Great Fragrance Quotes

Love is wild; its whole beauty is in its wildness. It comes like a breeze with great fragrance, fills your heart, and suddenly where there was a desert there is a garden full of flowers.

I love the stillness of the wood; I love the music of the rill: I love the couch in pensive mood Upon some silent hill. Scarce heard, beneath yon arching trees, The silver-crested ripples pass; and, like a mimic brook, the breeze Whispers among the grass. Here from the world I win release, Nor scorn of men, nor footstep rude, Break into mar the holy peace Of this great solitude. Here may the silent tears I weep Lull the vested spirit into rest, As infants sob themselves to sleep Upon a mothers breast. But when the bitter hour is gone, And the keen throbbing pangs are still, Oh, sweetest then to couch alone Upon some silent hill! To live in joys that once have been, To put the cold world out of sight, And deck life's drear and barren scene With hues of rainbow-light. For what to man the gift of breath, If sorrow be his lot below; If all the day that ends in death Be dark with clouds of woe? Shall the poor transport of an hour Repay long years of sore distress— The fragrance of a lonely flower Make glad the wilderness? Ye golden house of life's young spring, Of innocence, of love and truth! Bright, beyond all imagining, Thou fairy-dream of youth! I'd give all wealth that years have piled, The slow result of Life's decay, To be once more a little child For one bright summer's day.

Bella, I've already expended a great deal of personal effort at this point to keep you alive. I'm not about to let you behind the wheel of a vehicle when you can't even walk straight. Besides, friends don't let friends drive drunk," he quoted with a chuckle. I could smell the unbearably sweet fragrance coming off his chest. "Drunk?" I objected. "You're intoxicated by my very presence." He was grinning that playful smirk again.

Her heart felt as if it were breaking in her breast, bleeding and bleeding, young and fierce. From grief over the warm and ardent love which she had lost and still secretly mourned; from anguished joy over the pale, luminous love which drew her to the farthest boundaries of life on this earth. Through the great darkness that would come, she saw the gleam of another, gentler sun, and she sensed the fragrance of the herbs in the garden at world's end.

How great God is! He has given us eyes to see the beauty of the world, hands to touch it, a nose to experience all its fragrance, and a heart to appreciate it all. But we don’t realize how miraculous our senses are until we lose one.

Negative people talk and your dreams begin to wither off. But they begin to sprout in the fragrance of hope when they find a new soil! Change your environment!

And when she’s alone again, as truly alone in the world as she’s always felt herself to be, she looks at herself in a bamboo-framed mirror. Beautiful face, aglow with the taste of carnal pleasure, disdainful and avid … and above all an indefinable look in which can be sensed unspecified danger, sensuality triumphant and a sort of intoxicating vulgarity. She likes what she sees … around her drifts a great brunette fragrance, scent of happy brunette, in which the idea of others dissolves.

The happier you are, the more attractive you will be to those you love and cherish. As a great teacher once said, "Happiness radiates like the fragrance from a flower and draws all good things toward you.

I am thinking now of old Moses sitting on a mountain—sitting with God—looking across the Jordan into the Promised Land. I am thinking of the lump in his throat, that weary ache in his heart, that nearly bitter longing sweetened by the company of God... And then God—the great eternal God—takes Moses' thin-worn, thread-bare little body into His hands—hands into whose hollows you could pour the oceans of the world, hands whose breadth marked off the heavens—and with these enormous and enormously gentle hands, God folds Moses' pale lifeless arms across his chest for burial. I don't know if God wept at Moses' funeral. I don't know if He cried when He killed the first of His creatures to take its skins to clothe this man's earliest ancestors. I don't know who will bury me— ...Of God, on whose breast old Moses lays his head like John the Beloved would lay his on the Christ's. And God sits there quietly with Moses—for Moses—and lets His little man cry out his last moments of life. But I look back over the events of my life and see the hands that carried Moses to his grave lifting me out of mine. In remembering I go back to these places where God met me and I meet Him again and I lay my head on His breast, and He shows me the land beyond the Jordan and I suck into my lungs the fragrance of His breath, the power of His presence.

A great perfume will weave an emotional thread in the fabric of our lives." Marian Bendeth Global Fragrance Expert Sixth Scents

Dear God, master of the universe, compassionate and merciful: we who are steeped in sin, kneel in supplication before your throne and beseech you to recall from this world Saadat Hasan Manto, son of Ghulam Hasan Manto, who was a man of great piety. Take him away, Lord, for he runs away from fragrance and chases after filth. He hates the bright sun, preferring dark labyrinths. He has nothing but contempt for modesty but is fascinated by the naked and the shameless. He hates sweetness, but will give his life to taste bitter fruit. He will not so much as look at housewives but is in seventh heaven in the company of whores. He will not go near running waters, but loves to wade through filth. Where others weep, he laughs; and where others laugh, he weeps. Faces blackened by evil, he loves to wash with tender care to make visible their real features. He never thinks about you but follows Satan everywhere, the same fallen angel who once disobeyed you.

There is a whirlwind in southern Morocco, the aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. There is the africo, which has at times reached into the city of Rome. The alm, a fall wind out of Yugoslavia. The arifi, also christened aref or rifi, which scorches with numerous tongues. These are permanent winds that live in the present tense. There are other, less constant winds that change direction, that can knock down horse and rider and realign themselves anticlockwise. The bist roz leaps into Afghanistan for 170 days--burying villages. There is the hot, dry ghibli from Tunis, which rolls and rolls and produces a nervous condition. The haboob--a Sudan dust storm that dresses in bright yellow walls a thousand metres high and is followed by rain. The harmattan, which blows and eventually drowns itself into the Atlantic. Imbat, a sea breeze in North Africa. Some winds that just sigh towards the sky. Night dust storms that come with the cold. The khamsin, a dust in Egypt from March to May, named after the Arabic word for 'fifty,' blooming for fifty days--the ninth plague of Egypt. The datoo out of Gibraltar, which carries fragrance. There is also the ------, the secret wind of the desert, whose name was erased by a king after his son died within it. And the nafhat--a blast out of Arabia. The mezzar-ifoullousen--a violent and cold southwesterly known to Berbers as 'that which plucks the fowls.' The beshabar, a black and dry northeasterly out of the Caucasus, 'black wind.' The Samiel from Turkey, 'poison and wind,' used often in battle. As well as the other 'poison winds,' the simoom, of North Africa, and the solano, whose dust plucks off rare petals, causing giddiness. Other, private winds. Travelling along the ground like a flood. Blasting off paint, throwing down telephone poles, transporting stones and statue heads. The harmattan blows across the Sahara filled with red dust, dust as fire, as flour, entering and coagulating in the locks of rifles. Mariners called this red wind the 'sea of darkness.' Red sand fogs out of the Sahara were deposited as far north as Cornwall and Devon, producing showers of mud so great this was also mistaken for blood. 'Blood rains were widely reported in Portugal and Spain in 1901.' There are always millions of tons of dust in the air, just as there are millions of cubes of air in the earth and more living flesh in the soil (worms, beetles, underground creatures) than there is grazing and existing on it. Herodotus records the death of various armies engulfed in the simoom who were never seen again. One nation was 'so enraged by this evil wind that they declared war on it and marched out in full battle array, only to be rapidly and completely interred.

if I could have caught up from the earth, the whole of the flowers of the earth, if once I could have breathed into myself the very golden crocuses and the red, and the very golden hearts of the first saffron, the whole of the golden mass, the whole of the great fragrance, I could have dared the loss. — H.D., from “Eurydice,” Collected Poems 1912-1944 (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1982)

The faint aroma of gum and calico that hangs about a library is as the fragrance of incense to me. I think the most beautiful sight is the gilt-edged backs of a row of books on a shelf. The alley between two well-stocked shelves in a hall fills me with the same delight as passing through a silent avenue of trees. The colour of a binding-cloth and its smooth texture gives me the same pleasure as touching a flower on its stalk. A good library hall has an atmosphere which elates. I have seen one or two University Libraries that have the same atmosphere as a chapel, with large windows, great trees outside, and glass doors sliding on noiseless hinges.

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready to break my heart as the sun rises, as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers and they open — pools of lace, white and pink — and all day the black ants climb over them, boring their deep and mysterious holes into the curls, craving the sweet sap, taking it away to their dark, underground cities — and all day under the shifty wind, as in a dance to the great wedding, the flowers bend their bright bodies, and tip their fragrance to the air, and rise, their red stems holding all that dampness and recklessness gladly and lightly, and there it is again — beauty the brave, the exemplary, blazing open. Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?

