Happy Earth Day!

Those who contemplate the beauty of the Earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
Rachel Carson

Wishing everyone a very happy 45th Earth Day! ~ Dominique 

Image source here

Nothing More to Be Said...

Beauty is an ecstasy; 

it is as simple as hunger. 

There is really nothing to be said about it. 

It is like the perfume of a rose: 

you can smell it and that is all. - 

W. Somerset Maugham

Natural Beauty

A young monk was in charge of the garden within a famous Zen temple. He had been given the job because he loved the flowers, shrubs, and trees. Next to his temple there was another, a much smaller temple where a very old Zen master lived. 

One day, when the temple was expecting some special guests, the young monk took extra care in tending to the garden. He pulled the weeds, trimmed the shrubs, combed the moss, and spent a long time meticulously raking up and carefully arranging all the dry autumn leaves. As he worked, the old master watched him with interest from across the wall that separated the two temples.

When the young man had finished his work in the garden, he stood back to admire his work. "Isn't it beautiful," he called out to the old master. "Yes," replied the old man, "but there is something missing. Help me over this wall and I'll put it right for you."

After hesitating, the young monk lifted the old master over and set him down. Slowly, the master walked to the tree near the center of the garden, grabbed it by the trunk, and shook it. Leaves showered down all over the garden. "There," said the old man, "you can put me back now."

 

Image source unknown but greatly appreciated

Antilope - A Scent of Distinction

Antilope by Weil

Long forgotten and mostly unknown, Antilope by Weil was my favorite fragrance in late 70s. Sweet, woody, and elegant, it suited my taste back than. It was probably much too extravagant for a young person, but I liked it a lot. It came in a tiny bottle with a stopper. The scent is well etched into my olfactory memory even if I have a slight difficulty describing it today. It was fresh and wild and musky at the same time. I was mesmerized when I first smelled it.

Antilope was launched in 1945 by a Parisian furrier Les Fourrures Weil upon their return from American exile. 

The House of Weil made furs since 1912, but following the trend, launched its first fragrance in 1928. A number of fragrances were created at that time by various perfume makers to mask the unpleasant smell that a fur coat would exude with age. The specially designed fur fragrance was to camouflage the smell without damaging the fur coat. 

The House of Weil made its first fur fragrance at the direct request of a wealthy client. Weil's first fragrance was the Zibeline made in 1928 by the legendary Claude Frayssee and his daughter Jacqueline. A few more followed until the outbreak of the second World War when the Weils were forced into exile. The war did not really interrupt their creativity as they continued to make furs in the United States. Their return to Europe at the end of war was marked by the launch of two luxurious fragrances - Antilope and Padisha.

Antilope is an elegant, but slightly old fashioned floral woody aldehydic chypre perfume. It reminds me rather of the glamorous and capricious ladies who accompanied their husbands on African safaris rather than of the wild scent of hunted game.

There is something luxurious and exotic about the perfume whose "soul" is full of temperament - more like a difficult to catch antelope than a wild animal trying to attack its prey.

The top note is composed of neroli, bergamot and aldehydes that open to fresh and floral  heart of clary sage, rose, lily of the valley, jasmine, carnation, iris and violet. This olfactory structure rests on a woody base with a touch of musk and amber: sandalwood, vetiver, patchouli, tonka bean, amber, oak moss and musk.

I haven't smelled the Antilope for ages. I thought Antilope had disappeared from the market, but when the company was restructured in 2002 under a new ownership, the perfume was re-launched in a new, fresher, more herbal and slightly less "powdery" version of the old classic. Who knows, I might even give it a try.

By Dominique Allmon

 

Dominique Allmon©2012 

Images source here

Sakura - The Celebration of Nature

Sakura at Hirano Shrine, Kyoto

Japanese aesthetics evolved around nature and its cycles. And while Shintō considers nature to be sacred, the Buddhists in Japan celebrates its beauty and impermanence. 

Like no other natural "phenomenon" sakura holds great significance for the Japanese people. Sakura, or the cherry blossom, symbolizes new beginning. Its fleeting beauty invites to a reflection on the meaning of life. Everything changes, everything is in constant motion, nothing lasts forever. In order to fully appreciate life, one must be able to live in the moment. 

