Smells and Bells

 I don't believe in ghosts. I'm not superstitious. I'm not particularly into astrology or tarot like a lot of my friends are right now. Abram's version of the sixth sense as more of a way of interacting with nature made a lot more sense to me than the version that immediately came to mind, thinking of ESP. That said: I don't believe in ghosts but my neighbors' house is haunted. Or, at least, that's the conclusion me and my siblings came to when we had something like our 6th neighbor in that house in 11 years. It didn't help to change our minds given how abrupt some of their departures were or how strange some of those neighbors were (one when I was ten was a professional disc golfer and his really annoying six year old daughter-- I guess someone's bound to do that, but at the time it was the weirdest job I had ever heard of). Clearly, a ghost was scaring them away. Four or five years ago, a family moved into that house. They had four kids- five?- an...

When my sister was little, she was obsessed with Orbeez and had approximately a gazillion of them. If you've never touched them, they remind me a bit of boba (which is part of the reason I refuse to even try boba tea). I was pretty quickly banned from touching them on account of they were really fun to squish because they would pop in half but it's "not nice to break your sister's things." I kept doing it anyway. Anyway, I was really interested in what Classen had to say about early museums and the expectations of touching the things on display, especially with how museums transition to no longer allowing touch. Orbeez have no real value outside of touch. They're kinda fun to look at, but not that interesting, they have no interesting smell or sound, and while I've never tried tasting one... please don't taste Orbeez. But, there's no real point in having them unless you're able to touch them.  At the same time, though, my sister's gazillio...

 I have a fear of going blind. Not, like, greatest fear of all time, but easily in my top three. This is both a reasonable and fully ridiculous fear as (1) I do have a medical issue that affects my eyes but (2) it has never affected my vision, nor would it have ever made me go blind, but I was 14 when I was diagnosed, assumed it was a possibility, and did not bother to confirm that for long enough that I internalized it. It's also the only sense that I'm "good" at, as little sense (haha, sense ) as that makes. My sense of smell is awful as I've said before, I never hear things right (though that's less a hearing issue and more a focus issue), and though it's hard to quantify touch as a skill, I certainly would've been bad at the touch group's guessing game from their presentation. My sight, on the other hand, is perfect (Technically better than, since my vision is 20/15 and "perfect" is 20/20). I'm the only person in my family to not ...

 Rasmussen repeatedly mentions the idea that in Indonesia, Arabic is largely used only as a language for prayer and reading the Quran and, even outside the stricter definitions of prayer, it's pretty much only ever used in religious Muslim contexts. I was actually surprised by how much time she spent explaining this, going on to say that many Indonesians don't even understand Arabic despite using it in religious contexts, because it was a pretty easy thing for me to understand since, unsurprisingly, I have at least a similar relationship with Hebrew. I could tell you the literal translations of maybe a dozen Hebrew words, on a good day. Hebrew is so associated with prayer for me that sometimes I forget people actually speak it (I say, knowing people that speak it). For another religion class, I had to watch the livestream of a church service (they were protestants of some kind, idk) and I remember being so totally baffled because I could not tell the difference between when the...

    Because I forgot to do this post before spring break, Purim has now passed. And because of that and our presentation on taste, I've been thinking a lot about cookies. I've been making hamantaschen every year for Purim since I was sixteen? Seventeen? I don't know, young enough that it's been a while, but old enough that I was the one who taught myself how to make them. Well, a Jewish food blog taught me how to make them, but same difference. I was genuinely thinking about Perez' book while making them this year, especially how in the Lucumi religion, it's important to be a part of the preparation of food. To be honest, I don't know how to cook. Neither of my parents were big chefs and I never tried all that hard to learn, so my talents don't extend far past pasta and grilled cheese. Baking has always been much easier (I think someone in class compared baking to science and cooking to art? I stand by that) and I've always had a big sweet tooth, so...

I've taken probably too many classes on death (2), but specifically I took Prof. Henry's class on the history of death, in which we talked for a while about medieval Christian relics. Interestingly, bodies of saints were supposed to have a good scent, smelling like spices or flowers even long, long after death.                                                The difference between the medieval Christianity and rabbinic Judaism immediately stood out to me. Both claim death is tied to smell, but the associations and rationales are completely different. This line from Green stood out to me particularly:   "And fragrance is also intimately tied to death-- perhaps as a representation of what we desire in that finality-- that death too will be fleeting, tempora...

 I've often joked that I have no sense of smell. I mean this in the non-literal, I have allergies at least three seasons of the year sort of way, but still, my sense of smell is generally bad enough that the idea of anosmia doesn't sound nearly as horrifying to me as perhaps it did to others. It was interesting that Ackerman described smell as a sort of constant thing that you cannot stop, because for me, it doesn't feel that way at all. The smells I do actually sense are usually the strongest, which in general has not left a favorable impression of the sense. When I think of strong scents I tend to think of skunks (I didn't realize the badness of which was debatable), perfume (not a fan), and my dog farting (with a frequency that is honestly impressive).  Probably, I don't give my sense of smell enough credit. The smell of a campfire brings me back to camping as a child. The smell of lavender reminds me of an acquaintance in high school who went around with a bottl...