It's interesting to me that smells communicate things that are almost impossible to articulate with words. There are smells that trigger memories, smells that elicit emotional responses, such as fear or happiness. I'm intrigued by that. We don't usually spend much time talking about, or even thinking about why our sense of smell has that kind of power.
People have smells that sometimes help me know more about them. (*the reader starts backing away..."ok Rob, you're starting to scare me.")
No, really. Odors are one way in which we broadcast our activities or habits, and we never seem to be able to fully mask them. I remember the church I used to go to...the leader there put a man out of the church because, according to him, he didn't smell like a Christian. He smelled like cigarette smoke. I'm still looking for that verse in the Bible. It's pretty sad to think of that guy, screwing up his courage to go talk to this bully of a pastor for help, only to get abused for the way he smelled.
A lot of Christians at the church I'm part of smell like cigarettes. Some of them smell like aftershave, breath-mints and alcohol. Most people have no smell at all, that I can detect. And of course, we never seem to be able to smell ourselves. It makes me wonder what I smell like to others? What really fascinates me is how insecure we become when we think about how we smell. I know for myself, there is the ideal out there, the cool people of the world, who only smell good at all times. I'm not one of them. My wife will walk by and remind me that I'm not; "Your breath stinks, what did you eat?"...and automatically I will file that somewhere under "character assessments", and quietly wish I could be one of the good smelling, cool people of the world.
I gave the Runaway Bunny a big hug last night. I hadn't talked to him in a week. He put his head on my shoulder and kept the embrace for a long time.
He smelled like dirty clothes and cigarette smoke. I remembered what he smelled like when he was a baby, and I would rock him to sleep during the worship services at our old church. He smelled faintly like cherries and baby powder then. But that was at least a hundred years ago.
It's strange to me, how much feeling and thought can be generated by a smell.
People have smells that sometimes help me know more about them. (*the reader starts backing away..."ok Rob, you're starting to scare me.")
No, really. Odors are one way in which we broadcast our activities or habits, and we never seem to be able to fully mask them. I remember the church I used to go to...the leader there put a man out of the church because, according to him, he didn't smell like a Christian. He smelled like cigarette smoke. I'm still looking for that verse in the Bible. It's pretty sad to think of that guy, screwing up his courage to go talk to this bully of a pastor for help, only to get abused for the way he smelled.
A lot of Christians at the church I'm part of smell like cigarettes. Some of them smell like aftershave, breath-mints and alcohol. Most people have no smell at all, that I can detect. And of course, we never seem to be able to smell ourselves. It makes me wonder what I smell like to others? What really fascinates me is how insecure we become when we think about how we smell. I know for myself, there is the ideal out there, the cool people of the world, who only smell good at all times. I'm not one of them. My wife will walk by and remind me that I'm not; "Your breath stinks, what did you eat?"...and automatically I will file that somewhere under "character assessments", and quietly wish I could be one of the good smelling, cool people of the world.
I gave the Runaway Bunny a big hug last night. I hadn't talked to him in a week. He put his head on my shoulder and kept the embrace for a long time.
He smelled like dirty clothes and cigarette smoke. I remembered what he smelled like when he was a baby, and I would rock him to sleep during the worship services at our old church. He smelled faintly like cherries and baby powder then. But that was at least a hundred years ago.
It's strange to me, how much feeling and thought can be generated by a smell.
posted by rob at
6:40 AM
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