“Incense”

“The Nag Champa incense instantly conjured in my memory the initiation ceremony conducted on the day I learned to meditate. In a pristine home, on a sultry afternoon, in an unprepossessing suburb of Miami, I first saw the suit-clad young man, upright in bearing with shining countenance, my teacher, my hierophant, Doug Birx. A temple purity permeated the ceremonial room. Flowers stood in a vase and a candle burned on a table. I might have been in the antechambers of heaven. I would never forget that scent. But the gardenia incense affected me differently, carrying me off to Hawaii and those days of languorous carefreedom. The scent bore all the magic of the romantic tropical isles, of leaning, whispering palm trees and silent extravaganzas of sunset, of the wham of the smashing surf and the high white spoutings of the close-in whales, of the prongs of scarlet bottlebrush and the rose-souled umbrellas of hibiscus.”