Smells and Bells

Image from mickeyblog.com Ackerman describes how smells move us in profound ways because we cannot describe them. She writes " smells are often right on the top of our tongues - but no closer - and it gives them a kind of magical distance, a mystery, a power without a name, a sacredness" (9). About two years ago, my family took a trip to Disney. We went on the Avatar Flight of Passage ride, twice, and, goodness....it smelled. Bad. It made me, my siblings, and my father nauseous. My mom loved it. Disney is notorious for their scents and smell machines (dubbed "smellitizers") which enhance the experience of their parks and make your memories that much stronger. Such was the case on this specific ride. When doing my Christmas shopping this year, I came across a small Etsy business called "Main Street Melts Candle Co." that specializes in capturing those Disney scents and recreates them through candles, essential oils, etc. So, naturally (or artificially, I s...

Creative Commons Zero via Max Pixel Despite having grown up reading a lot, I don't think I ever realized just how much smell defines our worldview. Reading so much as a kid shaped the way I write now; I develop my style based on what I can mimic and what I was taught is important for any piece. When I'm writing, it's just sort of become instinctual to start with the senses to lay out a scene. Smell itself is a sense I struggle with putting into words, a phenomenon Ackerman mentions almost immediately into the first chapter. In a way, a smell isn't just a  smell . It's layered in with the emotions you attach to the familiarity of it, like Ackerman's VicksVapo Rub (a staple in my house as well) story, but also the way the smell affects your brain. To develop exactly what a smell is, especially to a person, it takes some delving into their personal history to fully imagine it. To write a smell exactly right, you can't explain it without these connections. For m...

     Reading about how different cultures assign different meanings to objects and words, it had never occurred to me that we assign meanings to smells as well. After reading the section from Ackerman on smell, I realized that different cultures assign different meanings to scents, and these meanings vary among cultures. For instance, in the reading it is mentioned that while some cultures like to use animal feces as hair masks, Western cultures view this scent as repulsive and dirty. Yet, children don't learn that these smells are "bad" until they are taught (a point Ackerman makes).       Additionally, while the scents may stay the same, timeless in their ways, the meanings we assign to these scents change over time. Even our memories of smells connected to people we love or times we are fond of may change as we experience the scent in new settings, such as in the reading when the smell of eucalyptus and menthol triggered the author's earlier memory ...

  Might clean this up later. Probably won’t. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ “Love is a beautiful bondage, too” (Ackerman xviii). (As a poet, can I just say that’s a sick turn of phrase?)   In my experience, religion has often been described as trying to ‘pay back’ the love given to humans by the divine: despite being bound by rules, it’s still something cherished and looked for, and has all sorts of special sensations to go with it: hearing a sermon and songs, smelling the candle smoke, seeing the stained glass and the icons, feeling the uncomfortable ‘Sunday best’ clothing in a cold sanctuary on a hard pew, tasting the coffee shared with the congregation after the service. Describes scents, by virtue of the difficulty in describing them, as having a sacredness (9). Most religions use specific scents like candle smoke, oil, and incense, to separate the holy from the secular. Smell associates deeply with memory (11) and actually causes biological changes in humans (12): assumably, scents typi...

         As soon as I read the word Vicks Vapor Rub in Diane Ackerman’s, A Natural History of the Senses , I knew exactly what she meant when she spoke about the difficulty of putting smells into words and just how powerful the sense of smell is. It is truly amazing just how easy it can be turned into a memory. I found it heartwarming how Ackerman had familial memories of Vick’s vapor rub when she was sick, and I think of all the stories of my mother's mother and father's mother using Vick’s on them when they were sick, which they continued to do for me and my brothers. And every time I use it now, I am brought back to warm memories of tissues and m favorite Disney movie playing while my mom or dad sat by me. This was one of the first examples of how I understood how the sense of smell is a religious experience and can be seen as a ritual, as it not only creates memories but can bring great emotion.   Ackerman spent an enjoyable section of her cha...

  Web Blog Sensory Interpretation Blog Prompt or 6? 5 senses... Welcome!  Here is the Web post  Assignment for our class, and general guidelines for what to include in your posts Sensory Interpretation Web Blog Posts  (6 posts on each of the senses, 5% each, plus one summarizing blog post the last week of class 10%, for a total of 40%).  Short reflection writing assignments to be posted on a blog set up specifically for this class  here . Students will "log" what they are learning about the relationship between the senses and "religious" experience throughout the term, and be able to comment on one another's questions and insights.  You should make at least 7 posts, @one every two weeks. Make sure you have one post each tagged with "taste", "smell", "hearing", "sight", "touch" or "6th sense."  To assure you will get credit for covering each of the six senses in your blog posts, edit them to make sure th...