Plant the seeds of trust and compassion Make caring and sharing a life's mission Hold hand with dreams of greatness Peace will grow with beauty and fragrance.

He longed for it to be winter. A cold wind would blow, the sea would pound, and he would rise cheerful and fit from a delicious sleep beneath warm blankets. Then would come days in which he would write his great novel. The kettle would boil and hot coffee would froth in his cup. In the garden the citron would flower beneath a brilliant moon, its branches dripping fragrance. The starry sky would sweeten the soft silence and Hemdat would pour the dew of his soul into the sea-blue night.

The smell of coffee, white dust, tobacco and burnt bread, flowers with a fragrance of wine, and the crimson fruit, soft and overripe. A girl looking over her bare shoulder, with a flash of a smile, gold ear-rings showing from thick black hair brushed away from her face, long arms, a cigarette between her lips. Night like a great dark blanket, voices murmuring at a street corner, the air warm with tired flowers, and a hum from the sea.

Yea, she hath passed hereby, and blessed the sheaves, And the great garths, and stacks, and quiet farms, And all the tawny, and the crimson leaves. Yea, she hath passed with poppies in her arms, Under the star of dusk, through stealing mist, And blessed the earth, and gone, while no man wist. With slow, reluctant feet, and weary eyes, And eye-lids heavy with the coming sleep, With small breasts lifted up in stress of sighs, She passed, as shadows pass, among the sheep; While the earth dreamed, and only I was ware Of that faint fragrance blown from her soft hair. The land lay steeped in peace of silent dreams; There was no sound amid the sacred boughs. Nor any mournful music in her streams: Only I saw the shadow on her brows, Only I knew her for the yearly slain, And wept, and weep until she come again.

The sweet fragrance of a fresh New Year!

Durga is the strength and protective power in nature, Lakshmi is its beauty. As Kali is the darkness of night and the great dissolve into nirvana, Lakshmi is the brightness of day and the expansiveness of teeming life. She can be found in rich soil and flowing waters, in streams and lakes that teem with fish. She is one of those goddesses whose signature energy is most accessible through the senses. You can detect her in the fragrance of flowers or of healthy soil. You can see her in the leafed-out trees of June and hear her voice in morning birdsong. If Durga is military band music and Kali heavy metal, Lakshmi is Mozart. She’s chocolate mousse, satiny sheets, the soft feeling of water slipping through your fingers. Lakshmi is growth, renewal, sweetness.

If there is anything certain in life, it is this. Time doesn't always heal. Not really. I know they say it does, but that is not true. What time does is to trick you into believing that you have healed, that the hurt of a great loss has lessened. But a single word, a note of a song, a fragrance, a knife point of dawn light across an empty room, any one of these things will take you back to that one moment you have never truly forgotten. These small things are the agents of memory. They are the sharp needle points piercing the living fabric of your life. Life, my children, isn't linear where the heart is concerned. It is filled with invisible threads that reach out from your past and into your future. These threads connect every second we have lived and breathed. As your own lives move forward and as the decades pass, the more of these threads are cast. Your task is to weave them into a tapestry, one that tells the story of the time we shared.

It is always beneficial to be near a spiritual teacher. These masters are like gardens or medicinal plants, sanctuaries of wisdom. In the presence of a realized master, you will rapidly attain enlightenment. In the presence of an erudite scholar, you will acquire great knowledge. In the presence of a great meditator, spiritual experience will dawn in your mind. In the presence of a bodhisattva, your compassion will expand, just as an ordinary log placed next to a log of sandalwood becomes saturated, little by little, with its fragrance.

and as he walked slowly through the evening, breathing the fragrance and tasting upon his tongue the sharp night-time air, it seemed to him that the moment he walked in was enough and that he might not need a great deal more.

How I wished that he could feel heart's-ease! How I grieved that he brooded over pain, and pain from such a cause! He, with his great advantages, he to love in vain! I did not then know that the pensiveness of reverse is the best phase for some minds; nor did I reflect that some herbs, "though scentless when entire, yield fragrance when they're bruised.

Plant the seeds of peace and happiness Water it with true love and kindness Flowers of harmony will grow with hue Birds of peace will sing for all and you With love and with beauty With passion and with duty Plant the seeds of trust and compassion Make caring and sharing a life's mission Hold hand with dreams of greatness Peace will grow with beauty and fragrance.

... Krishna, the great Lord of Yoga, revealed to Arjuna his majestic, transcendent, limitless form. With innumerable mouths and eyes, faces too marvelous to stare at, dazzling ornaments, innumerable weapons uplifted, flaming— crowned with fire, wrapped in pure light, with celestial fragrance, he stood forth as the infinite God, composed of all wonders. If a thousand suns were to rise and stand in the noon sky, blazing, such brilliance would be like the fierce brilliance of that mighty Self.

When sometimes I stroll in silence, with you Through great floral meadows of open country I listen to your chatter, and give thanks to the gods For the honest friendship, which made you my companion But in the heavy fragrance of intoxicating night I search on your lip for a madder caress I tear secrets from your yielding flesh Giving thanks to the fate which made you my mistress

No one need shave his head or wear special headgear or ochre robes or run away from all that one holds dear. No Sir! You may live in this world and do your duties, earn your livelihood, look after those that need your help, spread the fragrance of love and service, and yet remember to keep in touch with your true Self, the spark from the great fire, the drop from the great ocean, by meditating regularly, so that, in the spotless clear mirror of your heart, Divinity’s reflection glows. From your heart, then, will the serene rays of the spirit proceed and fill other hearts with bliss.

Its great thorns pierced the canvas, and its heavy fragrance rushed within, enveloping his sleep, becoming one with his breath, and penetrated the chambers of his exploding heart.

A great teacher not only teaches, they cultivate green fields to grow beautiful flowers to spread the fragrance of peace, happiness, and prosperity.

Don’t allow the things you can’t control to define you. Or to turn you into someone who you are not. It takes time for things to be clear. To unfold. And not everything you think is supposed to be great.

Moonlight. The silvery sorcery of moonlight slipped through the windows. Roses. The fragile fragrance of roses floated on the air. Music. The muted magic of Beethoven drifted in from the apartment below.

Nature was the great ecclesiastical room. It held the power of divine spirit—the wind, the fragrance, the desire, the relief, the majesty of blessed existence. Shadow was merely an accolade within Nature’s immense room.

Perfume makers know that, owing to genetic differences in how we experience fragrances, about half the people who inhale jasmine will think of honey, and the other half, unfortunately, will think of urine. They’re both right.

TWENTY SMALL GRAVES There was a woman who bore a child almost every year, but the children never lived longer than six months. Usually after three or four months they would die. She grieved long and publicly. "I take on the work of pregnancy for nine months, but the joy vanishes quicker than a rainbow." Twenty children went like that, in fevers to their small graves. One night she had a revelation. She saw the place of unconditional love, call it the garden or source of gardens. The physical eye cannot see its unseeable light. Lamp, green flower, these are just comparisons, so that some of the love-bewildered may catch a fragrance. The woman saw pure grace and, drunk with the seeing, fell to the ground. Those who have the vision said then, "This morning meal is for those who rise with sincere devotion. The tragedies you've had came from other times when you did not take refuge." "Lord, give me more grief. Tear me to pieces, if it leads here." She said this and walked into the presence she had seen. Her children were all there, "Lost to me," she cried, "but not to you." Without this great grieving no one can enter the spirit.

What then shall I liken the Sperm Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude? Must it not be to that famous elephant, with jewelled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which was led out of an Indian town to do honor to Alexander the Great?

[All things] are little loves through which we attain to the great Love that is Christ. Flowers, for example, have their own grace: they teach us of the love of God. They scatter their fragrance and their beauty on sinners and on the righteous. (p. 218)

Everyone loves the smell of gasoline, but do you think it would make a good scent in a soap? Gasoline-scented soap is a great idea that’s a terrible idea. Plus, if I made soap that smelled like petroleum, The US Military would invade my shower and kill me.

