“To sail on a dream on a crystal clear ocean,
to ride on the crest of a wild raging storm
To work in the service of life and living,
in search of the answers of questions unknown
To be part of the movement and part of the growing,
part of beginning to understand,
Aye Calypso the places you've been to,
the things that you've shown us,
the stories you tell
Aye Calypso, I sing to your spirit,
the men who have served you so long and so well
Like the dolphin who guides you, you bring us beside you
To light up the darkness and show us the way
For though we are strangers in your silent world
To live on the land we must learn from the sea
To be true as the tide and free as a wind swell
Joyful and loving in letting it be
Aye Calypso the places you've been to,
the things that you've shown us,
the stories you tell
Aye Calypso, I sing to your spirit,
the men who have served you so long and so well”
Calypso by John Denver
Lucky me, for I have become enchanted by the Greenwitch. I’m not resisting her magic….. her sirens song brings back luscious memories and blinds me to my own primal fear. She carries within her soul the most precious knowledge of the sea…. That it is our first home and no matter what, no matter where we spend our final resting day that it is to the sea that we always will somehow , some little piece of what’s left of us return. Our tears are made of the same blood as hers.
When I opened the beautifully wrapped parcel that I received from Roxana Villa of her Greenwitch solid perfume and smoothed some of the buttery unguent into the hollow of my throat I was instantly mesmerized. I became acquainted with the Greenwitch last year in it’s ethereal liquid formulation and the solid perfume is equally as enchanting! Roxana’s Greenwitch is a groundbreaking Sea Chypre and it IS for me the long walks on the beach that I crave, that beacon that shines from the lighthouse straight into my soul. It smells at once of the deepest part of the sea AND the sea-spray, of male passion and amber. It is the scent of musky womb water and deep forest flowers. This witch is all of those things and even more that I have not yet begun to fathom. Her song is the song of the whales AND the eagles. She is at once whole and disarming all at the very same time …she is the very truest essence of Gaia distilled into a magically fragrant form.
Greenwitch is a completely natural fragrance with many different notes including hand blended accords of green floral essences, oakmoss , vetiver , patchouli and seaweed. The only exception to the all botanical formulation is a little bit of musky Africa stone which is the fossilized excretion of the Cape Hyrax and thousands of years old that creates an alchemy with the other sweet essences to cause a silky fusion of savory, salty and sweet. As the heat of my skin melted the jojoba and the soft creamy beeswax from Roxana’s own hives the fragrance was unleashed and I was flooded by a million memories of the sea , of surfing the big waves of off the black sandy beaches of Hawaii and playing with the rays, of kayaking in La Jolla and having sharks swim underneath and dolphins playing alongside me in the waves. I’m reminded of the sweetest times spent with my son and nephew when they were very young, building forts of drift wood , splashing at the waters edge and feeding white bread to the greedy gulls.
When Alex was a young boy we’d take the whale watching boats that sail off the San Diego coast into the deeper waters to watch for the gray whales that migrate from Mexico all of the way back to their summer feeding ground in the deep waters of the Bering Sea. I will never forget those moments. The extraordinary power, majesty and beauty of those magnificent creatures can’t be truly known until you’re in the water with them watching them swim, breach and dive. The sight of the flukes of a gray whale who has just begun a deep dive is breathtaking and a reminder of who we really are.….My son who has since become a diver tells me of interactions with creatures once unfathomable to him, diving with sharks and barracudas in their mysterious realms and facing the fear that distracts us everyday from really living. Surfing in the waters off of San Diego he became intimately acquainted with communities of harbor seals and dolphins who frequently came close to him when he was paddling out to the big waves.
One day when we flew out to visit him in San Diego, I looked in the back of his truck and saw a trident shaped fishing spear alongside his surf board and wetsuit. When I asked him if he was fishing he told that he was indeed, but for garbage not fish. Everyday he and many of the other surfers would go out and clean the kelp beds of as much paper and plastic as they could find, put it in their trucks and take it to the trash bins. Way too much debris from our lives here on earth is ending up in the vast beautiful ocean spaces. It is as if because we cannot really see what is living within it’s depths that we are ignorant of the devastation we are causing and as we destroy our oceans, we slowly destroy ourselves. Spend one afternoon paddling the seas in an insignificant plastic kayak and have a pod of dolphins surf the waves with you and your life will change forever. Trust me...the desire to protect and nurture that which you previously hadn’t been able to see will instantly overwhelm you.
Our beautiful planet is mostly covered by these ancient swirling , living seas and we will never be able to live within them as the sea creatures can although we are constantly trying , incessantly searching . It is hard work to look beneath the surface of anything, whether it be of the sea or your soul. Beckoning and frightening us at the same time , we ignore the sirens song at our peril sometimes until it’s almost too late. The beautiful scent of Roxana’s Greenwitch solid perfume is a magical spell of hope and rebirth …a reminder to look within, to find the joyful wildness that lurks inside our hearts …to become undomesticated at last. In doing so perhaps we will finally discover that we are the only ones who can save ourselves before it's too late.
Roxana has generously given a sample of her new Greenwitch Solid perfume for me to give to one of you lucky readers! It is beautiful! If you'd like to be entered please leave me a comment and some of your thoughts or tips about preserving our beautiful environment and I'll put your name in my cauldron for the prize draw!
I am honored to be reviewing the new Greenwitch Solid Perfume today with several other very talented bloggers! Please go to their sites, read their musings and show them some love!
Roxana Villas Illuminated Perfume
Scent Hive
Photograph of whale Flukes courtesy of http://www.whoi.edu Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute