Florid Inclusions
Ritual: Juniper Lavender Chocolate 70%
What lovely packaging! Solid A. If I hadn't experienced To'ak I'd call it an A+.
Smell: Oh I like this smell. It's a little hard to put my finger on it. It's sweet, with a floating airy sharpness. It's like the purple desert sky in the evening after a storm.
Very sharp at first on my tongue. Texture's a little bit grainy and dry. There's a sharp lavender here; French I think, not English. Oh, the juniper! That is why I thought of the desert. I once lived in a desert place covered in juniper bushes. This is such an interesting flavor. It's extremely sour and fruity, like all the Ritual chocolate I've tried. This one really dances.
You know what I've decided I'm putting too much effort into forming sentences and making sense, and I'm going to stop.
sharp points in a smooth purple dance, fluidity and abrupt transitions. a bird fluttering, diving, darting. the moment when a melody hangs, a phrase repeated three times but not completed, and the beginning of the final note. i feel excitement, longing, hope. i feel fullness like the tears leaping out from below my chest, the bright dancing energy of this chocolate, the mischief and the love.
Rococo: Violet Dark 65%
I don't think I know what violets smell like!
Smell: Wooooow whaaat? Extremely sweet, almost cloying and yet I think I like it. It reminds me of cream sherry, or some kind of liqueur. A specific one, actually. What's it called? Chambord. Oh what I suddenly started getting something brown and wheaty or nutty. This smell reminds me of a candy I'd find on a grandmother's side table.
a child undressing on a beach. the old cloth you wrap around teacups to protect them in storage or travel. something hot, a heated blanket or stone from the fire to warm the foot of the bed. someone knitting, dried flowers by her side, watching reruns of Judge Judy or Jeopardy on the television. flowers collected, studied, loved, pressed for preservation in a grass-stained notebook. a letter from a soldier, scribbled late at night and sealed with a kiss, held to the chest tightly.
This chocolate feels quite far from most of my personality. It belongs in the 1930s, and it's more feminine than I am. But I feel the life of its personality; there's someone who needs this chocolate, and they are someone who wants to live in a cottage alone with foxgloves and delphiniums, and floral aprons drying on the line outside, someone who gossips and preens and has a bookmark with beaded ribbons on the end.
Markham & Fitz: Ooh La Lavender 64%
Smell: Gosh, that just about knocks you over with lavender and honey. It's probably too much for many, but I like it. The smell itself is like a drug. I just want to sit here breathing it, letting it envelop my mind. It's a shame humans can only smell while breathing in. It's like a wash of sunlight and pillows, laughter dripping from the awning.
More sour than I expected at the start. An assertive middle fruit flavor, like mango or orange. a honey bee's pilgrimage, the high meadow blanket of flowers. it prays, antenna kissing the ground. it prays for a life that is longer, to visit every flower and know all the beauties of the world. mellifera, i'm sorry; but i will remember you for as long as i can. you've helped create something beautiful.
Goodness, that was the most poignant chocolate experience I've ever had. I literally cried in mourning and gratitude. I don't know, I don't even think it's an exceptionally excellent chocolate! I guess the nature of honey combined with my recent ponderings about art just really wholloped me. I think I also opened up an especially vulnerable mental space to invite the imagery this time. Perhaps "stop trying to make so much sense" removes more filters than I realized. ...Uh, hypothesis: I've been consuming art wrong all this time. Despite everything.
Mirzam: Halwa (with Rose, Saffron, Almond, and Pistachio) 62%
The swirly designs on the surface of this chocolate are super cool.
Smell: Wow that is is strange. Sharp, red, sour, twirling, falling down. Not to the ground, but down a narrow crevasse in a cave.
I'm immediately drawn to the "strange" flavor here. It is round. Green orange purple red. writhing slowly, a creature whose being is a pit of snakes. what a lovely texture in the crunch! like mouse bones in delighted jaws. sleuthing, prowling, galmoobing slitherly across the floor. the power and freedom, the lazy certainty, the unmitigated pleasure of enveloping the helpless still-warm recently alive, consuming basking satisfied.
Perhaps this is what it's like to be a gelatinous cube.