Sakura mochi

Since ancient times artists, poets, and philosophers celebrated this temporal beauty. Celebration of sakura in the early days of April is a perfect excuse for an outdoor gathering with family and friends. There is nothing better than a short escape from the monotony of everyday city life. You may even wonder whether it is the scent of sakura or too much sake under the sakura tree that makes people appear so carefree in a normally emotionally reserved society.

The beauty of sakura trees invites one to an intense contemplation. One not only takes time to appreciate the beauty of nature, but also learns to understand that all joys of life are temporary. As much as one would love to hold on to this tantalizing experience, one must let go. But there is no regret. One finds comfort in the very fact that nature follows its own cycle...

By Dominique Allmon

 
Sakura mochi image source here

The Beauty And The Rose

Rose - the queen of all flowers

Since ancient times rose has been a symbol of love, beauty, and sensuality. No other flower is so universally known and appreciated.

In ancient Egypt roses were considered to be sacred and were used in offerings to the goddess Isis. Remains of roses were found in Egyptian tombs were they were used as the funerary wreaths.

Cleopatra is believed to have perfumed the sails of her ship with rose water when she sailed to meet Marcus Antonius. The legend has it that the chamber of their first encounter was carpeted with rose petals. No wonder the Roman commander lost his mind.

In ancient Greece the rose was consecrated to the goddess of love Aphrodite. Romans continued this tradition and offered this lovely flower to Venus. The rose was omnipresent in ancient Rome. Rose water and rose oil were the symbols of luxury and were used to stimulate the senses during lavish banquets at the Roman court. The Patricians decorated their mansions with roses and wore rose garlands around their necks.

The flower was also used in Greece by the Eleusian Mystery schools. Temples were decorated with roses and the aspirants wore a rose before their initiation. The flower was to remind them of silence and secrecy they were sworn to. This tradition known as "sub rosa dictum" goes back to Alexandria and the Alexandrian hermetic tradition where rose was dedicated to Horus/Harpocrates, the god of silence.*

The rose as a symbol of silence was later adopted by the Rosicrucian Order and by the Freemasons. The adepts were sworn to secrecy and were not allowed to reveal any information about proceedings of the Orders.

Since the ancient times roses were valued for their medicinal properties. Roman historian and naturalist Pliny the Elder recorded thirty two conditions that could be relieved with roses. Rose petals, rose leaves, and rose hips were used internally and externally. Young rose buds were used in Traditional Chinese Medicine to promote the movement of the Qi energy within the body, to cure digestive disorders, and to alleviate gynecological disorders.

In Europe, a 12th century mystic Hildegard of Bingen used roses to heal the lepers. A century later, Crusaders returning from the Holy Land brought the Damascus rose to France. The species, Rosa gallica officinalis, also known as the  Apothecary's rose, was cultivated for medicinal purposes and gave rise to the entire industry whose center was the town of Provins. Grasse - another town in Provence - became the world capitol of perfume after the first perfume was created there by Molinard during the reign of Catherine de Medici to perfume the exquisite leather goods and camouflage the bad smell that resulted from the tanning process. The delicate rose, however, was not in the center of the perfume industry that sprung up there. The perfume makers in Grasse mostly used lavender, myrtle, thyme, rosemary, orange blossom, wild mimosa, and jasmine that were harvested from the surrounding fields. 

Modern science confirms some therapeutic properties of roses. Scientists discovered that all parts of the rose plant contain healing substances, antioxidants, and vitamins. Rose hips, for instance, are very rich in vitamin C, vitamin K, vitamin E, beta carotene, malic acid, tannins, and zinc. Rose petals contain quercetin and other bioflavonoids, tannin, and vitamin C, among others. Rose leaves have astringent properties and are rich in antibacterial compounds. The rose hip seed oil is rich in omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids. Dried rose petals and rose hips can be used to make delicious healing infusions. Remember, however, that only certified organic roses should be used for consumption.

The healing properties of roses were also exploited to make cosmetics. Early on it was discovered that rose oil, rose hip oil, and rose water could be applied to the skin to heal skin conditions and to beautify complexion.

