fly fire fly

I  remember well
the summer smell of luminescense

the sexy high high note scent

of firefly bellies
in humid nights
you could swim through

Received a gift of x
amount of sprays
of Nombre Noir

the light at the end
of the birth tunnel is a
telegraphing of fireflies
not the train's headlight


Painting: SunGlow (detail) Lura Astor 2002
song: Lura Astor

Olfactory Synasthetes

Do you smell in color?


 Smelling Orange: The Interconnected Realm Of Synesthesia
 


For years I contributed to online
fragrance/olfaction boards
asking if others "Smell in Color".

I've spoken with synasthetes, but I do not see letters/numbers in color. I definitely smell in color. The article's title jumped out at me! Yes! Does anyone else? Where are the other olfactory synasthetes!

In the mid-1980's, I co-choreographed a piece with two others, and the musician chose a color for every note.

The music was intellectual framed mentally; the presentation stark. Today, I would make such a collaborative piece lush and textural. Lycra bodysuits were relatively new, used much in dance, sports and then yoga. Anna White caused a huge hurrah wearing her, now famous, white lycra bodysuit at Wimbledon, 1985.
 
Pastel: Watersparks Lura Astor

weaving of words

crocheting, knitting, weaving
loom, weft, warp

twine, comb, spin

woof, word

are not only textile

not only history

they are original history

Painting: Drop in a Bottle Lura Astor 2002

transporting ourselves from there to here

Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom
1876 Ilya Yefimovich Repin
Sadko, a musician and traveler of Russian mythology..
music transports

scent changes time

time travel with scent
 
neptune, mermaids, merman, transparencies, psychic reception/transmissions, illusion, deception, addiction, confusion, flowing, compassion, trickery, lies, choreography, intuition, dreams, music, fantasy, daydreams, stories, film, art, inspiration, con-artists, the illusive, fluids, water, magicians, magic, lyrics, womb carriage

transporting ourselves from here to there from there to here

Sulfur - last of the series

burning sulfur
to blood-red liquid

visit from the bowels
of the earth
healing to the bowels
the scatological may seem illogical but is evident throughout scent
bottled and human

fertilizers, matches, insecticides, fungicides, black gunpowder, help with connective tissue, arthritis, skin problems, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, a hardening agent for rubber, vulcanization, vulcan: beneficial and hindering fire, brimstones, sulfur soaks more on sulfur




 













Photos by: burning - Johannes Hemmerlein
on volcano - yure13
in baths - yosemite

Chaos Crocheted

Crochet Your Own Model of Chaos

pictured: the Lorenz Manifold crocheted

mathematicians and authors, Hinke Osinga, Ph.D. and Bernd Krauskopf, Ph.D - paper and crochet instructions here.

Textiles, weaving, knitting, crocheting, with the aid of computer graphics and 3-dimensional modeling, help better understand equations which describe
how chaos arises, and is organized, in systems, the nature of chaotic systems, such as the weather.

More background in this article, one of many.


The fragrance Chaos by Donna Karan has its avid followers. Originally out in 1996, it was discontinued, but occasionally available, and reissued in 2008.

If you like Chaos you may like Must de Cartier, not as a replacement, and Diesel Green. Ironically, with a name like Chaos, the DKNY site states that Chaos was created to reconnect with our own natural creativity and balance; blending calm, serene notes with spicy, warm notes.

I know that as an artist, working in any medium, there are moments, or tides, of chaos within the structure of the piece, and I must get out of the way, allowing the other to imbue.

More on chaos "organizing" in the Synchronicity post and TED video here

more on sulfur

continuing from the post on Funky Green Imposter's sulfurous performance in the Green Aria at the Guggenheim  

an article of 3 March 2009 in click  The Sun on Vi-eggra notes findings on the importance of hydrogen sulphide ...


the smell of rotting eggs gives men erections?


And, in the Middle Ages, sulfur was among ingredients thought to protect against the plague. Leaf scents of the sulfur group include mustard, onions, garlic. 

Illustration: DNA Egg Lura Astor

10 June 2009 in Hollywood

The Luminario Ballet (link to clip)


fundraiser at the Avalon

Some Cirque du Soleil stars, film projection; the make up/look reminds me of the Mary Quant/Twiggy era, when modern dance was overlapping into ballet, The Joffrey Ballet's Astarte used current music of the time with new costuming/lighting, becoming a benchmark. Enjoy this contemporary piece!

