smile of roses

The scent of roses
has a smile on its face.

- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
German physicist, author 1742-1799

For me, the hardest is the rose to put in a bottle.
I sniff many fantasy roses, but never a real one in the juice. They mostly smell like the rose oil, not as the rose itself.

- Vedat Ozan perfumer





photo: Lura Astor

Peace of Mind

I will wave the magic wand
for a spritz of top-shelf,
lovely, Peace of Mind ... see what happens.

Powerful top notes,
soporific middle notes and
a dry down that lingers and
reminds one of something ... but what?



 




Illustration: Peace of Mind Lura Astor

Smell with the Breath of the Sky

 














I tien tien fung
... a sigh in the sky

from Lyall Watson's work on Winds

In the language of Tewa Indians
a 3-syllable term translated as
art or creativity means
water-wind-breath
A beautiful evocation of
the creative process
about catching the current,
breathing in, breathing out
in-spiration, breathe in spirit,
ex-halation, release it into the world
        
 - Robert Moss
 
from his book 
Dreamgates: An Explorer’s Guide to the Worlds of Soul, Imagination, and Life Beyond Death

Pastel: Wellfleet Bay Deb Dwyer

"You can’t sterilize yourself & think there won’t be consequences.”

 
"Well, clearly,” said (Gianfranco) Soldera (considered the single best producer of Brunello di Montalcino in the world),
“if you don’t have a nose, you can have all the customs in the world and you still won’t know a thing about food.

You need a nose with a memory.

But it’s much harder now than ever to have a nose.

We’re losing our sense of smell.

“Our nose was once the most important way we could survive. Man could smell danger before he could see it. He could tell when food was bad. With his nose, he selected the person with whom he wanted to reproduce. In the 1700s, they used to cover odors, but now we’re eliminating them. Pollution is killing our olfactory sense and then we’re finishing off the job with deodorants, shower gels, perfumed soaps. Your brain can no longer decipher what real smells are, what’s natural. You can’t sterilize yourself and think there won’t be consequences.”

- Sergio Esposito Passion on the Vine

What do you think?

Watercolor: Brushstroke In It  Lura Astor

Roses, Vanilla, Earth

And saw roses that smelt
like the vanilla of the earth.

-Lura Astor



... awoke from this dream bit and put on Caron Rose ...

 


photo: Huntington Garden Rose Lura Astor

Happy Solar Eclipse!

What's a sunny fume?

Cinnamon, honey, clover
singe, flare














Art: The Sun Behind Lura Astor

He has Very Smelly Feet

He had a great memory and never forgot an odor.

- Lyall Watson


on his childhood pet warthog, Hoover
from Warriors, Warthogs, and Wisdom: Growing Up In Africa

Warthogs were called Intibane, the ugly one, "He has very smelly feet.”

photo: Warthog in Senegal   Ji-Elle

written in ink that slowly fades away

Pig society is smell-bound.

Almost everything pigs do
is determined
in some
way
by odor.

Scent-marking and scent-reading help to define these limits and to cement social communication.

In our attempts to make sense of systems that are beyond our sensory grasp, I suspect that we disparage some scent-laying practices by passing them off as “territorial markings.” The fact is that pigs are not really territorial at all but operate movable home ranges, shifting these as they adapt to the seasons. They are generous with their secretions for a different reason, one that has more to do with identity than property. They are protecting themselves, rather than their surroundings, finding security in society instead of territory, laying down olfactory perimeters that are flexible.

.... Every warthog lives in a world filled with messages from every other warthog in the area – so that each one knows exactly where everyone else is, how they are, what they have been eating, and how long ago they passed this way.  

It must be like getting lots of letters every day from all your friends and family, letters filled with news and gossip, but written in ink that slowly fades away.

- Lyall Watson
Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs

 
photos:
Phacochoerus Africanus Hells Gate National Park, Kenya Joachim Huber
Warthog in Ngorongor Nicor
Illustration: Musical Book Lura Astor

The Two Faces of Fragrance

Fragrance has two faces.

It is a liquid with definite physical and chemical properties.

It is also a sensation, experienced either consciously or subconsciously, which affects people in different, hard-to-verbalize ways.

- J. Stephan Jellinek

 






Illustrations: Lura Astor

Smell Transportation

 
Smell represents the fallen angel of the senses,
it nevertheless remains a
potent wizard that transports us across thousands
of miles and all the years we have lived.

- Helen Keller

photo: Solvang Spout Lura Astor