Centuries ago people learned how to distill the essence of rose from rose petals. The precious rose attar or rose essential oil has a very complex chemical composition. More than four hundred different compounds have been identified so far.

 

Ce soir au jamais pefume by Annick Goutal

The essence has been used to make perfumes, perfumed oils, and pomades. To this day it retained its status as the costliest ingredient used by perfumers. The reason for it is the laborious process of harvest and distillation. It takes more than four thousand pounds of manually harvested rose petals to produce one pound of the essential oil. Some of the most expensive perfumes in the world were made with the rose essence. The legendary perfume Joy that was created for the couturier Jean Patou in 1929 by Henri Alméras, for instance, is a sensual floral scent that requires 10,000 jasmine flowers and 28 dozen Bulgarian roses to create one ounce of perfume.

Essential rose oil is used in aromatherapy to relax, sooth the nerves, and uplift the spirit.

The hydrosol part of the distillate is known as rose water and can be used externally as a soothing lotion for the skin or internally to help digestion. I love to drink a tiny cup of so called "white coffee" which is made of rose water and green cardamom pods.

To make this aromatic digestive drink boil cup of pure water with a teaspoonful of cardamom pods to release the aroma. Remove the cardamom pods. Add cup of rose water and bring it to boil. Serve after a heavy meal or whenever you need a help with digestion. Honey or brown sugar may be added to the drink to mask the slightly "soapy" taste, but I prefer to drink it unsweetened, just as it was served to me in a Lebanese restaurant in Egypt.

Dr. Hauschka Day Rose Cream

The anti-inflammatory and antiseptic properties of rose oil make it a perfect ingredient in skincare. Modern cosmetic companies often use either hexane-extracted rose essence or a synthetic rose scent to perfume their beauty products or to make perfumes. Synthetic rose scent has no therapeutic properties whatsoever and may cause allergies.

There are, however,  few cosmetic lines that can be trusted. One of them is Dr. Hauschka. The German company applies holistic principles that have roots in the anthroposophic philosophy of Rudolf Steiner and makes, among others, the absolutely fabulous Rose Day Cream! This formulation utilizes the flower's aspects of strength and softness and its power to harmonize. The rose makes this cream a perfect product for all skin types. The Rose Day Cream is a particular blessing for people with sensitive or dehydrated skin and  for those with a complexion prone to redness. The delicate rose scent is soothing to the mind and never overpowering. The cream has a very pleasant texture and is easily absorbed by the skin leaving it nourished and well protected.

Dr. Hauschka developed a unique skincare concept which respects the skin's own metabolic processes. The best results can be expected when products are used as suggested.

In the production of many of its cosmetics Dr. Hauschka utilizes rose essential oil, rose water, rose wax, and rose petal extract. Based on the holistic philosophy, every single ingredient is used according to its individual effect and  its interaction with other ingredients. Only the purest ingredients are used and packaging is fully recyclable. Dr. Hauschka products are not tested on animals.

By Dominique Allmon

*Harpokrates or the Horus child personifies the new born sun. He was depicted as a child suckling his finger. This gesture, however, was misread as a sign of silence. Thanks to this misreading Horus became the god of silence.

The Beauty and the Rose by Dominique Allmon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Mitsouko - The Fragrance of Mystery and Romance

The legendary perfume Mitsouko was created by Jacques Guerlain in 1919 at the end of the Great War, a time of great fascination with the Japanese culture and aesthetics. 

The creation of Mitsouko was inspired by the heroine of Claude Farrère's novel "La bataille", a story of an impossible love between Mitsouko - a wife of Japanese Admiral Togo - and a British officer. The story takes place in 1905, during the war between Russia and Japan. Both men go to war, and Mitsouko, hiding her feelings with dignity, waits for the outcome of the battle to discover which of the two men will come back to her and be her companion.

Mitsouko is a mysterious fragrance that does not simply reveal its beauty to everyone. The opening is long, like a play of all beautiful notes, and, of course, this fragrance is not for ordinary day use. On the skin it sounds as if it starts from far away, without any allusion to its intensity and sensual side. 

