Something Stinks (or does it?)
Scent is, by far, the most nebulous of our senses. It's the most detached from any physical properties, it's kind of just... there. I think that, because of this, it's also the most symbolically versatile of any of our senses. The rabbis in The Aroma of Righteousness recognized this fact, and used it in countless ways to show the relationship between god and humanity. The best and worst of our sensory experiences are, I believe, rooted in scent. Despite scent not being tied directly to any physical characteristic, it seems to reveal something about the source of the smell. We say that we've picked up the scent of something when we're locking in on where it is, or that something smells rotten about a thing we distrust. Scent seems to be tied to the essential nature of things; if I had to come up with synonymous words for an object's aroma, I might say it's vibe, or aura, or feeling. Smell is a sense that goes straight to our subconscious and lets us know things intuitively.
If I think about what my favorite smell is, I kind of draw a blank. So often you can't think of a smell that means something to you until the moment you're smelling it, and then suddenly all the emotions and memories tied up with it come rushing back in a wave. I guess I don't have a particular smell that I love more than anything, but there's certainly smells that I hate. I get to visit New York with some frequency, and I love going every time, but one thing I can't get used to is the smell. Somehow the air is stale even outside, something that constantly throws me off. I guess my favorite smell is actually a clean Spring or Autumn day, where just the smell of the plants and the water around you seem to brighten everything up. Things are just starting to bloom here in Maine, and the air already smells incredible. I can just tell that everything around me is alive and vibrant, even before the trees have leaves and the grass is green.
One of the first, early symptoms of COVID-19 is that it can take away your sense of smell. We're so used to losing our sense of smell from a stuffy nose, but imagine if you lost any of your other senses in their entirety like this? Because scent is so hard to pin down, I think that it is highly undervalued, so much so that we may not even pay attention to it when it's gone. Imagine if Coronavirus took our hearing or sight instead? I'm sure tracking the virus would be a hell of a lot easier. But no, it goes after our most unspecific, easily missed sense. Losing this connection cuts you off from the subtle ways in which the world tells you that it''s alive. I guess that the rabbis were right that scent is a connection to divinity, to life itself.
(I'm trying to think of a media example to include in this post, but that would kind of undermine the whole point of this post, that scent tells us things in ways that we can't even really understand that no other sense does. In lieu of a media example, I suggest that any readers step outside and try to drink in the scents of a world waking up again.)
If I think about what my favorite smell is, I kind of draw a blank. So often you can't think of a smell that means something to you until the moment you're smelling it, and then suddenly all the emotions and memories tied up with it come rushing back in a wave. I guess I don't have a particular smell that I love more than anything, but there's certainly smells that I hate. I get to visit New York with some frequency, and I love going every time, but one thing I can't get used to is the smell. Somehow the air is stale even outside, something that constantly throws me off. I guess my favorite smell is actually a clean Spring or Autumn day, where just the smell of the plants and the water around you seem to brighten everything up. Things are just starting to bloom here in Maine, and the air already smells incredible. I can just tell that everything around me is alive and vibrant, even before the trees have leaves and the grass is green.
One of the first, early symptoms of COVID-19 is that it can take away your sense of smell. We're so used to losing our sense of smell from a stuffy nose, but imagine if you lost any of your other senses in their entirety like this? Because scent is so hard to pin down, I think that it is highly undervalued, so much so that we may not even pay attention to it when it's gone. Imagine if Coronavirus took our hearing or sight instead? I'm sure tracking the virus would be a hell of a lot easier. But no, it goes after our most unspecific, easily missed sense. Losing this connection cuts you off from the subtle ways in which the world tells you that it''s alive. I guess that the rabbis were right that scent is a connection to divinity, to life itself.
(I'm trying to think of a media example to include in this post, but that would kind of undermine the whole point of this post, that scent tells us things in ways that we can't even really understand that no other sense does. In lieu of a media example, I suggest that any readers step outside and try to drink in the scents of a world waking up again.)
Smell can definitely tell us a lot. It can tell us when something's dangerous, or when we're supposed to eat something, but it's extremely difficult to articulate our perception of smell.
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