Increasingly the heaven of which I dream is partly composed of the persistence of memory. Three times in my life I have glimpsed a state of perfect equilibrium and sensed in profound silence Keats "slow time of eternity". Without exception, these experiences were initiated by an intense fragrance which seemed in some unsought way to trigger perfectly natural encounters with forces beyond one's understanding.

In the labyrinth beneath the Cretan Palace of Knossos, previous abode of the Minotaur, I smelled "Time" and the memory of its precision tore at my throat for days. Ten years later during a rainstorm on the Amazon River, I thought for one brief moment that 'twixt lip and nostril' I had caught the sharp cinnibar green smell of life itself. Finally, in the incongruity of a Melbourne banking chamber, an unidentified odour assailed my brain and in a moment of Zen-like enlightenment I understood the biblical statement "And the word was made flesh".

Three experiences is not many in a world peopled by those who claim to have lived numerous lives. I am not of that ilk at all, but have worn my three perfumed memories like "fresh flowers" within me....the true interior still-life.

To understand the physical and psychological aspects of the perfumes man composes first look to your own memories, for they are the benchmarks against which all others are judged. Some of my own early memories of perfume have been so multiplied in those of my peers to have become cliches. The keeping of "Aunty's Ashes" in an old "Evening in Paris box" has been immortalized even by Dame Edna Everage.