Mitsouko is one of the well known aromas of chypre olfactory group with cool top notes and oak moss in the base. But it also has a note of a juicy peach, which gives a clear and quite gourmand nuance. It features bergamot, peach, jasmine, may rose, spices such as cinnamon, oak moss, vetiver, and wood. The fragrance is exuberant, unusual and very elegant. It is neither too sweet, nor too heavy, well balanced and never overwhelming. Eau de Toilette is a bit more aggressive, while Eau de Perfume is warmer and nicer. The full richness of the composition, however, is revealed only in the perfume concentration.  

Mitsouko is said to herald the end of World War I. Because of the shortage of glass bottles at the end of the war, this perfume was marketed in the bottle of its predecessor, the L'Heure Bleue which was created in 1912. Mitsouko is sometimes considered to be the warm and much more cheerful counterpart of the melancholic L'Heure Bleue.

Beauty Redeemed

By Trebbe Johnson

The frog, kissed, turns into a prince.

We all know the story. The arrogant young princess had wanted nothing to do with the slimy, splay-toed creature who showed up right after her treasured golden ball bounced into a deep well. When the frog promised to retrieve it if she would take him home with her, she airily agreed. She was a princess, used to getting what she wanted, and she had no thought of complying. Ball in hand, off she went. That evening, when the frog showed up at the castle, and demanded to eat from her plate and sleep in her bed, she turned her face in disgust. Her father, the king, however, insisted that she keep her word. Later - some say that very night, some say after days of eating and sleeping together - Frog asked for a kiss. When the princess complied or, as in an early version of the tale, when she hurled him against the wall in fury, she freed him from a spell that had been cast on him, and he turned into a handsome prince.

What’s going on here?

On one level, it’s easy. You can say: kindness turns ugliness into beauty. Digging deeper, Bruno Bettelheim believed that the story is a lesson about sexuality for the maturing adult; it promises that, with time and continued intimacy, disgust will fade and “we will experience a happy shock of recognition when complete closeness reveals sexuality’s true beauty.” True, perhaps, but the fascination in this and other stories in which ugliness, confronted, is transformed not just to beauty, but to the original beauty of the metamorphosed one, lingers on, past adolescence. Myths and fairy tales endure because they are complex and pliant. Lean into any particular spot of a myth, and the fabric, like an elaborately embroidered arras in a Shakespearean drama, will fold around you, and shape itself to your query.

So what is the shape of beauty in tales of an ugly creature redeemed through the attentions of another?

Shape shifting is a familiar ploy in world myth. Gods and wizards can change their own forms in a blink. They can also transform others if provoked by anger, jealousy, or simply whim. Suddenly, a person looks down to see his familiar body subsumed in the limbs and skin of another creature, while his own acute human consciousness quails at the horror of the situation. Often, it is only an act of the gods that can turn the human back again. In Greek myth, jealous Hera changes Io into a cow after Zeus - disguised as a cloud to hide his crime - has raped her. Then, after poor Io spends years wandering and bellowing around the world, Zeus has a moment of compassion and changes her back again. Sometimes, as in the Irish tale of the children of Lir, it is only time (in that case nine hundred years) that can reverse the spell. Every now and then the victim cures himself, as Lucius does in the Roman story, when he eats the roses that change him from an ass back to a man.

But in other tales from diverse lands and traditions, beauty is redeemed not by the gods, time, or an antidote, but by another human - like the imperious princess. Those rescuers don’t have superpowers. They can’t turn the tortured victim into some other creature, and, in fact, it would not occur to them to try to do so, since the magic they enact is seldom deliberate. What they can do is change the ugly one back to his or her original - and beautiful - form through purely human behavior. In the process, two people transform: the ugly one whose beauty is redeemed, and the redeemer him- or herself.

It is not with the petulance of a princess, but with a knight’s sense of honor, that a human act restores lost beauty in the Arthurian tale of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell. King Arthur had been threatened with the loss of his head if he could not come up with the answer to the question posed by the ferocious Green Knight: “What do women want?” Traveling the kingdom in search of the answer, Arthur met Dame Ragnell, who, like Frog, was willing to exchange favors: she would tell him the answer if Arthur’s knight, Sir Gawain, would marry her. Unfortunately, Dame Ragnell was “the most ugly hag mankind had ever seen: face red, nose snotted withal, mouth wide, teeth yellow and hanging down over her lip, a long thick neck, and hanging heavy paps.” Sir Gawain conceded, however, and Arthur got his answer: Sovereignty. What women want most is sovereignty.