1:337-338 GREAT CHANGES IN ME I CANNOT DESCRIBE I told the local astrologer that the fact that he doesn't see something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. A lover may perceive a certain light in the beloved's face that another person can't. A healthy person tastes a variety of flavorings in food that a patient with a coated tongue cannot. To the sick everything tastes bitter. Great changes and shifts occur in me that I cannot describe, but they are very real. Ways open. A fragrance from the divine comes through. No one sees this, but it is the most profound event in my life. Friendship cannot be seen or measured, but the experience of living within it is beyond argument. Words like belief, righteousness, and faith can be used however a debater wants. With Hasan the silk-weaver recently I spoke of the power of the Islamic prophets. Then he used my words to support his free-thinking lineage. Soul comes here from the unseen to observe this world, the body, the night, and the sunlit morning landscape, saying, I have seen this; now show me your other properties, Lord of the universes (3:26).

The smell of smoke from trash burning in back yards was held by the mist; and as he walked slowly through the evening, breathing the fragrance and tasting upon his tongue the sharp night-time air, it seemed to him that the moment he walked in was enough and that he might not need a great deal more.

Thomas was greatly interested in Sirius's accounts of his love affairs; about which, by the way, he showed no reticence. To the question, 'What is it that attracts you in her?' young Sirius could only reply, 'She smells so lovely.' Later in life he was able to say more. Some years later I myself discussed the matter with him, and he said, 'Of course it's mostly the luscious smell of her. I can't possibly make you understand the power of it, because you humans are so bad at smells. It's as though your noses were not merely feeble but colour-blind. But think of all that your poets have ever said about the delectable curves and colours of the beloved, and how her appearance seems to express a lovely spirit (often deceptively), and then imagine the whole thing done in terms of fragrance. Morwen's fragrance when she wants me is like the scent of the morning, with a maddening tang in it for which there are no words. It is the scent of a very gentle and fragrant spirit, but unfortunately the spirit of Morwen is nine-tenths asleep, and always will be. But she smells like what she would be if she were really awake.

How great God is! He has given us eyes to see the beauty of the world, hands to touch it, a nose to experience all its fragrance and a heart to appreciate it all. But we don't realise how miraculous our senses are until we lose one. A Talib had fired 3 shots at point-blank range at 3 girls in a school bus - and none os us was killed. One person had tried to silence me. And millions spoke out. Those were miracles too.

This is the age of science, of steel -- of speed and the cement road. The age of hard faces and hard highways. Science and steel demand the medium of prose. Speed requires only the look -- the gesture. What need then, for poetry? Great need! There are souls, in these noise-tired times, that turn aside into unfrequented lanes, where the deep woods have harbored the fragrances of many a blossoming season. Here the light, filtering through perfect forms, arranges itself in lovely patterns for those who perceive beauty...

Tea Rose (Perfumer's Workshop) **** green rose $ Composed in 1972, Tea Rose was the first fragrance signed by the great Annie Buzantian (Pleasures), and was in many ways the first niche fragrance: the Perfumer's Workshop did nothing but fragrances, had a small range, was fairly hard to find, and had a devoted following. Tea Rose was and is a rose soliflore that illustrates how complex a composition must be before it can actually claim to smell of rose. The rose it depicts is huge, painted in watercolor, and has the species name written below it in cursive. LT

The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentleman, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered lanes; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner.

In the morning light the scene was beyond compare. The mountains and the hills were bathed in the soft light of the coming day, and the glowing, richly tinted clouds that encircled them. The lighter green of the hillsides contrasted with the deeper shades of the valleys and the graceful foliage of the waving palms that extended around the beach. The groves of orange trees bending with their golden fruit, mingled with the breadfruit trees, and the banana with its great green leaves, while the morning breeze, laden with the breath of flowers, came from the shore, distilling a fragrance rarely inhaled in other lands.

From "The Jasmine Farm" by Elizabeth von Arnim, c 1934: "...except for a little trickle of water somewhere near, and the piping, on an oleander bush, of a solitary bird, so great a stillness surrounded her that in the whole world there might have been no one but herself. Relaxed she sat, her hands palm upwards on her lap, her mouth open because she was too tired to keep it shut. If she had known it, she was being exquisitely welcomed. The scented air, floating past her, lingered to pat her face. From a row of Madonna lilies, under the windows of the house, came fragrance, crossing the grass to greet her. Slanting shadows cooled her. The bird piped away, as if to her alone, songs of wisdom and good cheer. She was surrounded, companioned, pressed upon by beauty; and, for all she saw of it, it might have been Tottenham Court Road in a fog. 'Lift up your heart,' something whispered--'foolish woman, lift up your heart.' But of what use is it to exhort the absorbed, those who are steeped in their own particular tragedies, to do things like that? She heard the whisper, she recognised that familiar words were drifting through her mind, and all she did about it was listlessly to wonder that anybody had enough energy to lift up anything.

Thus spoke the Beauty and her voice had a cheerful ring, and her face was aflame with a great rejoicing. She finished her story and began to laugh quietly, but not cheerfully. The Youth bowed down before her and silently kissed her hands, inhaling the languid fragrance of myrrh, aloe and musk which wafted from her body and her fine robes. The Beauty began to speak again. 'There came to me streams of oppressors, because my evil, poisonous beauty bewitches them. I smile at them, they who are doomed to death, and I feel pity for each of them, and some I almost loved, but I gave myself to no one. Each one I gave but one single kiss — and my kisses were innocent as the kisses of a tender sister. And whomsoever I kissed, died.' The soul of the troubled Youth was caught in agony, between two quite irresolvable passions, the terror of death and an inexpressible ecstasy. But love, conquering all, overcoming even the anguish of death's grief, was triumphant once again today. Solemnly stretching out his trembling hands to the tender and terrifying Beauty, the Youth exclaimed, 'If death is in your kiss, o beloved, let me revel in the infinity of death. Cling to me, kiss me, love me, envelop me with the sweet fragrance of your poisonous breath, death after death pour into my body and into my soul before you destroy everything that once was me!' 'You want to! You are not afraid!' exclaimed the Beauty. The face of the Beauty was pale in the rays of the lifeless moon, like a guttering candle, and the lightning in her sad and joyful eyes was trembling and blue. With a trusting movement, tender and passionate, she clung to the Youth and her naked, slender arms were entwined about his neck. 'We shall die together!' she whispered. 'We shall die together. All the poison of my heart is afire and flaming streams are rushing through my veins, and I am all enveloped in some great holocaust.' 'I am aflame!' whispered the Youth, 'I am being consumed in your embraces and you and I are two flaming fires, burning with the immense ecstasy of a poisonous love.' The sad and lifeless moon grew dim and fell in the sky — and the black night came and stood watch. It concealed the secret of love and kisses, fragrant and poisonous, with gloom and solitude. And it listened to the harmonious beating of two hearts growing quieter, and in the frail silence it watched over the final delicate sighs. And so, in the poisonous Garden, having breathed the fragrances which the Beauty breathed, and having drunk the sweetness of her love so tenderly and fatally compassionate, the beautiful Youth died. And on his breast the Beauty died, having delivered her poisonous but fragrant soul up to sweet ecstasies. ("The Poison Garden")

Snow and soot covered the ancient tree's broken branches and seared bark. It wasn't dead, not quite yet. Here and there tiny shoots of green struggled to emerge, but they weren't doing well. The end was near. A shadow loomed, and a creature settled into the drifts, and old, wounded thing of the skies, as near death as the tree. Pinions drooping, it laboriously began building a nest--a place of dying. Stick by stick, it pecked among the ruined wood on the ground, piling the bits higher until it was clear that it was not a nest at all. It was a pyre. The bloody, dying thing settled in atop the kindling, and crooned soft music unlike anything ever heard before. A glow began to build, surrounding the beast soon in a rich purple lambience. Blue flames burst forth. And the tree seemed to respond. Aged, ruined branches curled forward toward the heat, like an old man warming his hands. Snow shivered and fell, the green patches grew and began to fill the air with the fragrance of renewal It was not the creature on the pyre that was reborn, and even in sleep, that surprised Gordon. The great bird was consumed, leaving only bones. But the tree blossomed, and from its flowering branches things uncurled and drifted off into the air. He stared in wonderment when he saw that they were balloons, airplanes, and rocket ships. Dreams. They floated away in all directions, and the air was filled with hope.

