White Whale

"Stepping back and smelling the Masque Milano’s White Whale now, it is a chamber piece of ambergris, violets and olibanum, with rivulets of saltwater hurrying along the wood planks of the Pequod. This combination is so beautiful and so compelling that I raise my wrist over and over at frequent intervals. The next day, wearing something sensible to the office, I am caught by a memory of violets and ambergris that call like a siren from their glass vial across the city. White Whale haunts. As I raise my wrist to my nose over and over, enraptured by White Whale’s beauty but sad that it, like Moby Dick, is the last of its kind, I realize that Alori has quite cleverly and poignantly captured the novel’s theme of obsession."