INCENSED

A thin twirl of smoke unspools from the incense burner like hypnotizing hand gestures. A slow motion ghost, rising and drifting into a faint fog, the way a memory may appear in a room of the heart. 

The art of the incense burner is part of the pleasure. An homage to Brutalist factory design, complete with tapering smokestack, its masculinity teased with rose pink. From a gift shop at the Benesse Art Site, Naoshima, Japan. Or, a wooden incense cylinder made of the curved bark of a tree branch in China’s Yellow Mountains. Smoke slips through its fingerprint like openings that were die cut by nature. Curated by the AMAN shop in Shanghai.

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