Wednesday 7-11 PM
Avalon Hollywood
1735 N. Vine Street
Hollywood ~ Los Angeles, CA
Parking on either side of the club in lot

synchronicity - play yours today

Personal space varies within cultures and environments. 

On numerous occasions, I have almost been run over with shopping carts or walked into, though I am visible and spatially aware.

One car's tempo changes the whole drive pattern on a freeway.

Here, a presentation on unplanned synchronicity by mathematician Steven Strogatz on the TED talks series It shows how flocks, including birds, fireflies, humans and fish, synchronize, acting as a unit with no one giving orders.

Strogatz shows this tendency in the realm of objects, " ...spontaneous order and unexpected consequences ..."

I call it the dance of order within chaos.

One designer calls it don't bump into anything, stay away from the predators.
Here, an article Playing the Synchronicity Game by author and workshop leader Robert Moss.

Watercolor: Lura Astor

theatrical 4th wall explorations continue

Some reviews and commentary
on the Green Aria Scent Opera
tickle me ... the description of
people pulling away from the scent microphones
when Funky Green Impostor
makes an appearance, with first whiff.

this memory floated in

Sitting in the back row of an historic
movie theater, 1973
3-D film production of Frankenstein
co-produced by Andy Warhol, Carlo Ponti and others, directed by Paul Morrissey

The first 3-D experience unfolds like this

we're sitting in the back row
a huge flock of bats fly, startlingly fast,
into the camera, continuing into the audience
everyone in the audience turns their head away
we are staring at a huge group of grimacing faces
collectively moving away from the birds
a collective gasp
a collective body giggle
human reflexes
and instinctual protection
in a theatrical frame
the usual audience of individuals, couples,
and small groups
changed into the collective

Fragrance in Internal Uses

The Coca-Cola Museum click here may sound uninteresting, but it is a treat to sample 50-plus varieties of fragrance/flavors, in the delivery system of carbonated beverage, as translated and targeted to cultures and regions around the world.

Coca-Cola with tamarind, cardamon, citrus notes and more

Located in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, I see online that it has changed since my 1991 visit.

I don't think there is a lavender cola yet ... Provence, Washington, Oregon, California ... other lavender growing regions?

Recipe for a carbonated lavender and a few links:

 
orange-lavender cappuccino
lavender-lemon soda
lavender honey
lavender lemon curd





Photos: Small Leaf Tamarind/Diploglottis campbellii  Tatiana Gerus
Limes on Granite Counter Janet Hudson

follow up to birth control changing smell perception

This smell abstract follows up my earlier post Nothing in Nature Abstains

Published in 2001, it addresses rhinomanometric and olfactometric outcomes of oral contraception. I believe this affects men and women, as cross research reveals.

Care and concern in developing safe, effective birth "control" is required, for as a culture, we are affecting base responses to socio-sexual cues, recreation, procreation and care of progeny. Perhaps going back to basics is required. Investigative pharmacognosy research into native plant uses, uses by midwives prior to witch accusations, and B.C.E.; and investigation into surviving oral and written information can help adjust current research to homeostatic balance.

In 1996 I edited an obstetrical/gynecological paper for publication in JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Association, for a doctor concerned with radical increase in bleeding with the variety of hormonal introductions into women's systems. The newest forms of birth control that stop, or radically reduce, external bleeding is the other extreme of the range. A sane balance is needed. Balance between body and health, plant wisdom and technology. I request going back to basics. Clues to start: wild yam, quinine ...

Personally, I frame this within the sense of smell, as this is key way of moving through life, consciously and unconsciously.

Affecting the senses is power. If you believe it is a mild side affect that women dull their sense of smell (see article) hormonally, imagine living with a cold or allergy that takes away all your pleasure of eating any of your favorite dishes. Study anosmia.

tagline from 1960's ad campaign It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.

There is always a price.

Another sub-cultural extreme is using abortion as birth control. As a recent guest lecturer at Chapman University, Santa Maria campus, California, I mentioned that abortion affects men as well as women, extrapolating the numerous ways, to rapt attention. This was delivered to a class within the sociology department, on cultural movements of the 1960's and their relevance today.