The air was steeped with the heady fragrance of roses, as if the entire hall had been rinsed with expensive perfume. "Good Lord!" she exclaimed, stopping short at the sight of massive bunches of flowers being brought in from a cart outside. Mountains of white roses, some of them tightly furled buds, some in glorious full bloom. Two footmen had been recruited to assist the driver of the cart, and the three of them kept going outside to fetch bouquet after bouquet wrapped in stiff white lace paper. "Fifteen dozen of them," Marcus said brusquely. "I doubt there's a single white rose left in London." Aline could not believe how fast her heart was beating. Slowly she moved forward and drew a single rose from one of the bouquets. Cupping the delicate bowl of the blossom with her fingers, she bent her head to inhale its lavish perfume. Its petals were a cool brush of silk against her cheek. "There's something else," Marcus said. Following his gaze, Aline saw the butler directing yet another footman to pry open a huge crate filled with brick-sized parcels wrapped in brown paper. "What are they, Salter?" "With your permission, my lady, I will find out." The elderly butler unwrapped one of the parcels with great care. He spread the waxed brown paper open to reveal a damply fragrant loaf of gingerbread, its spice adding a pungent note to the smell of the roses. Aline put her hand over her mouth to contain a bubbling laugh, while some undefinable emotion caused her entire body to tremble. The offering worried her terribly, and at the same time, she was insanely pleased by the extravagance of it. "Gingerbread?" Marcus asked incredulously. "Why the hell would McKenna send you an entire crate of gingerbread?" "Because I like it," came Aline's breathless reply. "How do you know this is from McKenna?" Marcus gave her a speaking look, as if only an imbecile would suppose otherwise. Fumbling a little with the envelope, Aline extracted a folded sheet of paper. It was covered in a bold scrawl, the penmanship serviceable and without flourishes. No miles of level desert, no jagged mountain heights, no sea of endless blue Neither words nor tears, nor silent fears will keep me from coming back to you. There was no signature... none was necessary. Aline closed her eyes, while her nose stung and hot tears squeezed from beneath her lashes. She pressed her lips briefly to the letter, not caring what Marcus thought. "It's a poem," she said unsteadily. "A terrible one." It was the loveliest thing she had ever read. She held it to her cheek, then used her sleeve to blot her eyes. "Let me see it." Immediately Aline tucked the poem into her bodice. "No, it's private." She swallowed against the tightness of her throat, willing the surge of unruly emotion to recede. "McKenna," she whispered, "how you devastate me.

I have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and still content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of life. Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far, My night shall be remembered for a star That outshone all the suns of all men's days. Shall I not crown them with immortal praise Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see The inenarrable godhead of delight? Love is a flame; -- we have beaconed the world's night. A city: -- and we have built it, these and I. An emperor: -- we have taught the world to die. So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence, And the high cause of Love's magnificence, And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames, And set them as a banner, that men may know, To dare the generations, burn, and blow Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming.... These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours, Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon; Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes; and other such -- The comfortable smell of friendly fingers, Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns.... Dear names, And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames; Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing; Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain, Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train; Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home; And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould; Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew; And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new; And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass; -- All these have been my loves. And these shall pass, Whatever passes not, in the great hour, Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power To hold them with me through the gate of Death. They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath, Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust And sacramented covenant to the dust. ---- Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake, And give what's left of love again, and make New friends, now strangers.... But the best I've known, Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown About the winds of the world, and fades from brains Of living men, and dies. Nothing remains. O dear my loves, O faithless, once again This one last gift I give: that after men Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed, Praise you, "All these were lovely"; say, "He loved.

Grace handed the rose back to the old vendor; then she turned and started to walk away. After a few steps, unable to resist the fragrance still in her mind, she stopped and came back. "Hungarian, right?" she asked the vendor as she pointed to the bucket of pinkish roses, spying Patrick's curiosity. "They're roses, lady," he said. Grace bent over and stuck her face right into the heads of the entire bucketful of sweet-scented pinkish flowers. "Rosa gallica officinalis, definitely," she said mostly to herself. "I'm betting from east of the Danube, probably in the plains around Scabolcs-Szatmar-Bereg," Grace pronounced with a pretty good East European accent. She smelled them again, pulled herself away, and again mumbled to herself aloud. "Great depth. Would make a killer base note in a spicy summer parfum." She looked again at Patrick and pointed to the pinkish flowers in the bucket, and quickly walking away, she stated with a professional tone: "Those are nice." Undoubtedly, Patrick noted, this was a woman much more interested in roses than in the men who presented them.

I have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and still content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of life. Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far, My night shall be remembered for a star That outshone all the suns of all men's days. Shall I not crown them with immortal praise Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see The inenarrable godhead of delight? Love is a flame:—we have beaconed the world's night. A city:—and we have built it, these and I. An emperor:—we have taught the world to die. So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence, And the high cause of Love's magnificence, And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames, And set them as a banner, that men may know, To dare the generations, burn, and blow Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming . . . . These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours, Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon; Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes; and other such— The comfortable smell of friendly fingers, Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns. . . . Dear names, And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames; Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing; Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain, Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train; Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home; And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould; Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew; And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new; And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;— All these have been my loves. And these shall pass, Whatever passes not, in the great hour, Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power To hold them with me through the gate of Death. They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath, Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust And sacramented covenant to the dust. ——Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake, And give what's left of love again, and make New friends, now strangers. . . . But the best I've known Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown About the winds of the world, and fades from brains Of living men, and dies. Nothing remains. O dear my loves, O faithless, once again This one last gift I give: that after men Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed, Praise you, 'All these were lovely'; say, 'He loved.

The exotic fragrance was hers, too. Incense. Goddess scent. 'Mr. Carsington, you must speak to me,' she said. He'd rather not speak. He'd rather stay exactly where he was, pillowed against her soft bosom and inhaling her scent while she gently stroked his cheek. 'Mr. Carsington.' The hand left off stroking to pat his cheek, with growing impatience. Remembering the lady had a short temper, he knew the gentle pats would shortly escalate to slaps. He opened his eyes and met her green gaze, where anxiety mingled with vexation. 'Where am I?' he said, though he knew the answer perfectly well. It was a delaying tactic. Her bosom made a perfect pillow. He did not want to leave it. 'On the floor of Anaz's storeroom,' she said. 'You seem to have fainted.' 'Fainted?' he echoed incredulously. 'I was knocked in the head. I ought to know. It's happened often enough.' 'That would explain a great deal,' she said. She started to rise. Aware she would have no compunction about letting his poor, battered head thump to the floor, he quickly sat up.

ave you noticed the focus these days is back on the simple things of life? What's the first thing you do when you pick a rose? You smell the fragrance. Maybe it brings back a memory of the time you picked flowers for your mom. Perhaps it's time to recapture some of that girlhood simplicity. A lavender sachet in your drawer can be an unexpected and simple pleasure. Spray a little cologne on your notepaper or even on the bathroom throw rug. Or better yet, boil a little pot of cinnamon and enjoy the aroma. Put on lively music while you do your housework. Light candles for a quiet yet festive atmosphere. When we find satisfaction in the little things in life, we are happier and more willing to look for the positive in bigger things. olor in your home can make a world of difference. It can help you redefine spaces. If an area is too large, add a throw rug in a complementary color and create a "get together" spot. Add some soft colored curtains for a change of seasons. The idea is to create intimacy, a place that's inviting on a chilly evening or a warm spring afternoon. The richer the colors, the more welcoming the space. Red is great for warmth. Go for it! And shades of cranberry and plum work well. Experiment and step out of your comfort zone. Your home can be a place that gives you a feeling of quiet for thinking about what really counts in life and also be a festive atmosphere for celebrating. on't put all your emotional eggs in one basket. Our work consumes much of our time, and that's natural. And for some of you, that's 95 percent of your awake hours. Is it time to change your focus-to make life a little easier and less stressful for

No garden can aspire to be named An Old-fashioned Garden unless it contains that beautiful plant the Garden Valerian, known throughout New England to-day as Garden Heliotrope; as Setwall it grew in every old garden, as it was in every pharmacopœia. It was termed "drink-quickening Setuale" by Spenser, from the universal use of its flowers to flavor various enticing drinks. Its lovely blossoms are pinkish in bud and open to pure white; its curiously penetrating vanilla-like fragrance is disliked by many who are not cats. I find it rather pleasing of scent when growing in the garden, and not at all like the extremely nasty-smelling medicine which is made from it, and which has been used for centuries for "histerrick fits," and is still constantly prescribed to-day for that unsympathized-with malady. Dr. Holmes calls it, "Valerian, calmer of hysteric squirms." It is a stately plant when in tall flower in June; my sister had great clumps of bloom like the ones shown above, but alas! the cats caught them before the photographer did. The cats did not have to watch the wind and sun and rain, to pick out plates and pack plate-holders, and gather ray-fillers and cloth and lens, and adjust the tripod, and fix the camera and focus, and think, and focus, and think, and then wait—till the wind ceased blowing. So when they found it, they broke down every slender stalk and rolled in it till the ground was tamped down as hard as if one of our lazy road-menders had been at it. Valerian has in England as an appropriate folk name, "Cats'-fancy.

