"I myself am strange and unusual . . . "

Ok. I sent the eau de parfum samplers out, and I had a little part of the booth at Intermountain set up for samples of the same parfums -- and the reactions thus far are mixed. I like that, actually. It means, in a way, that I achieved the goal -- not to create scents that smell like A) aromatherapy, or B) like everyone else's natural botanical stuff. I admit that Serj is closer to a "normal" eau de parfum than is Oshiba. Serj is fruity and slightly floral with underpinnings of earth and moss. Oshiba is -- Oshiba's just different. The inspiration for this perfume came from an accident of fate. I was evaluating materials and found the combination of hiba wood and osmanthus absolue intoxicating. Breathtaking, really. So while Serj was created using repeated trials, a la Carles, Oshiba was directed from outside myself, intuitively, until an odd balance of hiba, osmanthus, rose and labdanum (very little labdanum) was achieved.

Men more than women seem to enjoy these two scents. Serj opens with a blast of sweet, sugary fruitiness and mellows into twining florals to end in a powder patch of vetyver and patchoulis. Oshiba screams from the bottle with almost metallic rage, then settles quietly (as quietly as a kickboxer with ADHD) into figgy, floral, powdery cedarness, the rage still hovering to the end.

So yes, these two scents are strange and unusual, or out of the box, as some have indicated. But like all art, they are reflective of a time and space within this artist's life, which means they won't be around forever. I'm terrible with the forever stuff. Static situations kill me. I will keep a bottle of each for memories, then it's on to the next strange and unusual scent. Or maybe I'll keep it simple and only slightly more than ordinary -- or maybe not.