passionate elementals: Maundy Thursday: Perfume

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

Diane Ackerman

The crush of sweating, dusty travellers searching out their Passover accommodation; sweet grassy animal dung littering the roadways, steaming in piles in the sunshine.

Guests jam-packed elbow to well-dressed-now-dishevelled-elbow, at an invitation-only supper, garlic and cinnamon rising up into the warm air circulating above empty platters;  guests staring open mouthed, startled at the noise the sealed alabaster jar makes as it shatters, as liquid spills forth, as the musk of spikenard reaches their corner; guests craning their necks to see the travesty of this too-brazen woman, this too-public display of too-much affection; gossip-monger guests relishing every moan this would-be-Messiah makes as his muscles ease under her touch: her scent, the scent of the Himalayas, slowly becoming his.  She is ‘Beloved’; he is hers.

Bursting out into the warm evening, wanting to find a quiet place, he comes to the place they call Gethsamene, where the sweet olive oil is pressed, where the ripeness of that day’s flowing green juice still lingers, the oil with which he could anoint each bowed head as they join with him in prayer, watching the city calm, as the warmth finally seeps out of the day, replaced by the bitter chill of dead of night.

The metallic tang of blood falling on the floor of the chalky limestone quarry mingles with rough rushed red wine laced with bitter yellow myrrh, designed to numb, not awaken, his senses; but he refuses to drink; through the excruciation of each pain he smells instead her spikenard still on his skin, and he knows there is at least one here who tried to heal him.

When last breath escapes, the rich man brings armfuls of myrrh and aloes, so much more than is usually needed, but these oils will be smoothed over lacerations and cuts, working as antiseptics on those hideous wounds that may yet miraculously knit together; the rich man tries to remember his scriptures as he works, tries to recall the tone of voice the Teacher had used to explain them: could it really be possible that this broken body might yet live?

The ‘Marys’ do not quite trust the rich man has done a good enough job, that the body of the man they loved is as well wrapped against putrefaction as possible, so they bring their jars and baskets, spices from Arabia, from Egypt, from the deserts of Palestine.  When the women come to a shocked standstill before a gaping tomb, how many of these precious powders are dropped the ground, oils spilling freely again, soaking this earth with rich mixtures from the Orient, dripping from their hands, smearing onto their dresses, as they turn and race to tell the news?

The lily-perfumed wings of love
Will lay the dust of all your grief.
Patience my heart, and struggle on. 

For when love binds,
It binds you to the tyranny of a racing steed,
And when love scatters,
It flings the soul-like fragments of the stars
Out of the ambergris scented woods. 

Love makes of each moment an eternity
And tends the garden of the heart’s desire
When love mocks, ruby tears fall heavy as pomegranates
And when love looks, it sees your deepest mystery. 

Love seeks out the tears of hidden hearts
And turns not from the Lovers of the Dawn.
Is there a remedy for the pain of love?
Or is it too unbearable for thought? 

One taste of the medicine
And you will realise just how sick you have been.
Those who plead in the defence of love
In love’s judgement shall find grace 

And to that court, Hafiz
May your heart fly…

‘Wings of Love’

~ Hafiz

spilled. (iPhone image)