Smell is intelligence.

Green Aria - the reviews are in

Green Aria Scent Opera played to full houses at New York City's Guggenheim Museum this past weekend, 31 May 2009 and 1 June 2009.

Here is what the New York Times had to say, and it made me wistfully laughing to imagine hearing the voice from backstage telling the audience of who was replacing whom during the evening's performance.

In case you worried we were growing too staid in our fragrant likes, the evening's loudest ovation went to Funky Green Imposter, from all accounts exuding a faintly sulfurous odor. Is there anything faint about sulfur?

And, James Kohl would remind us that natural redheads drive people crazy in lust due to their exuding more sulfur. You can read his work in The Scent of Eros: Mysteries of Odor in Human Sexuality. Jim presented some of his work in the 1980's at seminars I put together in Las Vegas, Nevada; originally meeting him while a guest at a Mensa Toastmasters.

 I toss a fragrant bouquet to all involved in the innovative click Green Aria and hope you make it to Los Angeles, California, USA.

Here are Green Aria reviews from the
Wall Street Journal
Science & the City
New York Magazine
Time Out New York

Illustration: Green Bulb Lura Astor
 

past present future scents

Tomorrow,
you can smell the past

Today,
you can make tomorrows' memory-smells

The intelligence and humor left in a bottle, vial, ring, amphora, pomander, snuff box can now be archaeologically reconstituted with today's technology.

Some recent public examples of archival reconstitution of perfumes include the Titanic find.

Adolphe Saalfeld was a German born Edwardian perfumer who left England on the RMS Titanic, embarking to sell his fragrances world-wide. They met a watery holding tank in 1912, while he survived via lifeboat number 3 and returned to Manchester, England, living until 1926.
In 2000, 62 bottles of his concentrated perfume oils were recovered. He had boarded with 65 test tube like bottles. At the time of the Titanic sail he had been 47, chairman of the chemists and distillers Sparks, White and Co. Ltd. 

Though he did not pursue the perfume business, his rose/violet composition has been copied using the scent's "fingerprint" of the original chemical composition and debuted at the Edinburgh Science Festival.Scents of Time Series brings us Ankh: reconstructed from written formula found at Edfu on the Nile, derived from Kyphi incense.

Nenufar: Blue Lotus is visible in many hieroglyphics. Sacred to Pharaohs and Pharaohesses, guess what? The flower's chemistry contains the hallucinogen myristicin. The petals were steeped in wine and then the wine was drunk and then the drinkee drank in the hallucinogen stories. The perfume uses nutmeg spice, which contains myristicin. Remember studies show how much men enjoy the scent of pumpkin pie, which is loaded with nutmeg. I hail from the Nutmeg State.

Pyxis: named from a pixie fresco on a wall at the House of the Vetii in Pompeii. Based on floral, herbal and spice spores found in the garden of a perfumer, believed to be called Sperato, at Pompeii.

Scents of Time's David Pybus worked with perfumers from Givaudan on these scent reconstructions. He has authored several books.

I have not yet smelled any of these, so, the infinite perfume hunt continues.

Painting: Electric Sunrise Lura Astor

Nothing In Nature Abstains

The new birth control degenderizing of women is dangerous. Natural cycles of lust, recreation, procreation and just plain creation are messed with when we fear the women's internal bloods so much we don't want the externalization. Such sanitization as we spill others' blood onto the earth for such stupid, greedy non-reasons is officially out of balance.

Numerous hormonal birth controls have women thinking they are pregnant all the time, struggling with 50-plus side effects, up to and including death. No wonder the women then need and want to nest, even if prematurely, with that particular man. Rather than enjoying her sexual well-being, the body continuously says, "baby coming, make nest, baby coming, make nest". And, the sense of smell changes.

We can categorize time in calendars that disregard lunar cycles and circadian rhythms at a cost. It is documented that Daylight Saving Time causes havoc, including sleep disturbances. Sleep Study institutes reveal sleep deprivation to be a main cause in many "accidents" including major oil spills on the oceans.

Nothing In Nature Abstains


One can call something not sex, can call it something else, can term anal sex, oral sex, armpit sex, etcetera, as forms of abstinence, but again, at a cost. Saying something is not sexual does not make it so. Additionally, this remove diminishes aspects of foreplay and carress, and ... the relational.

