Smells and Bells

  Smell: The Skeleton Key to Memory (A Natural History of the Senses) By Calliope Mills As much as I would love to say that the most powerful sense to me is taste–due to my obsession with food and constant pursuit of my next culinary undertaking–or hearing–as I find comfort, creativity and great joy in dancing to music–I find that smell, is truly what keeps me on my toes in everyday life.      As Diane Ackerman says in her opening paragraph to her chapter on this sense, “Nothing is more memorable than a smell” (16), I find this to be quite true. It is almost always a scent that has me catapulted back, days, months, or decades into memory. A whiff of one specific type of antique furniture, and I am transported back to my grandmother's living room. Like I am in that moment looking out her window, seeing a sunset over the ocean at the bottom of the hill, listening to my cousins run about, wreaking havoc throughout her old hallways, and I can feel a worn sheepskin...

Religion & the Senses Religious Properties of Smell By Genesis Lantigua Introduction:      Candles, incense and essential oils have become our best friends when cleaning and perfuming our homes. Most of us also do not step outside our homes without first taking a shower and layering ourselves with lotions, deodorants and perfumes. Where does this obsession with scent come from and why is this a conversion in religious studies? Let's sniff into history and find out.     Diane Ackerman has composed a beautiful and easily captivating text, A Natural History of the Senses, where she clearly illustrates the historical component of each of the senses. For this posts' sake, we will analyze Ackerman's first chapter on smell. The History of Aromas     According to Ackerman, perfumed scents were first used in Mesopotamia as incense offering to “sweeten the smell of animal flesh burned as offerings” (Ackerman, 56). Perfumes were eventually conside...

Interestingly, before reading Diane Ackerman's section in A Natural History of the Senses  about our sense of smell, I can't say that I had ever really thought about all the wonderful things we can link to our ability to smell things. Truthfully, I think this is because I have for most of my life had a very poor sense of smell. I remember going to the Portland Rose Garden in Oregon with my family when I was 16 and my family coming up to me to marvel at how beautiful the entire place smelled. I, however, had to stick my nose directly into any of the roses in order to smell anything.  So, after reading through Ackerman's section on smell, I really had to sit back and think about how smell has connected me to certain memories throughout my life. I loved her descriptions about the ways that certain smells would suddenly transport her back to her childhood, how something about the smell of tagging Monarch butterflies sent her straight back to Illinois in the 50s, breathing in th...

Before reading the first chapter of Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses , I hadn’t given much thought to the history of the sense of smell, the thousands of scents that we can smell, and the lasting impression they leave on us. Ackerman describes tagging butterflies in California, and smelling fragrant eucalyptus trees in the forest around her. It transported her back to her childhood, when her mother would rub Vick’s vapor rub on her chest. It amazes me how scents stand the test of time for decades. My sophomore year, pre-COVID, I let a girl drink out of my water bottle. I was very embarrassed when she exclaimed “Your water bottle smells like the penguin ride at Story Land!”. I was grossed out, but she seemed nostalgic. I hope she meant plastic-y, but I still have no idea what she meant.  I love smells, and reading about smells, so this chapter was definitely a treat. Years ago, I read a book set in the 1950s called The Coldest Night by Robert Olmstead. There was a sc...

         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...