Smells and Bells

I think having the opportunity to take Smells and Bells and then experiencing a worldwide pandemic came with good timing. Oftentimes, we’re so rushed to get from one one place to another that we miss out on what happens around us. We’re so accustomed to the lifestyle of being busy that it has become the norm for many of us. However, the pandemic has forced us to slow down. We’re now appreciating everything that we had previously taken for granted and noticing things in our surroundings that we have never noticed before.  Take this quarantining/social distancing as an opportunity to be more aware of what you experience through the senses. I don’t think my senses have necessarily heightened over the past 5 weeks, but I am actively making the choice to pay more attention to what I see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. I like going on nature/mindfulness walks and basking in the sunshine out in my backyard. This morning, I could hear a faint noise from the wind, hear the birds chirpin...

I read a book called A Mango-Shaped Space when I was in fifth grade. It’s about a young girl who discovers that she has synesthesia. She figures this out when she realizes that not everyone is able to associate numbers, letters, words, sounds, etc. with colors. I actually knew what synesthesia was prior to reading this book because my mom has it. My sisters and I loved having her describe the color of each of our names- mine was a dark shade of green to her. My mom is also extremely talented at playing piano and has the musical gift of having perfect pitch. I think this is because she is able to see colors when hearing sounds, which helps her identify notes and keys. I always wish I had synesthesia, particularly the type known as Lexical-Gustatory, in which a person experiences taste and smell from written and spoken words, as well as when they see certain colors and feel certain emotions. I think the fact that the individual is experiencing the world in an entirely different wa...

Rama & Sita India is a destination that I would love to travel to. Its rich culture and religious diversity shape much of the country’s ideals, customs, architecture, music, art, etc. Diana Eck, author of “Darsan: Seeing the Divine Images in India” describes India best when she says, “India presents to the visitor an overwhelmingly visual impression. It is beautiful, colorful, sensuous. It is captivating and intriguing, repugnant, and puzzling. It combines the intimacy and familiarity of English four o’clock tea with the dazzling foreignness of caparisoned elephants or vast crowds bathing in the Ganga during an eclipse. India’s display of multi-armed images, its processions and pilgrimages, its beggars and kings, its street life and markets, its diversity of peoples- all appear to the eye in a kaleidoscope of images” (10).  One of Frida Kahlo's Self Portraits I remember being mind blown about our vision when a challenge having to do with the color of a dress was goin...

  “Animal Skins”, chapter five of Constance Classen’s book, The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch  really resonates with me because I’m currently taking Barbara Darling’s Religion and Animals course. In addition to visual, auditory, and chemical methods of communication, tactile communication is “the common medium of communication for all inhabitants of the Earth” (69). Human beings shake hands, hug, or kiss as a sign of respect or endearment- the same can be applied for non-human animals. Elephants will intertwine their trunks to show acceptance and affection, cats will lick and nuzzle their young, sea otters will rub their nose and faces on each other to establish social bonds, etc. Animals will communicate with animals outside their species through touch. My cat will know when I’m feeling down, and he will nuzzle up against me and provide me with a sense of reassurance. When my dog was extremely sick, my sisters and I would take turns petting him as a way of comfo...

Even prior to reading Anne Rasmussen’s Women, The Recited Qur’an, and Islamic Music in Indonesia , I knew the significance that sound plays in Indonesian culture. I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to travel to Indonesia last summer. Among the diverse cultures, traditions, and landscapes, I was also drawn to the rich sonic environment. Although I was not able to attend any of the cultural and religious festivals that Indonesia is known for, I was still able to get a good sense of the sounds in Indonesia. When we drove through the villages with our car windows down, we were met with the bustling sounds of the streets- outdoor market vendors selling various produce, honking cars, the revving of motorcycle engines, and barking dogs. On one of the days that I was there there, we noticed that the cars ahead of us had stopped moving. We couldn’t see what was going on, but we could hear- the beating of drums, the sound of the laughter of children, the footsteps of people, etc. fil...

In “Kitchen, Food, and Family”, chapter two of Elizabeth Perez’s, Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions, she talks about the emphasis on feeding the gods in Black Atlantic traditions and that practitioners “use food as a medium of exchange with their deities” (61). Reading this made me think of a similar practice we do in my family, but instead of feeding the gods, we feed our ancestors. My family’s participation in the religion that we’ve been following has diminished over the years, but my mom continues to be an active practitioner. There is an altar (butsudan) in the room upstairs of my house for our ancestors. Most, if not all the families in the church we belong to have an ancestor altar, and the responsibility of each family is to maintain cleanliness of the altar and make daily food offerings, as well as pray to their ancestor spirits. My mom will take small portions of the dinner that we have prepared for the family to eat tha...

I think there is an overgeneralization that humans’ olfactory abilities are ridiculously poor. A number of studies have been published indicating that humans are more attuned to detect specific chemical components found in urine, blood, fruits, flowers, etc. compared to non human animals, such as mice and dogs. This does not mean that humans have a better sense of smell in comparison to these animals, but rather, our olfactory abilities are not as weak as we think they are (we should give our noses more credit!) This also shows that each species specializes in specific scents that pertain to their lifestyle. For example, humans are attuned to the scent of blood to alert them when they are hurt or when others near them are hurt, while a mouse may be more sensitive to the scent of its predators .   In the “Noses” section of her book, “A Natural History of the Senses”, Diane Ackerman writes that as we humans evolved, our sense of smell has weakened over time, and vision and hea...