You can say 2 plus 2 is 5, but, is it?To mother earth may all your sexy little beings get better and better at love and loving.


From whence all came Wu Wei
re-member
the male
the female

Ellison Adger Smyth - Civil Rights/Virginia

AN 89-YEAR OVERVIEW
SLIGHTLY IRREVERENT FORMER REVEREND PENS MEMOIRS

ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS used with permission
Date: Sunday, February 14, 1993
Section: CURRENT
Edition: NEW RIVER VALLEY
Page: NRV-1
Byline: LURA ASTOR SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS

Please contact me if you have the corresponding photos to this article.
The article came out on a Valentine's Day Sunday and the photos were a wonderful retrospective.

"I was a hillbilly born in Blacksburg," said Ellison Adger Smyth, who's seen a lot of the world in his 89 years.

From his vantage point comes a book, "RetroSpect: Growing up in Blacksburg and Other Tales Through a Long Life." Changes and challenges filled those years, and so does a charming tale of romance. The book, published by Pocahontas Press, is due out in July.

When he retired in 1968 as pastor emeritus of Blacksburg Presbyterian Church after 21 years, he and his wife, Mary Linda, traveled the country in search of their retirement home.

Those travels were a new chapter in their life together that began with a traditional Southern courtship that began in Charleston, S.C. On the retirement odyssey, "Mary Linda collected plants and I collected rocks and butterflies," Smyth said.tell

They visited Mexico and Canada, and after four years put their feet back on Blacksburg soil, settling in the Warm Hearth retirement community. It was his second Blacksburg homecoming. The first one had brought him to town as a young pastor in 1948. "There's no place like home," said Smyth, who was born on what is now the Tech campus.

Mary Linda Smyth, who holds the distinction of being Virginia's oldest employee, works in the Virginia Tech herbarium. She urged her husband to join a writing workshop at Warm Hearth led by poet Nikki Giovanni.

Mary Linda Smyth said she believed her husband needed more intellectual stimulation. "He's always worked with words; why, he's written thousands of sermons." Ellison Smyth thought otherwise. "I had enough to keep me busy, what with my gardening, woodwork and lapidary work . . . besides, what was I going to do with a gang of old women?" he asked, laughing. "But I was intrigued and Nikki Giovanni is a genius." And many of the group turned out to have sharp minds. Now he teasingly refers to them as his "over-aged harem."

"Oh, he's a treasure, wherever he goes," Giovanni said. "He reads for us every week. . . . He's used to writing and speaking. We can count on him to start the discussion for us. "And he's a charmer. I'm glad Mary [Holliman, of Pocahontas Press] is doing the book. He's writing valuable essays" on the beginnings of Tech, where his father was dean of faculty.

Smyth also found some male reinforcements in the group. "One fellow had traveled around quite a bit, Texas and so on. One of his stories was in dialect and I asked, `What part of the Southern Appalachians are you from?' He said, `Illinois.' " Smyth seemed tickled that the joke was on him.

Why did he want to write his autobiography at this point? "Writing is a good outlet," he said. It forces a person to be true to himself and follow his own counsel.

Smyth didn't start as a minister. After graduating from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1925 as an electrical engineer, he moved from Blacksburg (population then about 700) to Schenectady, N.Y. (population 18,000.) A dozen years and a career change were ahead before he would marry Mary Linda.

Schenectady was quite a change for a country boy, he said. For several years he worked at General Electric. Then he discovered he was more interested in people than in electrical research. "I found I could listen. People would come to me. . . . They just needed a listening post." About this time, he said, "The hound of heaven dogged me and I couldn't escape."

Smyth followed in his great-grandfather's footsteps and entered a seminary, studying first in Richmond and then in Edinburgh, Scotland. His great-grandfather was a pastor in Charleston. One of the couples he married there had a son, whom the grandfather baptized. The son later had two daughters.
Smyth by 1935 was doing ministerial work in Lexington. His supervising pastor was married to one of those daughters.

Smyth drove his boss' wife and two of her friends to Charleston for Garden Week that year and met the other daughter, Mary Linda, who was sick with the flu. Sparks flew anyway. Mary Linda had a suitor at the time, but Smyth indicated his interest should she ever be free. Before long, she was, and she came to Lexington to visit her sister. She and Ellison were married July 1, 1937. Now, Ellison Smyth likes to tell people they "met in bed," because of Mary Linda's flu.

