Attar of Roses

Story

Imagine an open field of roses, extending as far as the eyes can see, an eighty mile long garden. Hundreds of thousands of bushels of rose petals get picked, boiled and distilled, and re-distilled, and purified, until out of one thousand pounds of petals five ounces of precious attar of roses are extracted. A perfume so strong that it is too much for a person to bear undiluted.

You can't extract the quintessence of a sunset but you can concentrate scent to its pure essence. Every time I take the lid off the little bottle, an eighty mile long rose garden comes out.

For the sake of efficiency we think of the attar of roses as just a perfumery ingredient and do not back track all the steps that brought it to be. Somewhere far away though, there is a field of roses getting distilled into a little bottle as we speak.