Silver Kush, and the Joy of Oxymorons

Oxymorons are great. Of all the modes of contradiction (oxymoron, juxtaposition, paradox), oxymorons seem to play to humor the best, in my opinion. There are some classic examples, like “jumbo shrimp” or sarcastically referring to “military intelligence,” where some are simply contradictions of definitions (the former) and some are contradictions of ideas (the later). Some get the portmanteau treatment, like “frenemy,” the contraction of “friend” and “enemy.” Some are used to capture contradicting feelings, like “bittersweet,” and some are used in fantasy and science fiction to capture a sense of possible impossibility, like “living dead.”

Silver Kush has me thinking about this a lot. I’ll get into the details in each part of the review, but Jar Co.’s Silver Kush begs me to describe it in so many oxymoronic ways.

Let’s start with first impressions. Opening the jar – and I’ve talked about this before – is in some ways my favorite part of this whole experience. Getting a good look and a deep inhalation of aroma from a freshly opened container of cannabis can be pure bliss, as your senses are lovingly assaulted with an aroma that is both new and familiar. The terpenes we all know and enjoy have been put together organically in a novel and thought-provoking way. What do we smell, and what will it mean when we smoke it? Can we compare it to another cultivar of cannabis, or are we comparing it to something else? Another plant? Another organic thing? A non-organic thing? Or a place, or a time?

Silver Kush is pungent. It reeks. It is borderline offensive, and yet smells amazing and enticing. Disaggregating the discrete (and in some cases discreet as well) components of the aroma was difficult. There’s a pungent herbal and cheesiness to it, with a permeating essence of ammonia. Which sounds just gross when I write it all down together, but this Silver Kush is that type of distinctly “weedy” smell that reminded me of the first oxymoron that kicked off this whole conceptual throughline: it smells like the very very best of what we used to get back in the day when it was all mostly garbage, we didn’t really know what good weed was because we’d probably never (or at least almost never) had any, but when we got that nosefull of that real stinky shit, you just knew for some unknown reason that it was going to be good. The aroma of the best shitty weed. So nostalgic.

The look and feel of the buds however contradicts this as well, as they are so evenly shaped and similar in size. They’re all either that classic medium-small fat Christmas tree nug shape, or the slightly off-center State of Maine-esque shape. They’re a medium green with hints of paler green dotted throughout. There are abundant and irregular clusters of orange pistils, and the whole of the nug is sparkling with trichomes. The texture is fluffy and relatively soft, leaving the fingers gently sticky. They’re really exceptional buds, as I have come to expect from Jar Co.

The hits were clean and easy, with a gentle spicy feel in the deeper throat and lungs. The flavor of the smoke largely carried over conceptually from the aroma, though lacking the ammonia quality, thankfully. I broke the flavors down differently in my initial notes as earthy, herbal, and peppery, under a lingering pungent skunkiness that seems to be the flavor version of the ammonia aroma. Again, I feel like I’m describing something truly gross, but it hits that reinvented nostalgia button, and I’m here for it.

The highs have to be broken down into how it hits in the morning versus how it hits in the evening. They’re not entirely dissimilar, but the evening has a much more euphoric feel to it, where any relaxation I was already feeling is amplified, allowing my head to float a bit. Earlier in the day, particularly in the early morning, I feel invigorated (though not necessarily energized, if that makes sense), where my brain is swimming with thoughts and ideas, and I feel creative but just a little bit stoned on the edges of my senses. It keeps coming back to getting high back in college and in my early twenties, where we’d smoke whatever, whenever, so if it happened that whomever I was hanging out with had some weed to share, we’d get high and then do whatever it was we were going to do anyway. The highs frequently seemed to meet us where we were and just enhance whatever we were up to, be that playing video games, walking to get dollar menu fast food, wandering off into nature, or passing out on couches watching a movie (on VHS more often than not). The body high is noticeable but not overwhelming, with a very gentle heaviness if sedentary, and a calm, metabolism-enhancing feeling earlier in the day.

The contradictions and adaptability of the highs from Silver Kush have reminded me why it’s one of my favorite strains when I’m looking for a classic, old school, or traditional high. When I ask customers what they’re looking for in a high, and they’re not used to being asked a question like that, sometimes I get a simple “just high,” and Silver Kush is one of my very favorite suggestions. I very highly recommend this for the next time you just want to get high and enjoy the world around you, whatever that world looks like.