But whenever he found the great Lady in these occupations and postures, he would presume no farther than to look upon her with profound reverence; and thereby he merited sometimes to hear the sweetest harmony of the celestial music, with which the angels regaled their Queen, and perceived a wonderful fragrancy which comforted him and filled him entirely with jubilation and joy of spirit.

The flower that dwelleth by the brooklet's brink Is beautiful; but 't is its fragrant breath That winneth us to love. And like the spreading waves of fragrance That circle round the flow'ret, so the heart That hath it's life in holiness sends forth An influence of sweetness to the world." Let us remember that we are all casting the shadow of our real inner and outer life upon immortal souls about us. And according to our character and life as holy or worldly,we are unconsciously influencing those around us for good or evil, touching them to issues of life or death. ****** We are apt to overlook this unconscious influence of our life, because it is so quiet and intangible. We seldom think of the power there is in the light of every day, because it is so gentle and common. An earthquake that comes thundering through the solid foundations of the earth and rocks a whole continent,startles the people with a sense of some mighty forces at work. And yet the light of every morning that comes so gently as not to wake an infant in its cradle, is mightier in it's influence than an earthquake. The greatest powers are ever those which lie back of the noises and commotions of nature. We hear the rustling leaves of the forest swept by autumnal winds, but the sublime constellations make no noise. We hear the sparkling of bonfires in the street, but who ever heard the sun shine? So in the moral world, the quiet influence of a good man, as it follows him day by day as his shadow, and falls silently on the children at home, or upon friends on the streets, in the places of business, or in the social circle,is often more potential for good than his voluntary and positive efforts of usefulness - just as the great silent powers of nature are mightier than the noises of the street. Friends of our passing life and ways, Now present to our view; These garnered thoughts, of leisure days, We dedicate to you. **** We ask not for posthumous fame From loving friends apart, But kindly thoughts about our name, - The mem'ry of the heart. - Afternoon by Theophilus Stork D. D. 1874

Gene had already cleared the soil, or had someone do it for him, who knows, and brought in a load of plants and flowers, which were sitting around in their pots. The colors were all over the place, no great scheme there, but he'd gone for scent in a big way. I only recognized a few of the flowers, but they all smelled wonderful. Lisa ticked them off for me, her mouth full of pepperoni. "Jasmine, freesia, lavender, sweet peas, alyssum, night-scented stock, scented phlox, clematis of course, and some fancy tuberose." She looked over at Gene. "You picked well. These should give her fragrance for most of the year, in turns. And some nice evening scents, too.

A Lover's Call XXVII Where are you, my beloved? Are you in that little Paradise, watering the flowers who look upon you As infants look upon the breast of their mothers? Or are you in your chamber where the shrine of Virtue has been placed in your honor, and upon Which you offer my heart and soul as sacrifice? Or amongst the books, seeking human knowledge, While you are replete with heavenly wisdom? Oh companion of my soul, where are you? Are you Praying in the temple? Or calling Nature in the Field, haven of your dreams? Are you in the huts of the poor, consoling the Broken-hearted with the sweetness of your soul, and Filling their hands with your bounty? You are God's spirit everywhere; You are stronger than the ages. Do you have memory of the day we met, when the halo of You spirit surrounded us, and the Angels of Love Floated about, singing the praise of the soul's deed? Do you recollect our sitting in the shade of the Branches, sheltering ourselves from Humanity, as the ribs Protect the divine secret of the heart from injury? Remember you the trails and forest we walked, with hands Joined, and our heads leaning against each other, as if We were hiding ourselves within ourselves? Recall you the hour I bade you farewell, And the Maritime kiss you placed on my lips? That kiss taught me that joining of lips in Love Reveals heavenly secrets which the tongue cannot utter! That kiss was introduction to a great sigh, Like the Almighty's breath that turned earth into man. That sigh led my way into the spiritual world, Announcing the glory of my soul; and there It shall perpetuate until again we meet. I remember when you kissed me and kissed me, With tears coursing your cheeks, and you said, "Earthly bodies must often separate for earthly purpose, And must live apart impelled by worldly intent. "But the spirit remains joined safely in the hands of Love, until death arrives and takes joined souls to God. "Go, my beloved; Love has chosen you her delegate; Over her, for she is Beauty who offers to her follower The cup of the sweetness of life. As for my own empty arms, your love shall remain my Comforting groom; your memory, my Eternal wedding." Where are you now, my other self? Are you awake in The silence of the night? Let the clean breeze convey To you my heart's every beat and affection. Are you fondling my face in your memory? That image Is no longer my own, for Sorrow has dropped his Shadow on my happy countenance of the past. Sobs have withered my eyes which reflected your beauty And dried my lips which you sweetened with kisses. Where are you, my beloved? Do you hear my weeping From beyond the ocean? Do you understand my need? Do you know the greatness of my patience? Is there any spirit in the air capable of conveying To you the breath of this dying youth? Is there any Secret communication between angels that will carry to You my complaint? Where are you, my beautiful star? The obscurity of life Has cast me upon its bosom; sorrow has conquered me. Sail your smile into the air; it will reach and enliven me! Breathe your fragrance into the air; it will sustain me! Where are you, me beloved? Oh, how great is Love! And how little am I!

My scents for change are (and there's a lot of them, because there's a lot going on for me at the moment!): Pour Homme by Yamamoto On the Road by Timothy Han Santal Blanc by Serge Lutens Oud Wood by Tom Ford Dear Polly by Vilhelm La Flâneuse by Lucien Lechêne PM by the Great Eastern Fragrance Company Je t'aime Jane by Bella Freud No. 9 Benjoin by Prada Shalimar by Guerlain Original by Eight & Bob

As the physical body becomes less dense, there is an increasing sensibility and awareness to the subtle elements of the ether which were once unknown to the perceptive senses. The being then becomes knowledgeable of things that to others are not yet part of their reality. This new elevated state leads him to be seen by those others as crazy and out of touch with common sense. For the one who reaches such stage, however, there is an overwhelming sensation of lone wonder, where beauty is found in nothing but an empty garden of extraordinary flowers with different fragrances and colors. To this individual, the world has ceased to exist in its meanings for it is a world of brute ignorance and dark unconsciousness, guided by self-deceptive impulses. He is like a traveler in time stuck in the past. He has evolved but cannot escape the time-line in which he is in. He is blessed while led to think by fools that he is cursed. And the only thing he needs to do, in order to close the gap between his new self and the physical world, consists in looking inwards and appreciate the decadence around him from the perspective of the Observer. Once he can do that, he can be one with the Great Architect and start thinking like a god. In that precise moment, he is freed from any time-line and all the secrets are revealed unto him. His soul becomes boundless and his personality as fluid as water. He can be anything with a burning fire, and nothing like air, at the exact same time; he can love everyone like fertile soil for growth, and no one, as if he was just air; he can be everywhere and nowhere, like darkness, but also attach and detach at will, like light. And he can also have the power to unroot himself from any will produced by any thought that he might or not have chosen to have.

