Smells and Bells

 I've talked about this in class before, but let's all wipe our memories and pretend this is new.  I used to live in Vermont, and my grandparents have a house in Chatham (Cape Cod) that we would visit for the summers. It was a long drive back then, four hours in the car, half asleep in the backseat. I would always know when we'd arrived, as I would be picked up by my dad. The garage door was loud, usually jarring me a little, but I always knew what was coming next. The smell of the garage in Chatham has colored my summers since before I can remember. It's a specific sort of musk, not mold, that reminded me of sitting in a large pink bucket as a child, or walking down Main Street with a brown paper bag stuffed full of candy.  As I've grown up, that smell remains dear to me, but less naively upbeat. It now reminds me of losing our annual wiffle ball game pitcher to cancer, days on the boat, being the odd one out, lots of laughs over all the seasons, and so, so much mo...

Cats in the fish-market Tetouan, a city on the northern coast of Morocco, had long been a crossroads of civilization. The city had seen peoples from many lands come to its shores, including Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and Arabs, yet its most famous story had to do with mercy in a time of need. Including Jewish and Muslim refugees from Granada in Spain, fleeing the Inquisition and the end of both Muslim rule and the Jewish golden age. For centuries, it had been known colloquially as bint al-Garnatah, the daughter of Granada, and even its official name stemmed from that history of cross-cultural connection. It came from titti-wan , Rifian Amazigh for "eyes in the mountains", referring to guards local lords had appointed to watch over these refugees build new homes after hey had lost everything. For centuries, it had been a place of welcoming and renewal.  However, in June of last summer, the city saw a new group of travelers: ten bleary-eyed Wheaton students, three days into a...

    I'm late to this post, and  I skipped class when the making of this post was discussed, I think. I'm not sure of the parameters, what we're supposed to be writing about, aside from a sense, and I can't find a mention of it in any syllabus material. This is my fault, as I wasn't in class! Instead of being in class on that day of Thursday the 17th, I was in the sculpture and printmaking studios, just one floor down, working on two different projects. For this blog post, I'll be focusing on the sculpture assignment: a life-sized bust of myself. Pictured are the progress photos I've taken-- the current product is mostly finished, it just needs to be glazed and fired (making it strong and shiny, essentially).      Sculpture is all about touch and sight. While there is the smell and taste of clay, and the sound of soft clay being sheared off or the slap of wedging, the making process is focused almost entirely in the hands and eyes.       ...

My old house sits there, occupied off and on by any new person seeking an Airbnb when they pass through the small coastal town in Midcoast Maine. In the summer, they will stroll around the four-acre property sitting on a hill that overlooks a marsh with more birds and frogs imaginable. The renter, probably booked it in Airbnb for convenience, as it is close to downtown and large enough to accommodate families or a group of friends. The convenience is priority and for unconcerned renter, the property does not affect their stay immensely. The memories once made by my siblings and I playing on the swing set or sledding in the winter is completely separate from their stay in this newly renovated Airbnb. They may never lay eyes on the crumbling drywall made from horse hair because the house was constructed as an 19th-century farmhouse. They may never uncover the Sharpie on the back of the kitchen cabinets that lists mine and my siblings names. And they will certainly never experience the li...

    Singing is an Escape

          In Akerman’s chapter on Touch, her discussion on torture— “In the Middle Ages, so-called witches and others who lived on the outskirts of the law, piety, or convention were burned at the stake. Mimicking the fire and brimstone of hell, it was the ultimate horror. Death would happen cell by cell, receptor by receptor; each of life's minute sensations would be torched.” (Akerman, 69) — struck me.       The descriptions of death happening cell by cell, a mimicking of the fires of hell… it sounded familiar. Sensations of being constricted by something on your body, an unrelenting, continuous assault of the physical sense of touch.  Whenever clothing is too tight, too scratchy, too loose, too soft, I really do understand the senses described here.                    What do the Middle Ages era torture and modern clothing have to do with each other, though?   ...