The fragrance is incredible. I pick up the bar and the sharp scent of sun-soaked pines fills my nostrils. I am transported. One foot in the shower, the other planted in the soft duff floor of a spruce forest. Light filters through the needles as the breeze shakes the boughs, casting infinitely fractal shadows on the understory. On me. The warm sun and the warm water intertwine until the two sensations are one, fusing my dual states of being into an ascended state of piney bliss.

Then I apply the bar to my body and cry out in pain. A bobcat? A mountain lion?? It is the stinging bite of razor blades drawn across my skin, of sharp claws tearing into my flesh. My eyes fly open, ready to do battle. But I am only in the shower, a bar of soap in my hand, peppered with the world's sharpest coffee grounds. Red lines marr my arm where their serrated teeth have found purchase. The deepest will scab. A wave of the scent caresses me again and I yearn to return to that forest! I pine for pine. But pine and pain are unexplainably, inescapably linked. Beauty and agony, each essential as contrast for the other, and yet... perhaps a rose with slightly fewer thorns could smell as sweet?