It may be debated whether the art of a perfume lies in its development over time, as its structure unfolds. A beautiful blossom can be sculpted into shape using the magic of variable volatility.

This approach invites time to be part of the equation and sequence to be part of the logic. It keeps things somewhat manageable, because time is a limiting factor, the divisor when you divide the totality of what is going on (the dividend) to get the quotient of “things going on per arbitrary unit of time.” (Yes, a little bit of elementary school arithmetic to keep it real!)

Surely each thing going on is a more feasible bite size than the totality of things going on.

With single-molecule perfumes, linear perfumes, “spiral” perfumes, etc—that spurn the traditional pyramid structure, it’s all going on the whole time.

The brain does that sometimes, too. For me, particularly when recalling archived memories—they are crudely compressed and collated into a stack without the buffering effect of chronology—and when trying to imagine the future: all the possibilities fuse into a giant, fuzzy overlay that overwhelms me into a panicked illusion that I need to somehow sort it all out now. The false urgency is more often paralyzing than catalyzing.

Time, the great fixative and carrier for goings-on! I need to remember to include it in my formulae.

No promises about actual perfume, though.