Tuberose Revisited or: The Music of Flowers

Kissing the Shore

Painting Words and Light!

Flowers of Fire!

When I was in my late 20s, I fell in love with flowers. Roses, jasmine, geranium, ylang ylang, iris and Wong-shi? Yes, Wong-shi, a type of Chinese gardenia blossom that floats on the surface of both Laura Biagiotti's original fragrance Venezia and the 2011 reformulation. Along with mango, black currant, prune (makes it plummy) and osmanthus (the apricot scent). Underneath it all is vanilla, cedar wood, ambergris, musk, civet and tonka bean. It was heaven! It still is...thankfully without real civet, musk or ambergris. How did they do that? I think...just like Kilian Hennessy...she took her time. All of us who loved her homage to the floating city of dreams that Venice is are blessed to have this fragrance again. I have a bottle courtesy of my friend Wendy's recent trip to Venice.

I wasn't sure if it was quite as fabulous, but I slept last night with nothing on but this exquisite juice and awoke wrapped in the arms of a sweet self I have missed. It is icing on the cake, or petals floating in the canal, that Laura Biagiotti's reformulation was done right, and that she has helped to finance the recreation of Venice' La Fenice Opera House famous green velvet curtain hand-embroidered with gold daisies that graced the stage before the 1996 fire. This little bottle of juice is what is on fire. Flowers of fire. Memories in the bottle floating back to me...

I've also been trying to find the modern equivalents of what seem to be the now watered-down Mitsouko and Narcisse Noir favored by Anais Nin and June Milller. I think also they get toooooo dark and indolic on me. I'm comfortable with a little darkness, and with the right combination of woods, vanilla can take you there, but I guess vetiver is too much for me. I love cardamom too.

I posted this on Facebook too, and Alison said: "Wow! I'll take 3 bottles please! Again, you should be a writer. If you were in marketing you could make a killing. Of course, then you'd probably have to write about worthless stupid products and you would quickly get bored and depressed and quit because it would suck the life out of you. So never mind. Your description of this fragrance is as intoxicating and romantic as Venice itself."

Um. Wow. And Diana told me that I NEED to self-publish my three manuscripts, one of them of prose-poetry, as well as all of my poems. Now that I think of it, Anais Nin self-published at first, and so did Virginia Woolf. Hmm. It is hard not to sound egoistic in wanting to do this. I am good at writing.

But I just keep huffing the flowers! I have written for years for myself. I have three unpublished manuscripts, one of which is finished...and several compilations of poetry. The poetry is really painful stuff, but some whimsical in an Alice-In-Wonderland sort of way. The finished manuscript is lyrical, surrealistic prose-poetry. It is very dear to my heart, and was very healing to write, which is why I keep it close to my heart. Thanks to everyone for their kind words about my writing. It is a pleasure to hear after years of hearing people say to me: "Well, it won't make you any money", or "I'd like to write too..." when what I needed to hear was this. Encouraging words and love and appreciation for my soul.

The Fire of Kali's Destruction Clearing the Way

Today I saw my father. I thought I was prepared. On the 12th he apparently fell over a waiter's leg at Applebee's restaurant. His face was blackened on one side, and he joked over the phone that he looked like The Phantom of the Opera. I joked back nervously that he was more 'grounded' than I. He didn't tell me the day it happened, nor the next day...not wanting to frighten me...but somehow I knew something was up. I even posted on his timeline about Hanuman the monkey god letting Sita know that Ram was okay...kind of like the Divine letting me know that my father was okay. Really.

But this is tough. Mortality. Issues. Questions. He could have died, and I knew it, the minute I found out on the 15th when I called him. I knew that he could have died. He is one tough cookie. But today I saw him. Finally. And I thought I was okay. But the rest of the day was very, very, very difficult. I am afraid. I am afraid for my future and for his, but I felt the presence of Ammachi particularly all week. She kept me drenched in fragrance, and drenched in love. My being, my soul and my apartment exuded it. Out of the potential destruction she lifted me...showing me that I am stronger than I know, that my father is strong too. Clearing the way for greater things for both of us...just not clearing the aisle of the stray feet of waiters. But she held us in her heart, and so did God. 

