The moment of intoxicating nectar, ephemeral heady scent, snuffed out deliberately. The God had made his point of the sacrifice, fleeting beauty in the moment, and the inveitabilty of death's embrace. Absolutes are so precious and resource intensive. Even in this form, jasmine, honeysuckle, lotus, daffodil, and rose are not captured in their pure form, but only a portion of their being can be stored in bottles.
We never capture anything. We own nothing. Each moment is fleeting, precious, and unique. Only change is constant.
A debate I got into this year was on the nature of love. It was posited to me that love causes pain, wars, suffering and destruction. To me, higher love, divine love is giving, not grasping, joyful, and does not make demands. To make demands is to cage an object of one's attention, not to tend a flower into blooming. To me, destructive love is ownership, imprisionment, anger, fear, obsession, envy, jealousy. This is not love, but the crushing of ephemeral beauty.
People are not flowers, even though I may have likened the experience of love to one. People are bulbs, seeds, acorns, if you will. Whether we become bonsais, saplings, or great grandmother trees, is part of how we reach town the sun each day, drink in the rain, whether it be drizzle or blizzard, listen to the wind, and feel within the dark for ever stronger roots.