Never change such thoughts, which fragrance and please the hearts and minds of others, even though that break your beneficial objectives since such character qualifies and wins great humanity into inhuman systems.

he asked them. “Too long. Don’t be such a stranger. Stop by if you’re in our neighborhood. We would love to sit and chat. We can talk about the good old days and we got lots of pictures and stories from Tuscany.” “Will do. Enjoy the evening.” Jack turned and was face to face with their daughter, Patti. “Hi, Jack,” she whispered. “Great to see you again,” she said and kissed him on the cheek. “It was so good to talk with you the other day. It meant a lot to see you.” He watched her as she started to walk away and turned to him and say, “I wanted to let you know that after we talked I gave my husband a phone call. Eric and I decided to get back together. We’ve shared a lot of history, and we’re at least going to give it one last try to see if we can make it work. Thanks for everything, Jack. Bye.” She kissed him on the cheek. Jack saw Hope walking across the floor. “She’s pretty. Who was that?” glancing at Patti walk away. “An old and dear friend. Both Charley and I had a crush on her when we were younger. I’ll introduce you to her and her mom and dad later. You’ll like her.” More people filed inside to an already full hall. Soon it was standing room only. Jack turned to Hope and whispered, “I can’t believe this. We’ve had over twenty businesses make donations to the veterans’ fund to help support job training and for overseas servicemen’s wives and families. We also got money from the Yankee Bookshop, the Woodstock Inn, the Billings Farm Museum, the bank, and Bentleys Restaurant. They all donated money.” “That’s great,” she said excitedly. “And we’ve received over thirty new membership requests for the Veterans Post and that’s just yesterday. This is better than I ever expected. And four companies have committed to hiring more vets locally, including King Arthur Flour Company. They’re planning to build a new distribution center just west of town. I can’t believe all of this is happening.” “You should,” Hope said. “I remember you sat down right over there at that table and laid out what you wanted to see happen and you kept working on it until it did. I’m so proud of you.” He hugged her close and kissed her. He never wanted to let her go. The distinct fragrance of fresh balsam, pine, and holly filled

The motorcycle adds great value toward our quest for individual experience. It offers a means of recreation and self-expression that is unlike any other. The motorcyclist can experience travel without the confinement of an automobile, being able to smell the fragrances nature surrounds us with, and feel the subtle temperature changes we never noticed before when cocooned in a car. Whether its evolution, innovation, or destiny, this marriage between the wheel and the motor provides us with a remarkable vehicle for discovery that goes far beyond roads traveled—it goes deep within us.

Tea- The sweetness of love, The fragrance of flowers, The comfort of a friend, The warmth of a hug -Such great delight gingerly poured from a single pink teapot.

Greatness has a fragrance. Get close to it and that fragrance will arouse your potential.

The pictures she drew on were vibrant as ever, though. The crumbling stone farmstead overlooking the great Luberon valley where she was born. The blending room of the distillery in Manosque where she had experienced a kind of rebirth, beginning the transformation into the woman she was now. Scent was memory, and memory a complex blend of scent and emotion: the perfect flowers of the lavender hills, like millions of mauve butterflies fluttering on stalks; the violet; the heliotrope of home, with its heart of sweet almond and cherry vanilla. She mixed them all into her signature fragrance Lavande de Nuit, along with a breath of civet musk and a haunting trace of smoke.

Song Day, in melting purple dying, Blossoms, all around me sighing, Fragrance, from the lilies straying, Zephyr, with my ringlets playing, Ye but waken my distress; I am sick of loneliness. Thou, to whom I love to hearken, Come, ere night around me darken; Though thy softness but deceive me, Say thou’rt true, and I’ll believe thee; Veil, if ill, thy soul’s intent, Let me think it innocent! Save thy toiling, spare thy treasure: All I ask is friendship’s pleasure; Let the shining ore lie darkling, Bring no gem in lustre sparkling! Gifts and gold are nought to me; I would only look on thee! Tell to thee the highwrought feeling, Ecstasy but in revealing; Paint to thee the deep sensation, Rapture in participation, Yet but torture, if compressed In a lone, unfriended breast. Absent still! Ah! come and bless me! Let these eyes again caress thee; Once, in caution, I could fly thee: Now, I nothing could deny thee; In a look if death there be, Come, and I will gaze on thee!

Sophia remembered visiting one of these unfortunates, an older sister of her mother’s, who owned sixteen pug dogs, all of whom slept, ate, and performed their natural functions in the same room as their mistress. “A large number of parrots besides lived in the same room,” Sophia wrote. “One can imagine the fragrance which reigned there.

Lydia paused, looking out at the forest, now decked with echoes of brilliant hues, and saw, to her delight, what Pit's seeds had grown into. For among the trees and bushes and vines, were the bright gold blossoms of dozens of sunflowers, turning their great beautiful heads towards the sun, and the world was filled with the sweet earthy fragrance of their flowers.

At first I felt something like an oppressed anxiety when I was near the little sick girl, which later changed into pious and reverential awe in face of this dumb and strangely moving suffering. Whenever I saw her, an obscure sensation would arise in me that she must surely die. And then I grew afraid to look her in the face. Whenever I roamed the forests during the day, feeling so joyful in this solitude and peace, when I stretched out wearily on the moss and gazed for hours together into the bright, shimmering sky, into whose very depths one could see, when a strange and profound sense of joy thrilled me, I would suddenly think of the sick Maria - then I would get up and roam aimlessly about, overwhelmed by inexplicable thoughts and feel a dull pressure in my head and my heart which brought me to the verge of tears. At times when I walked in the evening along the dusty main street which was filled with the scent of the blossoming lime and watched whispering couples as they stood in the shadows of the trees; when I saw two people pressed close together as though they were one being, sauntering slowly beside the fountain as it quietly played in the moolight, and a feverish thrill of presentiment coursed through me as I thought of poor sick Maria; then I was seized by a quiet yearning for something inexplicable and all at once I saw myself strolling arm in arm with her in the shade of the fragrant lime trees. And a strange radiance shone from Maria's great dark eyes, and the moon made her slender little face appear still paler and more transparent. Then I fled upstairs into my attic, leaned against the window, looked up into the deep dark heavens where the stars appeared to have gone out and for hours abandoned myself to formless and confusing dreams until overcome by sleep. And yet - and yet I did not exchange so much as ten words with poor sick Maria. She never spoke. I would only sit at her side for hours gazing into her sick, suffering face, feeling ever and again that she must die. In the garden I lay in the grass and breathed in the fragrance of a thousand flowers; my eye was intoxicated by the gleaming colours of blossoms flooded with sunlight, and I listened too for the silence in the air above, interrupted only by the mating call of a bird. I sensed the ferment of the fruitful, torrid earth, that mysterious sound of ever-creative life. I could then darkly feel the greatness and beauty of life. Then it semed to me as if life belonged to me. But then my eye lit upon the bay-window of the house. I could see the sick Maria sitting there - silent and motionless and with closed eyes. And all my thinking was again drawn to the suffering of this being and remained there - became a painful but shyly conceded yearning which struck me as puzzling and confusing. And I left the garden timidly, silently, as though I had no right to linger in this temple.

The Dark Night (XVIII) - 1863-1946 Our love is woven Of a thousand strands— The cool fragrance of the first lilac At morning, The first dew on the grass, The smell of wild mint in the wood, The pungent and earthy smell of ground ivy crushed under our feet; Songs of birds, songs of great poets; The leaping of the red squirrel in the tree, The running of the river, The commotion of stars and clouds in the high winds at night; And dark stillness. It is adorned with all the flowers That stand in our garden; It holds the night and the day. Our love is made Of the South Wind and the West Wind, And the soft falling of rain; Of white April evenings; It is made of trees, And of the many-coloured fields on the hills; Of horizons, Dark sea-blue of the west, thin sky-blue of the east, With a yellow road between. The flames of sunset and sunrise Mingle in the fire of our love.