And all the prayers of friends were so deeply appreciated by both of us. I knew, somehow, that I was not prepared to handle his fall very well, so I called everyone I knew, asking for prayers. Everyone sent them. I am ever so, ever so grateful.

And Kali is making us stronger.

Reviving the Mad Hatter?

Ah! Reviving the Mad Hatter instead of Reviving Ophelia...this piece by Eva Soulu 'gets' me. I do love Alice!

Curiouser and curiouser... I dive into this practice, plumbing the depths...

Anais Nin: Swimming Through My Soul

I wept because from now on I will weep less. I wept because I have lost my pain and I am not yet accustomed to its absence." ~Anais Nin

...and thank you to Jim, Nancy & Faye...and to Chela and to someone whose name I don't know... a friend of Ramgeet's. And Yogi Bhajan and Sri Amritanandamayi Devi and Kalika and my father David, and Dan. 

So many people responded...Siri Amrit, Emma, Balprem, Renee, Tone, Trina, Susan, and Sukhmandir posted this:

I am sitting and realizing how profound the healing was... an incredible gift from my wonderful friend Ramgeet. Through her friend's gift (a friend whose name I do not know who just gave of his time and energy to release an attachment)... I may still be self-adjusting, but my spine feels light, my shoulders unburdened of so much pain. I feel such relief that I do not know how to accept that the pain is gone. It's gone. It's just gone. I am amazed. And I believe it now, though I could not quite at first. Anais words ring even truer for me today...soon this new way of being will feel more like home, as it truly is coming home to who I was so many years avon. I have not changed so much, I have only been given all the missing parts of my soul back. It was broken into a million scattered pieces like the Tikkun Olam of Judaism, and now it is whole. My soul is wholly mine again. God Bless.

God is indeed Great and I am in immense gratitude for the workings behind the scenes. And for the ways in which I sense the hands of Yogi Bhajan and Ammachi behind all this....

Siri Amrit said: "you even came through as my White Tantric Yoga partner at winter!"

She had said that her partner's face morphed into mine for a second. We had planned to partner, but I was not able to physically be there...

Tone said: "A quote from my beloved Anais that touches me deeply!!! LOVE. Thank you, precious Phoenix ~ You're a GEM ~ and I send you heaps of hugsss & smmmoochies across the pond ` Mwwaahhhh!! XOXOX"

Trina said she'd heard that she missed a great class this morning. The class was on the mediation stage of 'Politeness' and balancing the apanic energy, the lower three chakras, the lower triangle. Grounding into the earth. It WAS a lovely class! Everyone made it that way! Without them it would not have been so... I do not do that myself...it is Sarah, Jane, Heather, Megan, Donna, and others...

Susan said: "All the diaries of Anais Nin were my closest companions for many, many years. I devoured them all. And then went back to the beginning and started over."

Susan, I love the prose/poetry of her "House of Incest" too... I know the title is daunting for people, but the writing is so lyrical and heart-opening for me. So beautiful. Anais was close to my heart years ago, I own everything she wrote, but I just couldn't get back to it for a long, long time. Ramgeet did something very special for me that helped immensely! She is so kind! And now I'm just rediscovering everything I had to set aside. LOVE."

Gratitude to Kristen and Prakash Deep for seeing the attachment so clearly, and seeing what needed to be done. A thousand million blessings to you my dearest sisters! All the love your hearts can hold...

Asamidori sumiwataritaru ohzorano hiroki onoga kokoro to mogana (Ten)

As a great sky in clear light green I wish my heart would be as vast (Sky)
~ waka poetry by the Meiji Emperor of Japan

Renee: "So Succinctly moving."

God Bless you all!