Intoxicate me

I’ve written this several times before, one way or other: I’m easily affected by smells and fragrances.

When I was walking home tonight, in the middle of the night after a very warm day, I was overcome by smells. They surrounded me, filled me, took charge of me… I laughed out loud, so strongly did it affect me.

It smelled of flowers and receding heat, of warm grass soon to be touched by the mild dew. Lund is a flowering city, there’s flowers everywhere. I love living here.

As always, when I’ve been walking through the fragrant night, I’m affected. It’s like… Well. I don’t see all my senses as rating equally. I enjoy my hearing. I like music. But I can live without my hearing. Really. Toucch is a lovely, fantastic hting, that I'd hate to lose, but it's not how I primarily percieve the world. Eyesight on the other hand… Much more important. How else to judge text and art? Sooo important to me in the way I perceive the world. Smell though (and taste is basically the same thing) works like a memory trigger, a Madeleine cake.

My memory this time wasn’t terribly specific. It was more a feeling. A feeling that I’ve walked in that kind of smell, in a similar kind of temperature, next to someone I like, someone who I didn’t have the license to touch just yet. Imagine that it’s about half an hour before the first touch. You want to touch the other person, but it’s totally out of the question. For now. You can walk down the street together though. Walk down the street, next to each other. Close. So close that you can feel the naturally generated electricity in the other persons body. You’re the anode, the other person’s the cathode. You’re being drawn, pulled, towards each other. The electricity dancing between you is very nearly tangible. When – by chance – the hairs on your arm brush against the other, you could swear there was a spark… You walk closely together to feel the heat emanating from the other, to try to smell the other person’s body without being too obvious about it…

I’ve been there.

As I was walking down the street, I wished I were there again, slowly being intoxicated by your pheromones.

The smell of tonight is the fragrance of tomorrow, and of today

As I was walking home last night, well after nightfall, the city smelled of summer night. That was the first of this year.

It’s the days accumulated flowers, it’s the laughter that still lingers, it’s the cobblestones eagerly awaiting tomorrow’s dew.

Another take on Proust

I experienced a smell related memory today.

As I sat on the tram, on my way to work, a little old, very grey, lady sat down next to me. She is probably one of those little old ladies who constantly smoke. She was all grey; her coat was grey, her hair was grey, her skin was grey. Grey like smoke.

She smelt like smoke too. She was covered in the smell, the smell was so strong, it was like she had marinated in it for a very long time.

She reminded me of Denmark.

When I was little, I used to go with my family to Denmark for the holidays. We used to stay in small hotels and B&Bs. They were all brown (it was the late seventies/early eighties, after all) and smelt in a particular way. Of cigarettes and very pink Danish salami. The smell was very distinct.

The grey lady reminded me of that.

Madeleine cake, Japanese style

I just had a Proustian moment.

I was sitting at a bench, outdoors in the sun, lots of lovely spring sounds around me, and a smell of grass. The water lilies in the pond in front of me were just opening up to the sun.

I was having the miso soup that came with my take away sushi lunch, straight from the cup. I was enjoying it, very much, but suddenly I thought: "Why aren't there any little pieces of tofu in here?". Then I remembered that they never put tofu in the soup, and realised that it was a taste triggered memory. I was remembering the first time I had miso soup. It was in a lovely flat in Potsdam, outside of Berlin, round about this time of year, a couple of years back. I was visiting my then lover, an amazing man, quite a few years older than myself. I remembered how much he taught me. About me, about him, about people, about life, about food, about enjoying the moment, about living, about yoga, about sensuality, about crying, about laughing, about beauty, about minds, about bodies, about touching, about taking pleasure, about giving pleasure, about dancing, about courage, about work, about play, about giving, and about taking. I was better at certain kinds of giving than others, and certain kinds of taking than others, so there was a bit of an imbalance between the two of us.

At the time, I didn't have a very good idea of who I was, I as still finding out, and didn't take to kindly to his attempts at showing me these things, as I felt that he was trying to influence, change, me. I wanted to do the changing, the finding out, for myself.

Today, I can see how much he really did influence me. And what a good thing that is. That was a lovely spring. And lovely miso soup.

Green

There is a smell of grass outdoors. Newly mown grass.
It smells like my childhood.

It almost brings tears to my eyes.