Dacryodes edulis resin

A friend recently sent me a small sampling of resin from the bush butter tree of Africa, Dacryodes edulis. It's another one of 'those' types of smells, a push and pull creature, drawing you in and then repelling you at the same time. One moment it smells of cedar pencil shavings, and the next it smells like an old junkyard of cars, the aroma of spilled oil and hot rubber tires hovering in the air. It smells of dust and lemons and pine with a touch of sweaty tropical blossoms. It smells like the air of a strange place. The texture is fluid, like fresh pine resin, though in the cold it solidifies enough to touch without leaving a sticky trail.

My immediate response when sniffing it was repulsion, then almost as soon as that thought registered, I was off in memory. Holding my bio dad's hand as I walked barefoot in the dirt. Squeezing between dilapidated pre-1970's cars in a salvage yard, flat tires peeling away from rims, the scent of hot plastic upholstery and hard steering wheels and dust rising up. First grade and Mrs. Red Lips with her dyed black hair and white powdered face, folded and wrinkled like the skin of a Shar-Pei, glaring at me as I penciled color onto my fingernails because she was incapable of holding my attention. Play Doh, pencils, dust, oil, heat, plastic, lemon meringue pie, pine resin stuck to dirty jeans, summers at Dinkey Creek.

I love it. It has a place in incense, definitely.