While serving in Lexington, Smyth took several liberal arts courses at Washington and Lee to fill a lack in the humanities. He received a master's degree in history. The first dozen years of ministerial work took him to several churches: Warrenton; Nitro, W.Va.; and Hartsville, S.C. In 1947, he was asked to preach at Blacksburg Presbyterian Church. He became pastor there in February 1948.

Years later, Hampden-Sydney College gave Smyth an honorary doctorate of divinity, which he laughingly calls an "ornery degree." He said he thought it was bestowed because some of the Tech faculty and administrators in the Blacksburg church were Hampden-Sydney alumni and wanted the sermons preached by someone with a doctoral degree.

His book, "RetroSpect" includes memoirs of his studies and travels in England, Scotland and France during the 1930s. He writes and speaks of the people he met during his lifetime.

"People are people," he said. "Wherever you find people you find the same problems . . . selfishness, lack of vision, pride. You name it, we've all got it. Includin' preachers . . . sometimes, especially preachers."

-end-

After posting, I received this correction, printed here with permission:

I stumbled across your articles about my parents Ellison Adger and Mary Linda Vardell Smyth. There was an error in the write up about my father.

Although mother’s father was born and baptized in Charleston, South Carolina, my mother was born and raised in Red Springs, North Carolina. Grandfather Vardell was the founder and president of Flora McDonald College in Red Springs, and the family spent their summers in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Blowing Rock is where my father first visited my mother “in bed”. I don’t know where the idea of “garden week” came from. Mother and Dad were married July 1, 1937, in Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church, a church named after mother’s grand father, Rev. Jethro Rumple.

Father’s first ministry was in Saskatchewan, followed by a church in Nitro, West Virginia. Then came Lexington, Virginia, as an assistant to Dr. J.J. Murray, the brother-in-law of mother. Then Warrington, Hartsville and finally, Blacksburg. I was born in Hartsville and grew up in Blacksburg.

The article about mother was pretty much accurate.

Best regards,

E. Adger Smyth, Jr.

Minding Breather

click here, then click video

Virginia Tech Herbarium

In recent talks with friends in the fragrance, tea, herb and medicinal worlds, I remembered this story and would like to share it with you now. 

The memory begins with Mary Linda opening one of many sliding drawers of flat files to pull out herb samples on their archival paper.

 


In the 1990's I was a freelance journalist for the Roanoke Times and World News, for a few years. Wonderful people worked there; I had a great editor, Ray Reed, and a fellow, who's name I've forgotten, who used to write the best captions and headlines. He was almost bowled over when I complemented and thanked him one day; so many people and details go into any finished product.

Please contact me if you have information on the photos accompanying the article, I would love to include themROANOKE TIMES and WORLD-NEWS used with permissionAT 88, MARY LINDA SMYTH MAKES HERBARIUM A GIVING AND GATHERING PLACEDate: Sunday, October 11, 1992
Section: CURRENT Edition: NEW RIVER VALLEY
Page: NRV-1Byline: LURA ASTOR SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS

BLACKSBURG, VIRGINIA - While most of us have grown up believing retirement is mandatory at age 65, here's Mary Linda Smyth working away at Virginia Tech's herbarium at the age of "almost 88." Three mornings a week, Smyth does something she's good at and loves doing. People around the world benefit from her work.

The herbarium houses samples of all kinds of green plants as well as herbs, Smyth said. Many people think it's limited to commonly known herbs: peppermint, basil, mustard and such. It's the ideal place for capturing her experience. In 50-plus years, Smyth has taught at colleges and universities, including Radford University and Virginia Tech. She's been with Tech for 30 years and was an associate professor as well as essentially the acting curator of the herbarium.

