The Grammar of Vetiver

Vetiver is a grass that thinks it is a tree. The root goes down two metres and comes back with smoke, grapefruit peel, wet rope and dry earth — a full sentence from a single subject.

Haiti gives it light; Java gives it ash. The best compositions choose one verb and conjugate it slowly. Fueguia 1833 lets the Patagonian air do the conjugating.

When a client asks for “a clean vetiver”, I ask which of its four childhoods they want removed. That is usually where the real brief begins.