very abstract art. Doesn't mean that something can't be good (Dr. Pepper!) or that you can't enjoy looking at it. Wonderful moment in the Market Street Cafe this morning. I'd stopped for my free coffee (we supply them coffee sleeves with our logo) this morning, and a still warm scone, handed to me with a smile from the beautiful Erica. Couple of college girls came in, and I kind of did a little stutter step, smelling one of them. "Tommy Girl" I said out loud. The young lady looked at me strangely and said, "How could you possibly know that?" and I told her it was one of my favorite scents. I enjoy those little off the record conversations where you can talk about specific things, and you can tell that the other person never expected to be having that conversation. I told her, not even lying, though I could have and it wouldn't have made any difference, that I studied perfumes, bought small samples and tried them on women who would allow me to. Aw shucks. As it happened, I had a couple of samples in the truck, newly arrived in the mail, that I'd not even opened because they arrived yesterday and I got them from the box this morning, on my way out. I'd gotten two samples of "Chinatown", that Luca Turin had given the highest ranking and I gave one to her, told her to check it out, and be wearing it next week at this time, and I would, politely, smell it on her. Chalk it up to organic chemistry. A frolic. That's too esoteric, reading back over, because I was thinking about the Amish tradition of building a barn, which they call a 'frolic', and what a frolic it was, that I suddenly needed to know some organic chemistry, and that I was flirting, for sport. The real world actually became a fiction, and I could say anything I wanted to say. Not that that's not usually the case. I pretty much always shoot straight, even if I'm making it up. And I get this book on Inter-Library loan, a book on organic chemistry, I think, god, I've been alone too long, or something. I sacrifice everything to write to you, I put my life on the line, read books I never would have otherwise. And it's true, something I read in The New Yorker. Corona should never have been bottled in clear bottles. If light hits them they oxidize, a matter of volatile oils;I'ved always built and prenyl mercaptan is generated, skunky beer; lime kills the mercaptan. Seems there's almost always something chemical at play, when the natives do something as a matter of course. Manioc is to cassava what mandrake is to everything else. The screaming man. The prop guy is not to be diminished, what he creates is what allows us to believe. It's all illusion, but some of it is better than other. I've always built props is a hell of a statement. Cognitively impenetrable.