Eventually, he felt an overwhelming urge to meld his voice with the notes, and he began to play his ballad for the wind. Jack sang his verses, his fingers strumming with confidence. He sang to the southern wind with its promise of strength in battle. He sang to the western wind with its promise of healing. He sang to the northern wind with its promise of vindication. The notes rose and fell, undulating like the hills far beneath him. But while the wind carried his music and his voice, the folk of the air didn’t answer. What if they refuse to come? Jack wondered, with a pulse of worry. From the corner of his eye, he watched as Adaira rose to her feet. The wind seemed to be waiting for her to move. To stand and meet it. She stood planted on the rock as Jack continued to play, shielded by Orenna’s essence. Twice, he had played for the spirits and had nearly forgotten he was a man, that he was not a part of them. But this time he held firmly to himself as he watched the folk answer. The southern wind manifested first. They arrived with a sigh and formed themselves from the gust, individualizing into men and women with hair like fire—red and amber with a trace of blue. Great feathered wings bloomed from their backs like those of a bird, and each beat of their pinions emitted a wash of warmth and longing. Jack could taste the nostalgia they offered; he drank it like a bittersweet wine, like the memories of a summer long ago. The east wind was the next to arrive. They manifested in a flurry of leaves, their hair like molten gold. Their wings were fashioned like those of a bat, long and pronged and the shade of dusk. They carried the fragrance of rain in their wings. The west wind spun themselves out of whispers, with hair the shade of midnight, long and jeweled with stars. Their wings were like those of a moth, patterned with moons, beating softly and evoking both beauty and dread as Jack beheld them. The air shimmered at their edges like a dream, as if they might melt at any moment, and their skin smelled of smoke and cloves as they hovered in place, unable to depart as Jack’s music captivated them. Half of the spirits watched him, entranced by his ballad. But half of them watched Adaira, their eyes wide and brimming with light. “It’s her,” some of them whispered. Jack missed a note. He quickly regained his place, pushing his concern aside. It felt like his nails were creating sparks on the brass strings. He sang the verse for the northern wind again. The sky darkened. Thunder rumbled in the distance as the north reluctantly answered Jack’s summoning. The air plunged cold and bitter as the strongest of the winds manifested from wisps of clouds and stinging gales. It answered the music, fragmenting into men and women with flaxen hair, dressed in leather and links of silver webs. Their wings were translucent and veined, reminiscent of a dragonfly’s, boasting every color found beneath the sun. They came reluctantly, defiantly. Their eyes bore into him like needles. Jack was alarmed by their reaction to him. Some of them hissed through their sharp teeth, while others cowered as if awaiting a death blow. His ballad came to its end, and the absence of his voice and music sharpened the terror of the moment. Adaira continued to stand before an audience of manifested spirits, and Jack was stunned by the sight of them. To know that they had rushed alongside him as he walked the east. That he had felt their fingers in his hair, felt them kiss his mouth and steal words from his lips, carrying his voice in their hands. And his music had just summoned them. His voice and song now held them captive, beholden to him. He studied the horde. Some of the spirits looked amused, others shocked. Some were afraid, and some were angry.

European perfumery started in earnest around the turn of the twentieth century, and developed apace with the discovery of aroma chemicals: coumarin, vanillin, cyclamen aldehyde, the great nitro musks. The Great War left industry and cities largely intact and killed countless males. Many factors then conspired to make the period 1918-1939 the golden age of mass perfumery: working women vying for the remaining men, cheap aroma chemicals, cheap labor to harvest the naturals, flourishing visual arts and music, the obsolescence of prewar bourgeois dignity, replaced by irreverence and optimism. The WWII destroyed the great engine of European chemistry (Germany). The tail end of German chemistry on the Rhine lay in the neutral Switzerland and was untouched, which is wy today two of the biggest perfumery houses in the world (Firmenich and Givaudan) are Swiss. Postwar France stank. In 1951, six years after the Liberation, only one household in fifteen had an internal bathroom. The Paris Metro at rush hour was famous for its unwashed stench. Given cost constraints, French perfumes in those years ('50) had an air de famille, a perfumey feel based on then-cheap drydown materials like sandalwood oil and salicylate esters. Being able to smell someone's fragrance was a sign of intimacy. When a perfume left a trail (called sillage) it was remarked upon, usually unfavourably. It is a strange coincidence, or perhaps a hint of the existence of God, that skin melanin is a polymer spontaneously formed from phenols, and that the perfumery materials that defined American perfumery were also in good part phenols.

The commodity economy has been here on Turtle Island for four hundred years, eating up the white strawberries and everything else. But people have grown weary of the sour taste in their mouths. A great longing is upon us, to live again in a world made of gifts. I can scent it coming, like the fragrance of ripening strawberries rising on the breeze.

Society is against the heart, because the heart lives through love. And love cannot be controlled and conditioned. The heart is basically rebellious. The heart always lives in the moment. It never repeats the old. The heart always responds to the present moment. This is why society is against the heart. Society disciplines the head, because the head functionslike a machine. Machines are never rebellious. They simply follow orders. They are obedient. Hence the state, the church and the establishment, the status quo, are interested in the head. Our heart is the door to allow existence to guide us – instead of being directed by our own ideas, attitudes and preconceived expectations of how life should be. The heart creates inconvenience for society and for the established order. The heart is spontaneous and never repeats the old. The head lives in the past, which is why the head is traditional and conventional.  The heart relates to unconditional love and acceptance both for ourselves and for other people.  The heart relates to qualities such as empathy, joy, acceptance, trust, intuition, understanding, compassion, playfulness, healing, friendship, sincerity and a sense of oneness in love. Love is not an exclusive relationship with another person; love is the quality that arises when we are in contact with our inner being, with our authentic self, withthe meditative quality within, with the inner silence and emptiness. This inner emptiness is experienced by others and is expressed on the outside as love. This love is not addressed to a specific person; it is a presence that surrounds a person like a fragrance. Love is perfect as it is. Love is enough unto itself. Love has to be understood. Love is the flight of your consciousness to higher realms beyond the body. Love is the fragrance of a rising consciousness. Love is like the fragrance of a flower. The moment you are overflowing with joy, a longing arises to share it. This sharing is love. Love is not something that you can get from somebody else, who has not attained to a state of joy. Everybody is asking to be loved, and pretending to love. You cannot love, because you don't know what consciousness is. You don't know the truth; you don't know the experience of the divine.  You don't know what love is, because you have not yet gone deeper in your consciousness. In this ignorance and blindness love does not grow. If you really want to know love, forget about love and remember meditation. Love is the defeat of all imposed rules and conditions. hence there is  a struggle between the individual who follows his heart and the collective who follows the imposed order. The individual who follows his heart has to be aware of this struggle, because he is moving towards the freedom of being himself. Being himself means that he is not going to be ruled by the collective, by the crowd. It means that now he will live according to his own heart, according to his own light. When he becomes independent, he will start feeling that he is  becoming one with the whole, one with the universal.  It is on the consciousness level of the heart that we begin to understand that we are not separated from life. We begin to understand that we are not small separate islands in a great ocean, but that life is one and that we all are small parts of the Whole. We begin to understand what is really important and meaningful in life. It is on the consciousness level of the heart that we begin to understand that life is about sharing, rather than hoarding. We begin to understand that life is about giving, rather than taking.

He says that memories are words. A fragrance or a flavor or a sound can summon up an old memory, but what’s really happening is that a memory that had been slumbering and nebulous becomes accessible in words.

A great perfume can express the intangible, but essential, intentions of a designer and convey the constant, enduring, and driving identity of the fashion house. It was through Marc Rosen's advocacy that I came to realize that the greatest modern perfume bottles were an art reflecting art. They exist as design objects in their own right, but are directly responsive to the composition of the scents they hold. A perfume, based on a series of layers and combinations of scent and composed of "notes" in a system that is at once science and subjectivity, is dependent on the sensory and the intuitive. With evocative qualities that are an amalgam of references framing it conceptually, a perfume can inspire possibilities of representation through graphics and the form of its flacon. Perfume bottles reside at the intersection of aesthetics and technology. They are, at their most artful, the sculptural manifestations of the ideas, emotions, and poetry elicited by a fragrance.

Cleopatra the Alchemist, who is believed to have lived in Alexandria around the third or fourth centuries CE, is one of four female alchemists who were thought to have been able to produce the rare and much-sought-after philosopher’s stone. She is a foundational figure in alchemy, and made great use of original imagery which reflects conception and birth — representing the renewal and transformation of life. She also experimented with practical alchemy (the forerunner of modern chemistry) and is credited by some with having invented the alembic, an apparatus used for distillation. Her mentor was Maria the Jewess, who lived in Alexandria sometime between the first and third centuries CE; she is similarly credited with the invention of several kinds of chemical apparatuses and is considered to be the first true alchemist of the Western world. In 1964, the great surrealist artist Leonora Carrington painted Maria, depicting her as a woman-lion chimera with breasts exposed and hair wildly flailing around her, as she weaves magical gold-summoning spells. Actually, female alchemists in Greco-Roman Egypt weren’t uncommon, though they were mostly preoccupied with concocting fragrances and cosmetics. In fact, it was a collective of female alchemists in ancient Egypt who invented beer, setting up an unsurprisingly booming business by the Nile. This is all a far cry from the popular image of an alchemist: that of a lavishly dressed and usually bearded man in a medieval laboratory, bending over a fire and surrounded by all manner of arcane contraptions, trying to turn lead into gold.