The Green Knight was defeated, and Gawain duly returned to Dame Ragnell and married her. On the wedding night, after he forced himself to lie down beside her, she asked teasingly for just one little kiss. Gallantly, the knight assured her that he would do more than merely kiss her, at which point she turned into a beautiful woman. She then presented her astonished bridegroom with a choice: she could be beautiful by day when others saw her, and ugly at night when they were alone; or she could be ugly during the day, and beautiful at night - just for him.

Sir Gawain had learned his lesson. “My lady,” he replied, “the choice is up to you.”

The supremacy of her autonomy acknowledged, Dame Ragnell declared that henceforth she would be beautiful all the time.

Sovereignty means being independent and unlimited by any other. It is often said that one nation “recognizes” the sovereignty of the other, as if the state of autonomy actually pre-existed a more recent one of subjugation. When we acknowledge the sovereignty of another person, we affirm that they are independent from us, whole and complete - hence beautiful - unto themselves. Avowing that he will make love to his hideous bride, Sir Gawain exceeds the conditions of the bargain and takes on the task of what Clarissa Pinkola Estés calls loving the not-beautiful:

What is the not-beautiful? Our own secret hunger to be loved is the not-beautiful. Our disuse and misuse of love is the not-beautiful. Our dereliction in loyalty and devotion is unlovely, our sense of soul-separateness is homely, our psychological warts, inadequacies, misunderstandings, and infantile fantasies are the not-beautiful. Additionally, the Life/Death/Life nature, which births, destroys, incubates and births again, is considered by our cultures the not-beautiful.

Estés is writing here about another myth in which the rescuer extends himself in a patient, deliberate way, to transform the ugly back to the beautiful. In the Inuit tale of Skeleton Woman, a woman who had turned to bones and lay twisting and turning beneath the sea was pulled up in the net of a fisherman. When he first glimpsed this horrifying catch, the fisherman was appalled and wanted only to push her back into the depths. But his own humanity got the better of him, and he took her back to his snow house and carefully revived her by untangling her bones and laying them out aright. By and by she became again a whole woman, fleshy, warm-blooded, sensual.

Both Sir Gawain and the fisherman show us that the beauty of the other is revealed only when we stop wishing for the ugliness to disappear, and accept the other person fully. But acceptance alone is not enough. Loving the ugly back to its original beauty is a task that cannot be accomplished passively. Active loving is necessary. Gawain can’t simply marry Ragnell and then, wishing her a pleasant good night, shut himself away in his own room. The fisherman can’t dump that heap of bones on the beach and head home, consoling himself that somebody else will take the trouble to deal with the problem. To restore beauty, it is necessary to give beauty abundantly, even as instinct tells us to flee. In other words, we have to begin the metamorphosis by transforming our own expectations of what it is possible for us to do. We must move beyond the confines of what is safe and familiar, and even desired, and say Yes! to the scary, but compelling, possibility before us. Or, as the contemporary scholar of myth, Roberto Calasso, puts it, it is necessary to touch the monster. “The monster can pardon the hero who has killed him. But he will never pardon the hero who would not deign to touch him.” Daring to touch the unbeautiful, we realize that not only are we not dragged down into something loathsome, but that just the reverse occurs. We feel empowered, joyous, connected with the other. To give beauty- to our own misshapen selves, to another person, to a group of people, even to a damaged place on the earth - is to move past the fear or repugnance that keep us separate from life itself. To restore beauty is to marry the world, outside us and within.

For those who do undertake such an act of faith and courage, both redeemed and redeemer are even further transformed, as the Iroquois legend of Hiawatha beautifully shows. All the five nations of the Iroquois were at war with one another when the Peacemaker, Deganawidah, appeared among them in a canoe of white stone. He began going among the tribes, offering his teachings of peace, and eventually arrived at the house of the notorious Man Who Eats Humans. When Deganawidah climbed onto the roof and peered down through the smoke hole, he saw the man setting onto the fire a kettle containing the meat of a human body. At that moment, the Man Who Eats Humans looked into the pot and saw, reflected in the water, Deganawidah’s face imposed on his own, and in that moment he had a revelation. He realized that the man who possessed such a wise and noble face could never eat human flesh. Immediately he took the kettle outside and emptied it.

