She Comes. She Goes.

At a certain point, you recognize someone who's gone where you can't go. Someone who knows a language you'll never speak. Someone who lets the self go places the self should not let itself go.

With grudging admiration, you recognize writing that spills over the top, and won't apologize for the mess. Writing that is so baroque, so byzantine in the richness of its wordage, that it takes your breath away. Or makes your gorge rise.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm guessing mostly ladies, I commend to you: Suki ... http://cognoscented.blogspot.com/ ... writer of Cognoscented, the penultimate perfume blog.

She comes. She goes. She leaves empty perfume bottles in her wake. She's anonymous. She can't be reached.

She has lore: it's reputed she was once thatwhitecat, fragboard reviewer of renown, whose missives live on in those archives.

She's wonderful. Please. Go read her before she disappears again.

The photo is of a long-necked unguentarium. Yes, that's right. With early Byzantine motif, from the Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology (MASCA), University of Pennsylvania Museum