Tag: smell

Scents I am able to recall…

~ Live & Learn ~ 22 Comments

i can bring back certain scents from memory

maybe you can too

yesterday in a hospital room i was explaining to mom that because of his septoplasty surgery three weeks earlier he has lost his sense of smell

but I was sitting eating a banana and he was able to smell it
same thing when I walked in with a cup of coffee

i could not say that some people have the ability to summon a scent from memory
because this has not been proven yet

List of scents I can summon on demand:

  1. The scent the stem of a rose bleeds right when it’s cut.
  2. The body odor of grandmothers.
  3. The honey-sweet scent of breast milk on a baby’s warm cheeks.
  4. A banana.
  5. Coffee.
  6. Mastic.
  7. Amaretto.
  8. Leather.
  9. Tobacco, pipe Tobacco.

every scent i am able to recall is associated with a pleasant memory
i an not able to recall a scent associated with a bad memory

~ last tambourine, take it all in while you can

Notes:

  1. last tambourine = Someone we know.
  2. Photo: Marta Dzedyshko (via Pixels)

Pomodori

~ Live & Learn ~ 27 Comments

To travel is to eat. We were tucking into our lunch, which is to say Laura was munching crackers and I was eating bread and pomodori. These tomatoes tasted nothing like English tomatoes. They tasted tomatoey. I ate them one after another, the taste like a memory of childhood which actually turned out not to be a taste but a smell of taste, the reddening green smell – I had it exactly – of my Uncle Harry’s greenhouse in Shurdington where the air ripened under glass.

—  Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence

Notes:

  • Photo Source
  • Inspired by: I picked up the book after reading “Vivian Gornick: ‘I Couldn’t Finish Michelle Obama’s Becoming‘: (The Guardian, March 26, 2021): “The last book that made me laugh Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer is a brilliant book. For me, the best thing he ever wrote. A little bit of genius, it made me laugh, and laugh, and laugh.”

Spring

~ Live & Learn ~ 22 Comments

And the scent of mock orange
drifts through the window.

How can I rest?
How can I be content
when there is still
that odor in the world?

— Louise Glück, from “Mock Orange” in The Triumph of Achilles 

Notes:

Saturday Morning

~ Live & Learn ~ 23 Comments

(She) enjoyed the privilege of stillness, most days did absolutely nothing but breathe and look and hear and smell the world turning.

A self-appointed Judge of Existence.

~ Niall Williams, “This Is Happiness” (Bloomsbury Publishing; December 3, 2019)

 

Photo: Carlos Gotay (via Mennyfox55)

Saturday Morning

~ Live & Learn ~ 13 Comments

And for moments, nothing more.

Some people understand the privilege of stillness and can sit and breathe and look and hear and smell the world turning and let what’s next wait the while.

~ Niall Williams, “This Is Happiness” (Bloomsbury Publishing; December 3, 2019)

 

Photo: Levas Žiriakovas with Spring Sun