Often, as right now, Jean Perdu sits in the farmhouse’s summer kitchen, eyes closed, plucking rosemary and lavender flowers, breathing in this most profoundly provincial fragrance, and writing his Great Encyclopedia of Small Emotions: A Guide for Booksellers, Lovers, and other Literary Pharmacists. He is making an entry under “K.” Kitchen solace—the feeling that a delicious meal is simmering on the kitchen stove, misting up the windows, and that at any moment your lover will sit down to dinner with you and, between mouthfuls, gaze happily into your eyes. (Also known as living.)

As a shepherd Abel sanctified his work to the glory of God and offered a sacrifice of blood upon his altar, and the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering. This early type, a foreshadowing of our Lord, is exceedingly clear and distinct. Like the first streak of light that tinges the east at sunrise, it does not reveal everything, but it clearly manifests the great fact that the sun is coming. As we see Abel, a shepherd and yet a priest, offering a sacrifice of sweet fragrance unto God, we discern our Lord, who brings before His Father a sacrifice to which Jehovah ever has respect

The southern wind manifested itself first. they arrived with a sigh and formed themselves from the gust, individualizing into men and women with hair like fire- red and amber with a trace of blue. Great feathered wings bloomed from their backs like those of a bird, and each beat of their pinions emitted a wash of warmth and longing. jack could taste the nostalgia they offered; he drank it like a bittersweet wine, like the memories of a summer long ago. The east wind was the next to arrive. They manifested in a flurry of leaves, their hair like molten gold. Their wings were fashioned like those of a bat, long and pronged and the shade of dusk. they carried the fragrance of rain in their wings. The west wind spun themselves out of whispers, with hair the shade of midnight, long and jeweled with stars. Their wings were like those of a moth, patterned with moons, beating softly and evoking both beauty and dread as Jack beheld them. The air shimmered at their edges like a dream, as if they might melt at any moment, and their skin smelled of smoke and cloves as they hovered in place, unable to depart as Jack's music captivated them.

To be foreign is to be free. To have a great expanse stretch out before you—the desert, the steppe. To have the shape of the moon behind you like a cradle, the deafening symphony of the cicadas, the air's fragrance of melon peel, the rustle of the scarab beetle when, come evening, the sky turns red, and it ventures out onto the sand to hunt. To have your own history, not for everyone, just your own history written in the tracks you leave behind.

Many a time, dear child of God, you would have been an exposed lily, to be plucked by any ruthless hand, if it had not been that God had placed you in such circumstances that you were shut up unto himself. Sick saints and poor saints and persecuted saints are fair lilies enclosed by their pains, and wants, and bonds that they may be for Christ alone. I look on John Bunyan in prison writing his “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and I cannot help feeling that it was a great blessing for us all that such a lily was shut up among the thorns that it might shed its fragrance in that famous book, and thereby perfume the church for ages.

We human beings don't realize how great God is. He has given us an extraordinary brain and a sensitive loving heart. He has blessed us with two lips to talk and express our feelings, two eyes which see a world of colors and beauty, two feet which walk on the road of life, two hands to work for us, a nose which smells the beauty of fragrance, and two ears to hear the words of love. As I found with my ear, no one knows how much power they have in their each and every organ until they lose one.

...from the big tobacco barns there welled forth a fragrance that was for these Kentuckians, the soul of autumn. Oozing out into the sunshine from every crack in the great structures, it exhilarated like an elixir, like a long draught of some rich, spicy wine.

A great perfumer can take the visual perfection of living flowers and materials and elongate and morph it's lifespann into olfactory bliss.

A great perfumer can take the visual perfection of living flowers and materials and elongate and morph it's lifespan into olfactory bliss.

Celebrate aloneness, celebrate your pure space, and a great song will arise in your heart. And it will be a song of awareness, it will be a song of meditation. It will be a song of a lone bird calling in the distance— not calling to somebody in particular, but just calling because the heart is full and wants to call, because the cloud is full and wants to rain, because the flower is full and the petals open and the fragrance is released…unaddressed. Let your aloneness become a dance.

As musicians, we have the potential of doing great things. Everyone can remember at least one great concert they’ve been to. The performance was so inspired that it stayed with the audience well after they went home. Perhaps the fragrance of it was still there the next day. The feeling it created caused those present to behave differently for a while, possibly with more grace, with more mindfulness of the soul. Spiraling to deeper levels of consciousness, the performer takes us beneath the layers of illusion and peels

When the average person goes to an apple orchard, he will usually pay attention only to the fruit. If he goes to a nursery, he will notice only the beauty and fragrance of the flowers. Few people consider that the fruit and flowers are only the result of a great deal of planning, preparation, and hard work. In the same way, when most people see another person’s success, few will stop to think about how that person could be so successful.

Don't despair precious ones, no worry is too great that love can't heal. Each day whilst moving through the mists of time our heart is gently whispering the way of scattered dreams, the path fragranced with the sweet smell of hope, as we walk upon the way towards the sanctuary of ourselves.

city, ending again at the palace gate. “Bounds must always be walked to dawn first,” Belvarin had explained. “It is not the direction of the circle, but the direction of the first turn that matters—it must be the shortest way to the rising sun and the elvenhome kingdoms.” Now they were nearing the city’s margin, with forest beyond gardens and orchards. A cloud of birds rose singing from the trees—tiny birds, brilliantly colored, fluttering like butterflies. They swooped nearer, flew in a spiral over his head, and returned to the trees as the procession turned toward the river. Butterflies then took over, out of the gardens and orchards, arching over the lane, then settling on his shoulders and arms as lightly as air, as if he wore a cloak of jeweled wings. As they neared the river side of the city, the butterflies lifted away, and out of the water meadows rose flying creatures as brightly colored as the birds and butterflies … glittering gauzy wings, metallic greens, golds, blues, scarlet. Kieri put up his hand and one landed there long enough for him to see it clearly. Great green eyes, a body boldly striped in black, gold, and green, with a green tail. The head cocked toward him; he could see tiny jaws move. Was it talking? He could hear nothing, but the creature looked as if it were listening. It was a long walk, and his new boots—comfortable enough that morning—were far less so by the time they reached the palace gates again. He could smell the fragrance of roast meats and bread, but next he had the ritual visit to the royal ossuary, and spoke vows into that listening silence, to those who had given him bone and blood, vows no one else would hear. He came up again to find the feast spread in the King’s Ride, long tables stretching away into the distance. On either side, the trees rose up; he could feel them, feel their roots below the cushiony sod that welcomed his feet. His place lay at the farthest table, with

A great longing is upon us, to live again in a world made of gifts. I can scent it coming, like the fragrance of ripening strawberries rising on the breeze.

We human beings don't realize how great God is. He has given us an extraordinary brain and a sensitive loving heart. He has blessed us with two lips to talk and express our feelings, two eyes which see a world of colours and beauty, two feet which walk on the road of life, two hands to work for us, a nose which smells the beauty of fragrance, and two ears to hear the words of love.

Satsang is an initiation into the space where one starts belonging to God, the divine. Satsang is an initiation into the space where one no more thinks of oneself in egoistic terms, but where one starts thinking in terms of the whole. When you start feeling yourself in harmony with the whole great joy arises in your heart. Harmony with the whole is joy and disharmony with the whole is misery and separation. Whenever we a attuned to the whole suddenly the clouds on the sky disappear, and all is sunshine. Suddenly the flowers start blooming in your heart, and you are full of the fragrance of the unknown, of the beyond. But it happens only in the moment when you are in harmony with the whole. And everybody knows these moments once in a while. It happens accidentally: watching a sunrise. listening to beautiful music, in love, out in nature or for no reason at all. - and you fall into a subtle harmony. Something inside you becomes silent and quiet. The beauty of the sunset or the music may overwhelm you, so that you for a moment forget that you are separate from life. And then you feel great joy, beauty and silence. Satsang means to learn the art of creating situations, where it starts happening more and more consciously. It is to learn the art of creating the right conscious space for it happens, so that one day it happens but never leaves you again. This is the day of enlightenment, and one becomes a Buddha or a Christ. That is the day of harmony, when it has become so ingrained in you, so that now there is no possibility of separation from life.

We human beings don’t realize how great God is. He has given us an extraordinary brain and a sensitive loving heart. He has blessed us with two lips to talk and express our feelings, two eyes which see a world of colors and beauty, two feet which walk on the road of life, two hands to work for us, a nose which smells the beauty of fragrance, and two ears to hear the words of love. As I found with my ear, no one knows how much power they have in their each and every organ until they lose one.