On Friendship

[doomsday_disco]

Your friend is your needs answered.

He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.

And he is your board and your fireside.

For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.”

And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;

For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.

When you part from your friend, you grieve not;

For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain. And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

 

And let your best be for your friend.

If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.

For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?

Seek him always with hours to live.

For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.

For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

 

The warmth of shared meals, the pleasure of shared laughter, and the hidden language of sweet, comfortable silences: warm bread, roasted chestnut, oakwood smoke, sparkling bergamot, lentisk resin, and honeyed labdanum.

[VioletChaos]

In the bottle: I get tendrils of the chestnut and the honey straight away. Honey in particular is a note that will usually jump out at me. Hopefully some others come out in application, though...

Wet on skin: a teeny bit of the bread starts to emerge. I love the Lab's bread note, so if I'm lucky, this is a trend in the right direction! 

Dry down: the labdanum asserts its attachment to the honey at this point, which is a nice low-note addition to the mix. I'm also getting the bergamot now, but not the "sparkling" component. This is also not of the "earl grey" variety to me- this smells like the actual, fresh citrus fruit that bergamot is, as I encountered it in groves when I lived briefly in Morocco, and that is a very pleasant surprise to encounter here, and also feels thematically appropriate for a Gibran scent. 

In all: Because of the richness of the notes, I believe this will require aging to reach its full potential. That said, here in the present, this is a lovely, close-to-the-skin scent that reminds me of the BPALs of long ago, in that there's a sweet-hearted nature to this scent, and the chestnut / oakwood combo remind me, just a hair, of the 2005 release of Hearth, which is another sweet memory of the past. ❤️