smell

This was the kack__ cradle, icky-poo__ bassinet. It was Death and Diarrhea, singing duet.

Without the wetness of your love,The fragrance of your water,Or the trickling sounds ofYour voice,I shall always feelthirsty.

Three scents accompany my memories of this place: cut wood, poppy-seed bread, and the soft, crisp smell of snow.

I pass a construction site, abandoned for the night, and a few blocks later, the playground of the elementary school my son attended, the metal sliding board gleaming under a streetlamp and the swings stirring in the breeze. There's an energy to these autumn nights that touches something primal inside of me. Something from long ago. From my childhood in western Iowa. I think of high school football games and the stadium lights blazing down on the players. I smell ripening apples, and the sour reek of beer from keg parties in the cornfields. I feel the wind in my face as I ride in the bed of an old pickup truck down a country road at night, dust swirling in the taillights and the entire span of my life yawning out ahead o me. It's the beautiful thing about youth.There's a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential. I love my life, but I haven't felt that lightness of being in ages. Autumn nights like this are as close as I get.

Tonight I can smell the season the way it's usually only possible to at the very first moments of its return, before you're used to it, when you've forgotten its smell, then there it is back in the air and the flow of things shifting and resettling again.

For all the way he loved her. Every song had her memory, every rain had her smell, and every girl had her face.

Smells, I think, may be the last thing on earth to die.

But, when nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, alone, frailer but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, on the ruin of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.

Masculine exhalations are, as a rule, stronger, more vivid,more widely differentiated than those of women. In the odor of young men there is something elemental, as of fire, storm, and salt sea. It pulsates with buoyancy and desire. It suggests all the things strong and beautiful and joyous and gives me a sense of physical happiness.

Who who whose smell in the air of her room, whose fingerprints all over her friends_ secret places.

I smell him in intervals, in varieties, in ways I don__ quite understand.

Faeces by any other name would smell as gross

... but I could also write about love. How a hand can silence thousands of voices and how someone__ smell can make you feel at home even though you__e a million miles away fromhomeand have you ever hurt someone you love? Because you__e angry. Because you__e disappointed and sad and you just really wanted to love and be loved in returnbut life got in the way and you both said things that should never be said and you__e angry but don__ know how to. Because you still feel this strange love for him, but you__e also fucking angry and you want to hit him, but then hug him because hurting him is hurting yourself, and then hit him again because you__e angry! and so you fall on your knees because you__e hopeless to yourself and your own emotionsand that__ love, my friend.

An addition that takes time to depart, and sometimes, never leaves at all. A smell, a touch, thoughts, moments, feelings, movements, words left unsaid, words barely spoken; they all have a distinct sense, distinct fragrances! .... A pungent of cinnamon, an aroma of a rose, a summer breeze, a sweet smile like a per-fume that lingers on and on... endlessly.

Well, there is a piece of famous advice, grand advice even if it is German, to forget what you can't bear. The strong can forget, can shut out history. Very good. Even if it is self-flattery to speak of strength--these aesthetic philosophers, they take a posture, but power sweeps postures away. Still, it's true you can't go on transposing one nightmare into another, Nietzsche was certainly right about that. The tender-minded must harden themselves. Is this world nothing but a barren lump of coke? No, no, but what sometimes seems a system of prevention, a denial of what every human being knows. I love my children, but I am the world to them, and bring them nightmares. I had this child by my enemy. And I love her. The sight of her, the odor of her hair, this minute, makes me tremble with love. Isn't it mysterious how I love the child of my enemy? But a man doesn't need happiness for himself. No, he can put up with any amount of torment--with recollections, with his own familiar evils, despair. And this is the unwritten history of man, his unseen, negative accomplishment, his power to do without gratification for himself provided there is something great, something into which his being, and all beings can go. He does not need meaning as long as such intensity has scope. Because then it is self-evident; it is meaning.

Artists are the flowers of our world. The best ones are those who can stand out from the crowd by becoming a memorable flower _ one that moves us, inspires us, and makes us think hard. A flower with no smell to it is just something to look at. A flower that emits a beautiful fragrance is the one we want in our homes and on our walls. Your mission as an artist, is to become the best-smelling flower in the world, so that when the day finally comes when you are plucked from the ground, the world will cry for the loss of your mind-stimulating fragrance. Be different. Be original. Nobody will remember a specific flower in garden loaded with thousands of the same yellow flower, but they will remember the one that managed to change its color to purple.

We are often given pills or fluids to help remedy illness, yet little has been taught to us about the power of smell to do the exact same thing. It is known that the scent of fresh rosemary increases memory, but this cure for memory loss is not divulged by doctors to help the elderly. I also know that the most effective use of the blue lotus flower is not from its dilution with wine or tea _ but from its scent. To really maximize the positive effects of the blue lily (or the pink lotus), it must be sniffed within minutes of plucking. This is why it is frequently shown being sniffed by my ancient ancestors on the walls of temples and on papyrus. Even countries across the Orient share the same imagery. The sacred lotus not only creates a relaxing sensation of euphoria, and increases vibrations of the heart, but also triggers genetic memory - and good memory with an awakened heart ushers wisdom.

We are taught to think ourselves ugly. Eyes are an assaulted sense. We are taught to behave by spankings and whippings. Touch is an assaulted sense. We are taught we should not smell, or we smell wrong. Smell is an assaulted sense. We listen to songs that call us 'hos and tell us how to give blow jobs. Hearing is an assaulted sense. Taste, not so much.