August 7, 2021
"Smell goes directly to your emotions, you are crying, you don’t know why... Smelling has a power that none of the other senses have..."
"... and I must tell you now, it is molecular, it goes to the essence of the essence.... When I smell him, in reality I am entering into a level of intimacy more intense than if we slept in bed together.... We have never had so many fragrances around us.... But at the same time, we have no idea of what life really smells like.... [Smell has been] absolutely denigrated through centuries because smell reminds us that we are just animals.... There came this sudden obsession with sterilizing and disinfecting... now everyone must smell absolutely neutral.... [T]here is nothing more complex than nature.... We should be complex, but we have a problem with accepting our complexity and contradiction in ourselves."
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Real life smell really has been removed in as many places in our lives as possible, being replaced by faux smells. Many of the faux smells/fragrances are wonderful, but not real. On the other hand, some real smells, like passing an alley full of stuffed dumpsters in downtown Chicago in a dank, rainy morning, can leave you blowing out hard, trying to get whatever molecules just raced up your nostrils to your brain, back out. People actually take in the smell of chemical cleaners and think that it is a good and pleasing smell because it means 'Clean!' to them. And Clean! is among the greatest of goods in this covid era.
I know that when you are in a close relationship, you fall in love with the smell of that person you are in love with. Their actual smell. You may find yourself smelling their pillow. That is part of what you miss when they are gone. Your family members- your mother or father, had a certain smell that many of you can recall even now. You smelled them when you were a baby, and it has stayed with you. These are drivers of our lives. You may walk into a room or a restaurant and a smell will hit you and remind you of a very specific place and time that was a part of your life.
I worked in food and wine for years at one point in my life and I know, from working with great chefs and teaching how to taste wine, that people eat and drink as much with their nose as they do with their tongues. Watch a chef grab a fresh sprig of rosemary or sage and rub it between his or her hands, then sniff it. You'll see their eyes roll back in pleasure. Watch a wine drinker or whiskey drinker swirl and sniff their beverage before tasting it, getting the nuances of that liquid ahead of the actual taste. They can know much of what is coming from the nose, before even tasting.
Do any of you remember what a real rose smells like? I don't. I grew up with rose bushes around me. Now to smell 'rose' I go to a candle or fragrance store and smell a combination of chemicals meant to copy the original. We've bred the smell out of actual roses. Entire generations now come and go without knowing the smell of a rose.
My father died forty years ago, but to this day the smell of a cigar or the smell of gin reminds me of him, for those were his habits. Also the smell of lilies in the church sanctuary on Easter morning, another powerful memory. Speaking of church sanctuaries, I read once that the use of incense in churches developed in the middle ages in part to counter the body odor of all those unbathed worshipers in an enclosed space. I don't doubt that to be true, although incense has biblical roots too. I also do not doubt that we humans are complex and contradictory creatures embedded in nature.
When I was in my early twenties I used that Clairol Herbal Essence shampoo because I loved the smell. I found better shampoos but Clairol kept making it and never changed the packaging or logo for years. Once in awhile I'd use it again and the fragrance made me feel like 22 again. I found one last bottle at WalMart in the 1990s and kept it around just to sniff and it never failed to do its magic.
As Proust said, just for a moment you genuinely feel that happiness again.
Clairol finally stopped making it and the residue I had dried up.
There is a smell, I think from my childhood (at least that's the faint association), that I cannot find. Every few years I smell a glimpse(?) of it and then it is gone. Like seeing a long-forgotten friend in a crowd who then disappears and cannot be found when you search for him.
I hope it's a smell I will find again in heaven.
What ids the world's smelliest chemical?
Many of them are human-derived.
I read Diane Ackerman's 'A Natural History of the Senses' back in the 1990s. I've read it several times since. The book is very good at provoking your awareness of each of your senses due to how she discusses not only the sense itself but what life is like for those who are very sensitive and who lack the sense. I remember the chapter on smell being particularly impactful causing me to smell the world anew for a while. In fact, I took up an interest in essential oils because of it. I was working research ships at the time, even fisheries research, so you might imagine there were smells that one wanted to become inured to or at least have a strong, pleasant competitor. However, if you are enjoying a new awareness, even the smell of fish can be enjoyable if fresh.
Every so often I will encounter something similar to the odor I knew from my grandmother’s Philadephia row-home basement. It’s a mixture of dampness, old cigarette smoke in the walls, clean laundry and I don’t know what else. When that happens, no matter where I am, I have to take a moment because the nostalgia is overwhelming. If I could bottle that smell I would, because it seems to almost bring memory back to life.
I wrote this after my mother's death.
My Mother's Scent
My mother didn't wear
perfume or makeup.
She was scented
garden earth,
lemon wax,
bleach,
vanilla,
Tide,
Prell shampoo,
Ivory soap.
I could find her anywhere,
even in the dark,
just like a blind
newborn kitten.
Telegram.com (Wooster, MA)
Underwear-sniffing husband isn’t as unusual as he sounds
DEAR ANNIE: My husband and I are in our mid-30s and happily married. We have sex almost every night. Here’s the problem: I found out this past summer that my husband is kinky. I saw him smelling my worn lingerie, as well as our teenage daughter’s and my mother’s. What makes a man want to do this with women’s clothing? I’ve never heard of women smelling men’s shorts. Is this normal? -- A DUMBFOUNDED WIFE
DEAR DUMBFOUNDED: Your husband is turned on by the scent of worn women’s underwear. This is not an uncommon fetish. As long as everything else in your marriage and sex life is good, we wouldn’t worry too much about this, although you should insist he limit his fetish to your undergarments and leave his daughter’s and your mother’s alone. It’s creepy.
https://www.telegram.com/article/20131022/COLUMN88/310229994
The Scientific Reason Sniffing Panties Is Such A Turn-On
By Sofia Gray July 11, 2019
"The quick answer to why sniffing panties turns some people on is pheromones. Pheromones are chemical scents that naturally attract animals to each other for mating purposes, helping them to communicate and ultimately reproduce."
'...For example, researchers at the University of Texas, Austin conducted a blind study to determine how pheromones affected sex drive. They asked a sample of men to sniff t-shirts worn by women at different stages of their menstrual cycle. By a large margin, men rated the t-shirt worn by women at the peak of ovulation to be the “sexiest” and most “pleasant.”'
https://sofiagray.com/blog/the-scientific-reason-sniffing-panties-is-such-a-turn-on/
The late Poul Anderson, author of sci fi and fantasy, once remarked that smell is the most evocative of senses. In reviewing a manuscript, if he didn't see a smell every third page, he'd put one in. His characters are forever smoking pipes, drinking whiskey, smelling hot oil off the generators, passing bakeries, whiffing long-gone gunpowder.
In general, I like neutral. I like me and the people around me to be clean and not wearing perfume. I don’t like scented soaps, candles, whatever. Some foods can smell good, but I don’t crave the smell. The one exception is the smell of the person I love. Back in my dating days, I knew if a relationship was worth pursuing by how I reacted to her smell. When she was sweaty, did I want her to take a shower or did I want to hold her close? If I wanted her to take a shower, I’d be moving on soon enough. If I wanted to hold her close, she was going to break my heart one day.
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