I have a problem with jasmine.
Actually, as you've probably guessed, I have a problem with many things. Today it is jasmine. Courtesy of a woman at the train station who swept past me, knocking into my shoulder and leaving me reeling. Not because of the knock, I'm not so fragile, because of her perfume. Not overpowering, which made it worse; the scent elusive, drifting, awful. The memory of smells and tastes is so much stronger than the others. The quicker to open old wounds, to twist the hollow in my chest and leave me standing, aghast in a crowd of pushing strangers.
Jasmine grew over the deck, crept up the posts and pushed tentative tendrils through the cracks in the planks. The flowers opened in the evening, as the sun set and enveloped the house in a cloud of jasmine perfume. She made jasmine tea, harvesting the small white flowers in the early morning, a basket of them, petals tightly furled. More than once I woke surrounded by the smell, confused in the early morning light, to find her kneeling, concentrating with that small frown, over a sheet covered in tiny white flowers. Picking the best of them and periodically standing to press the rejected flowers into the mosquito net, held there by fragile green stems. That night the rejects would open for the last time, still clutched in the net. She'd lure me to bed at six, early, flickering orange light of the lamp on her skin, warm against mine. The smell of jasmine curling around us.
Standing in the middle of a throng of pushing commuters, I recalled this poem:
Actually, as you've probably guessed, I have a problem with many things. Today it is jasmine. Courtesy of a woman at the train station who swept past me, knocking into my shoulder and leaving me reeling. Not because of the knock, I'm not so fragile, because of her perfume. Not overpowering, which made it worse; the scent elusive, drifting, awful. The memory of smells and tastes is so much stronger than the others. The quicker to open old wounds, to twist the hollow in my chest and leave me standing, aghast in a crowd of pushing strangers.
Jasmine grew over the deck, crept up the posts and pushed tentative tendrils through the cracks in the planks. The flowers opened in the evening, as the sun set and enveloped the house in a cloud of jasmine perfume. She made jasmine tea, harvesting the small white flowers in the early morning, a basket of them, petals tightly furled. More than once I woke surrounded by the smell, confused in the early morning light, to find her kneeling, concentrating with that small frown, over a sheet covered in tiny white flowers. Picking the best of them and periodically standing to press the rejected flowers into the mosquito net, held there by fragile green stems. That night the rejects would open for the last time, still clutched in the net. She'd lure me to bed at six, early, flickering orange light of the lamp on her skin, warm against mine. The smell of jasmine curling around us.
Standing in the middle of a throng of pushing commuters, I recalled this poem:
The Wind, One Brilliant Day
The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.
"In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I'd like all the odor of your roses."
"I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead."
"Well then, I'll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain."
The wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
"What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?"
Antonio Machado
Translated by Robert Bly
Which left me so much more stricken than the smell of jasmine alone. That final question echoing in the hollow of my chest.
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