Wake up and smell the coffee y’all. Then, take some time to smell the roses.
Odor, fragrance, aroma; each elicit an emotion, sometimes a big emotion. The word “odor,” itself connotes something repellent and negative, whereas the word, “fragrance,” makes you smile and want.
Smells are funny things, figuratively, but sometimes literally. Are you of the age that you recall the image of the French cartoon skunk, Pepe Le Pew, from Looney Tunes?
When I was growing up, I vividly remember that my parents were away somewhere and we three girls were home, when a skunk got under our sun-porch and lit up the entire place with its defensive stink. I recall some tomato juice and maybe one of the many dogs we had over the years.
Smells bring back memories. What aromas trigger you?
For most people, food aromas are probably the most triggering. If you smell it either you want it or you repulsively do not. Cabbage, onions, garlic, and spoiled or rotted foods tend to elicit the negative in a sizeable number of people.
Bakeries nearly universally draw people into their perfumery. Realtors traditionally suggested that sellers bake a batch of cookies before showing a house. Why? Because prospective buyers feel like “this could be our home.” Nothing triggers wanting, more than the smell of freshly baked bread, pastry, pie, cake, cookies and more.
…Unless it’s perfume from its many sources. Flowers are not only a delight to the sight, but many of them also either smell good or we think they do. Whether certain flowers have a poignant smell or not, we instinctively go for the nose test.
“It smells like rain,” people say. It’s surely not rain itself, but the reaction of rain on earth, dirt, or soil, that births that unmistakable smell of rain. However, damp also has a not so pleasant smell, i.e. wet dog or wet cat, mildew and the “basement” smell.
The beach and the swimming pools chlorine smell is a distinct summer smell. If you live rurally, freshly cut grass or hay gives most people a sort of boost of freshness, “ah-achoo” and gesundheit to you.
I’m thankful that all my senses are intact and fully operational. There was that bout of COVID-caused phantosmia, where I frequently smelled non-existent meat, which has flown the coup by now.
If I were to lose my senses of taste, hearing, smell, sight, or touch, I would hope I would develop grace to adapt, but I’m not so sure. I truly feel compassion toward people who live without the beauty of any one of their senses. I’m sorry, folks.
Seals and Crofts 1972 song, “Summer Breeze,” confirms in a pleasant way, that smells are firmly linked with memories. It could be said that we smell with our minds. “Summer breeze makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind.”
What if I couldn’t smell jasmine, gardenia, honeysuckle, sweet peas, lavender or lilac? It’s not ideal, but in a pinch, we could describe the smell, with another smell. The candle industry has capitalized on our ability to describe a scent via simile.
When something is described as “like” something else, not something that stands entirely on its own, our language calls it a simile, a word that literally translates as “like.” It is a fact that most of our smell words are linked to their source, i.e. “it smells like apple pie.”
Of course, our perceptions of aromas vary widely from individual to individual. This is because we’ve had different experiences with the same scent, and the context in which we detect different odors is key to our response to that smell.
The sense of smell is a potent emotional trigger. For example, to some of us, certain flower scents remind us of “funeral flowers,” and elicit a sort of generalized sadness or dread. But to others, those same scents remind them of “bathroom spray,” and might just make them giggle.
On occasion, my husband’s coffee clearly smells like skunk. I’m not kidding. And he doesn’t even partake in civet coffee or cat poop coffee, made from the treasured exotic beans which pass through the digestive tract of the Asian palm civet and are collected from their feces!
Burn some coffee grounds people, it even scares away mosquitoes. Just saying.
When smell is an odor, we try to get rid of it, thus the concept of DE-ODORANT, “odor eaters,” and highly commercial fragrance masks such as aerosol sprays, oils, perfume, candles, and such. Why do you suppose that the smell of money is usually described as a stench?
Our perception of the smell of money as good or bad is probably about as varied among people as our perception of smell itself. Good to you, may be bad to me, etc.
Take manure, for example. The occasional manure smell is a part of our rural Pennsylvania aromascape. It is lovingly spread atop many farm fields to enrich the soil and produce all that farm basket, farm-to-table food everybody loves. I’ll wager a bet that even AOC, the “cow-hater,” has eaten some fancy “farm-to-table, organic” food, which wasn’t produced without some stench involved.
Christ himself has been described as an aroma. And certain fragrances are said to be pleasing to God. What’s your smell simile?