Smyth never knows what the workday will bring. A wide range of projects transpires in the large room, which smells faintly of the mothballs that are used in its storage vaults. She may be holding a delicate frond, covered with glue, when the phone rings. If no one else is there she must decide: frond, phone, or both? It's both. "Anything that turns up, I do," she said. She works six hours each week. That might make her Virginia's oldest state employee, but the personnel office in Richmond couldn't confirm that.A herbarium is a busy place. Virginia Tech's houses more than 86,000 plant specimens. Smyth is familiar with their Latin names, and "you wouldn't know the name if you didn't know something about its properties," such as its healing potential. "That's the way you classify them, by the properties."Plants arrive needing to be identified, a process that can take days of research. Plant specimens, looking as though they've been removed from a poetry book after being pressed under the weight of encyclopedias, need to be mounted, labeled, numbered and filed. A global scientific language is used to organize plants; the numbers mean the same thing from country to country.

Smyth sees plants from Japan, Europe and remote islands, as well as the many found throughout Virginia. She often has helped newcomers to the area. Smyth has taken people into the woods for on-the-spot lessons.

One recent morning she was mounting dry, flat plant specimens. She moved with the grace of an artist, placing the dried ferns on special herbarium paper, using special herbarium glue. In her lifetime, Smyth has collected 6,000 plants from Canada, the United States and Mexico. More than 600 were collected from the property she and her husband, Ellison, former pastor of Blacksburg Presbyterian Church, own in Blacksburg. She says it's not an impressive collection.

"Look at this number here. Ninety-eight thousand some." It's the identifying number on a plant given by a man who had collected a sample for each of its preceding numbers. The first of her 6,000 collected items came during her college years at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where she received a master's degree in botany and taxonomy in 1930.Smyth still was doing graduate studies, working toward her doctorate, when she met her husband-to-be, a Blacksburg native. She collected plants; he collected butterflies. It seems a perfect match. Seven years ago they celebrated their golden wedding anniversary with their four children.
-end-

color photo: jon sullivan

Vent

Understanding the irony that perfumery
is full of ingredients that were once alive
in one form
and now in the ethers
transmute
into a different alchemy of form ...

Interest in Patrick Süskind's book and subsequent movie Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is helped by a lack of literature to satisfy growing interest in smell and scent.

Online perfume boards and blogs fan fragrance interest, pulling back curtains, peeking behind scenes.

Scripted "Reality" TV validates the interest in seeing behind the seens: everything from the making of cars and robots, to saving a beached whale or marriage.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer's behind the scenes fantasy perfume story repulses me. My relationship to perfume is different than Süskind's story of killing.

My relationship with perfume, fragrance, scent, and the art and science of smelling is about life and, beauty; about craftsmanship, containers, packaging, artistry, mundane details; intelligence for a mind that bores easily as a body moves through what we call architecture.

With smell's varying volatiles, I get to be entertained on many levels as I move through the world.

Loathing the combining of sex with murder and/or torture, my interest with fragrance is not about killing femininity to "possess" it, or hunting and killing virgins whatever gender.

The movie? The book? Scraping bodies of killed virgins to jar up scent.

A fictional fallacy for death changes odor, fear changes odor.

Perhaps a take on an old vaudeville joke? No good virgin except a dead virgin?

Once one is no longer a virgin, to anything, a chapter of life has in essence died. Metaphorically, la petite mort, the little death, references orgasm, post-orgasm, times when something dies inside of one, times when one dies and is reborn, as in the arms of a lover.

No telling necrophiliacs that the exchange of feminine and masculine energies is better live. A reminder for anyone who got tweaked in life - the feminine and masculine live within each us, at all times ...

While helping run a niche fragrance boutique, people came in asking if I'd seen the movie. Many were visibly shaken; men, women, old, young, representative of many cultures.

Responding, I have a different relationship to perfume, I'd embrace the wonderful bottles on the glass shelves with a sweep of my arms, it is about life, not death, and, I'd see calm grow visible.

I wasn't running a little shop of horrors with perfume equivalents of human meat pies. It got me to thinking that human memories of cannibalism and human sacrifice may be closer to the surface than thought, given the ratings of these stories.

Therefore

look forward to
different
stories
translating
better
understanding
of the phases and cycles
of life-death-life
life-death-rebirth.

Pruning plants not killing them,
cutting hair not cutting the head off

an aspirational being about life and
the relational, inclusive,

rather than inabilities to fulfill;
one-sided, narcissistic,
(though I love the scent of live narcissus flowers)
demand of control of life and
control of death.

For that
I turn to Nature

if I'm lucky and
pay attention,
might learn something more


painting: Flieder und Tulpen Lovis Corinth