The smell of a ghost
I planned to start this blog post by describing a smell that’s eluded me for a lifetime, but I have no idea how to explain a scent through text. There’s no way for me to activate your scent receptors, make you feel the way I feel when I experience this scent, and that honestly saddens me to an existential degree. As is said in The Aroma of Righteousness by Deborah Green, we lack the “aesthetic lexicon” to accurately convey the sensory experience of smell. Nonetheless, although I can’t give you a smell through the internet, I’m going to try my best. I don’t know when I first smelled this mystery scent, but I can’t help but feel that it’s been around me since I was young. It’s distinctively floral, but not as sweet as other flowers typically smell – it has a grungy, hay-ey aspect to it – almost like the smell of a wheat field. I guess that’s why the smell conjures such a specific image in my mind. When I smell the scent, I’m forced to recall an image from my mind that’s equally, i...