Sunday, December 10, 2006

What is it......

that made me start making perfumes? Sometimes I ask myself that question. I always loved fragrances, as a little child I always took a cloth with me to bed and my mother had to spray some perfume on it, I kept it close to my face when sucking my thumb. My mother was a consulant of Mora Shira when I was a child and I liked to sniff all those lovely fragrances.

I liked to read books about essential oils and liked gardening, so I also started to read books about all kinds of plants and flowers. I also liked to read about healing herbs, but one time my brother gave me a book from Jean M Auel it was her first book "The clan of the cave bear". I was hooked, what a beautiful book, I never read something like that before. It's a long story to tell but this book is about the prehistory it's about a "human" little girl that lost her family in an earthquake and starts to run and run for weeks until she is found by a Neanderthals clan.
She raised up between them but they don't accept her so easy, she is different. The woman that takes care of her is a medicine woman and learned her all the secrets of healing herbs. This way the little girl Ayla gets respect from the clan and she can stay. Well the story goes on but it's too long to tell it all. Jean M Auel wrote 5 novels about Ayla.

The parts in the book about healing herbs were very interesting to me, and I started to plant healing herbs in my garden and made creams for my face with them. Later on I liked to make a garden that was fragrant so when you walked trough it you could smell all kinds of different flowers and plants. I planted the fragrant flowers and plants in a way that you always could smell something also in the evening and night. It was like walking through a perfume and smell all the details of it. I think there it started, I wanted to make a perfume.....

Here you can read more about the books from Jean M Auel and read a piece of the first chapter of her first book The clan of the cave bear:
http://www.amazon.ca/Clan-Cave-Bear-Jean-Auel/dp/product-description/0553250426
Here a site about the herbs Ayla used:
http://ecfans.com/aylasherbs/AHerbs_ac.htm

10 comments:

chayaruchama said...

Good morning, Meisje!

I can see you, in my mind's eye, in the garden,the kitchen, a comfortable corner reading...

What a lovely child you were.
No surprise to me.
How good it is, to be able to follow through on those interests and dreams...

Thank you !

Dikke kus-

Jenny said...

Hi Chaya, it is wonderful to follow your dreams, everyone should do the same or at leas try it. Some people stopped dreaming and that's a shame. Perfume making is a wonderful hobby, it allowes you to dream, dream about wonderful fragrances all to be discovered.
What is your dream Chaya?
BTW I wasn't a child anymore when I read the book.

Dikke kus terug.

chayaruchama said...

I suppose that my dream [other than the wish that my children turn out well-adjusted, happy and self-sufficient, or that my mother has a peaceful, painless death] would be that it would finally be my time...
To sing, to study, to apprentice to Givaudan-Roure or the like...

I would settle for recording a CD in the next two years, as a legacy for my friends and family.

This CD would include several languages [Yiddish, Ladino, German, Italian, French, Latin, English, maybe Polish] and encompass many types of song, everything from Early Music to Kurt Weill, including opera, lieder, chanson, maybe some of Chopin's 15 Polish songs...bel canto, too of course, and Mahler.
There would be the comic songs of Mozart and Beethoven in there.And obscure folk songs from many cultures.

You must think me mad !
I did most of my "professional" singing before I had my boys, and they've never heard me sing with accompaniment.

Dreams are just that- dreams.
If they were reality, they'd be called something else...

Jenny said...

So what you are saying is that dreams never come true? They are just dreams? I think that's not true it's also a choice to stop following your dream.
Maybe you stopped singing because you had a new dream to have childeren and didn't make time to sing? To be a proffesional singer is something not everyone can do even when they like to sing, but when singing is something you liked and like to do why did you stop? You could also sing with accompaniment for a hobby, you didn't even do that?

chayaruchama said...

I stopped because paying accompanists was very expensive, and with children, there are always lots of other places where the money needed to go !
Also, they were not easy boys- they didn't sleep. EVER !

I continue to sing, always, but not for money.
I have lots of hopes, but also many responsibilities.
It's easier to cheat yourself than it is to cheat your loved ones, especially when they are so needy.
Perhaps that is my karma-
I try to make peace with it-

And I always keep learning new things, every day.
Every day we spend above ground is a good one !

Jenny said...

Chaya that must not have been an easy time for you when your boys didn't sleep. Did you try to sing them asleep as well?
I also like to learn new things each day, I think when we stop learning we stop living. Learning fortifies our lives.
Life is short enjoy it while you can.....

chayaruchama said...

Lieve Jenny-

I send you love from my kitchen, where beautiful aromas are mingling happily...

Tonight we celebrate light in the darkness.
I, personally, can't get worked up over a military victory, but miracles..
Now, THAT'S magic !

Happy Chanukkah...

Have a glass of good red wine, and think of me- I'll think of you.
That's magic, in itself...

Dikke kus !

Jenny said...

Happy Chanukkah to you Chaya. Uhm can it be a white wine please? Cheers to all the miracles of live.

Victoria said...

I just saw this post!!! My favorite book of all time!!
:O)

Jenny said...

Hi Victoria,
It's my favorite book as well. When I saw it for the first time I thought it wasn't that interesting, a book about the prehistory. But this book is about people, about the relation between people, about courage, surviving.

When I start reading I can't stop because I want to know what's going to happen, even though I read it for the third time.

The only thing is Jean describes things like nature and places real extensive in my opinion sometimes too much. But it's the best book I've ever read.