In my meditation, I smelled our osmanthus, it’s like a swarm of mist, omitting in chunks of essence, but doesn’t stay. It’s like hide and seek, when you look for it, it disappeared; when you are not, it’s pushing all the way towards your face.
Osmanthus blooms in fall. Whenever I smell it reminds me of Guilin, a beautiful city in southern China, whose city tree is osmanthus. There are so many osmanthus there, when blooming season, you can get drunk just by breathing.
It’s a town of natural beauty with karst mountains and elegant greenery with the Li River wrapped around. It’s like a living canvas, with sweet fragrance of osmanthus in the air, such a romantic tropical place.
It’s funny, how you remember a place by scent, by people who live there, that’s how the heart traces its way back.