Deganawidah taught his message of peace to the reformed man, and the two of them continued on together to deliver the message to the tribes. Deganawidah called the man Hiawatha, He Who Combs, because he knew that he would have to confront and convert the greatest obstacle of all to peace, an Onondaga man named Atotarho, who was so cruel that his body had become twisted, and his hair a mass of writhing snakes. And so it was. At first Atotarho mocked the Great Law of Peace. Then he cast a spell on Hiawatha’s wife and daughters that killed them. For a long time Hiawatha sat by a lake grieving, unable to go forth until Deganawidah came to comfort him. Then they continued with their mission.

At last all the tribes were united, but still Atotarho refused. Deganawidah promised him that he would be chief of all, and keeper of the fire. Still Atotarho balked, asking who had the power. The chiefs of the five tribes came together and Deganawidah said, “Here is power.” Then Atotarho’s mind was changed, and Hiawatha combed the snakes out of his hair, and the twisted body straightened.

Transformed himself, Hiawatha goes on to change others, especially his enemy, Atotarho. This is the ultimate redemption. And it occurs not just once, but in steps: with Hiawatha’s realization of his own nobility, as reflected in the face of Deganawidah; his active participation in spreading the Great Law of Peace; his continued commitment to that new path, even after he has been plunged into great suffering; his willingness not only to teach peace to his enemy, but to give him the responsibility for maintaining it as chief; and finally, the touchingly personal and compassionate act of combing the snakes out of the enemy’s hair. This tale reminds us that confronting ugliness in ourselves enables us to penetrate and overturn it, since we know its difficult ways. Hiawatha’s journey also assures us that we will be tested, that we must expect to encounter the unbeautiful in ever-new forms that will demand ever-new expressions of beauty.

In each of these stories, lost beauty and brokenness are redeemed through the fire of suffering. Not just one, but two people undergo this trial, the one whose beauty has been stolen and then redeemed and the redeemer him- or herself, through the process of confronting the ugly. Beauty is superficial when it is untried. Lost, unseen, and unbelieved, and then, wonder of wonders, loved back to life, it flourishes, and both the beautified and the beautifier are stronger and wiser. Just as human consciousness remained locked within the victim during the time of trials, now, we hearers and readers of these tales assume, the memory of the hard times will endure after the transformation. One who has suffered and survived undergoes an alchemical process. She or he is like glass, which, as the nineteenth-century alchemist Shaikh Ahmad Ahsa’i wrote: after repeated fusings, refirings, and infusion of the magical Elixir, “becomes diamond. It is still glass and yet no - it is something other - but not so, it is certainly itself but itself after undergoing all these trials.” The heroes in these tales are themselves, but themselves after undergoing all these trials.

Ample research has shown that facing ugliness or unpleasantness and giving of oneself to transform it, improves the psychological well-being of the giver. Taking this principle as a spiritual mandate, Zen master Roshi Bernie Glassman offers “street retreats” in downtown Los Angeles, during which his students live as the homeless do. He claims that this work enables spiritual seekers to confront parts of themselves that have been rejected. We can encounter and transform ugliness into beauty in countless ways: by helping one another, by acknowledging some fearsome secret in ourselves, and by rejecting our own propensity to victimhood and striving for vitality in bad situations. We can even transform the physical world around us or, rather, we can transform our relationship with it. For the Global Earth Exchange in the summer of 2010, people all over the world went to natural places made ugly through mining, clear-cutting, pollution, and other assaults. After spending time there, they created a simple “act of beauty.” Lucy Hinton of London went with three friends to a dump near an industrial site, where they made a sculpture out of trash. “It was as if the place had been dead before, and now it was alive,” she wrote later. “When it was time to go, none of us wanted to leave. After spending time with the place in such an intimate way, it felt as though we had given some of ourselves to the place, and it to us. By the time we left, we felt relaxed, at home, like pioneers who had begun the process of breaking an invisible barrier that, until now, held this wounded place in some kind of soulless imprisonment. We dreamed of returning and helping to break up the baked hard topsoil so that seeds could emerge through the surface crust, and the birds and color might return once more.”

Together and individually, myths and tales of beauty redeemed build a teaching in how to reveal the beautiful beneath the ugly:

• show compassion
• acknowledge the sovereignty of the other
• confront the unbeautiful
• love actively
• turn suffering itself to beauty

There is one more step we can take, if we dare. Persian legends relate the trials of Majnun, a crazy-in-love young man who devoted his whole life to searching for his beloved Layla, from whom he had long been separated. One day, a man noted for his piety came upon Majnun sifting through dirt in the middle of the road. “You claim to be so devoted to your beloved,” the holy man said scornfully. “If that is so, how can you grovel here, searching for a pearl like Layla in the midst of all this rubbish?”

“Well,” Majnun explained, “I seek Layla everywhere, so that one day I may find her somewhere.”

As Majnun shows, we can choose not only not to avoid the ugly, we can place ourselves right in the midst of it. Even garbage can become beautiful, since our hands and intention must sort through it to come upon what is precious. Knowing that the essence of beauty, love, and authenticity we seek could be anywhere, we look everywhere. Then we may discover for ourselves what Majnun knows with all his heart: searching for beauty, we have the opportunity to encounter beauty anywhere.

Article source PARABOLA

In Praise of Shadows...

We Orientals find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and darkness which that thing provides. - Jumichiro Tanizaki

Image source unknown but greatly appreciated

Joy - Perfume Contra Recession

Although not as well known today as Coco Chanel, Jean Patou was one of the most famous and influential couturiers of his time. Like Chanel, he revolutionized the "look" of women's wardrobe. He also introduced sportswear for women and designed the first tennis skirt. In 1928, Jean Patou created "Huile de Chaldée", the first sun tan oil ever created. 

His exclusive designs were created mostly for the wealthy American socialites. But when the financial markets crashed in 1929, many of his clients, especially the rich American women, were bankrupted and the "need" for luxury fashion vanished overnight.

The ingenious couturier decided, however, that something had to be done if he himself wanted to survive the bad economy. To dispel the gloom of Great Depression he launched a superb olfactory creation, the legendary Joy.

Indeed, his "Maison Patou" survived through this day thanks to his perfumes. Joy wasn't the first creation of the house. And it wasn't the last either. 

Joy - Perfume Contra Recession

Created by Henri Alméras as carefully as one of Patou's Haute Couture dresses, magnificent and timeless, Joy gathers extremely rare flowers in a unique concentration: 10,000 flowers of jasmine and 28 dozen Bulgarian roses come together to compose the heart of a single ounce of Joy! The perfume also contains other precious flower essences such as ylang ylang and tuberose.

The simple, but incredibly elegant bottle that was created specially for Patou by the French architect and artisan Louis Süe, appears to stand in a stark contrast to the flowery, joyous opulence of this perfume. But both, the fragrance and the bottle are reflections of the contemporary mind. 

This exquisite perfume was, indeed, uplifting to the senses! I definitely added a little joy to the everyday lives of those women who wore it during that difficult times. Although prohibitively expensive, Joy was a luxury they could still afford to buy.

Jean Patou joked that Joy would be "the costliest perfume in the world" ... and, to this day, Joy most certainly is one of the most expensive perfumes ever created. Many more creations followed, but none achieved the same status.

By Dominique Allmon 

P.S.

This is an absolutely fabulous fragrance. You cannot feel depressed while wearing it. However, I would not suggest that you spent your last money on it, but if you can afford it, wear it with joy!

Hydrangea Waterfall

Blue Hydrangea

Just like the last green in a color pot

So are these leaves, withered and wrecked
Behind the flower umbels, which reflect
A hue of blue only, more they do not.

Reflections are tear-stained, inaccurate,
As if they were about to cease,
And like old blue notepaper sheets
They wear some yellow, gray and violet,

Washed-out like on a child's apron,
Outworn and now no more in use:
We contemplate a small life's short duration.

But suddenly some new blue seemingly is seen
In just one umbel, and we muse
Over a moving blue delighting in the green.

Reiner Maria Rilke
translation Guntram Deichsel 

Image: Hydrangea by Dominique Allmon©2009