Smellevision

I learned from my 98 year old friend Anita Long, that there was a famous bar at my corner years ago. I can still smell it I tell her. On hot humid days the old urine wafts up from the cement sidewalk in the alley under my window. I have tried everything to bleach it out. Now I laugh.

In Summer I can't walk through any neighborhood where the garbage truck has left the trail of leaking garbage 'soup' without gagging. My husband laughs at me "Just block your nose!" He says.

Any molecule of cat urine sets me off too. It might as well be radioactive waste. Yet, I love to sniff my cats scented whisker pouches, my dogs fur after sitting near a wood stove. I love to sniff my pillow. I love the scent of moth balls, and cedar chests, fresh coffee, black blueberry tea, and my husband's neck when he is grilling meat over the hardwood charcoal. I love the scent of baking bread. I love the smell of the fertilizer aisle in the hardware store, and new shoes. I loathe the scent of cologne and perfume unless it is diluted. I love the scent of a freshly lit match at the beach. Or the fresh scent of newly blown out birthday candles and cap guns. I love the scent of bleach at the butcher shop at clean up time.

I love the scent of paper leather bound books. I love the scent of seaweed and salt water. I love scent of vinyl seats in a NYC taxi cab. I love the machine oil scent of subway tracks in winter. As a child I loved the scent of my fathers face when coming home from the train station in winter. He smelled like newspapers and cold air. I loved my mother's Ma Griffe perfume when she had been out to dinner. I loved the scent of bath oil. I love the scent of dog breath and a baby's scalp. I love the scent of cardboard.

I love the scent of Murphy's Oil Soap and imitation green apple scented dish detergent.

I love the scent of ceramic studios, oil painting studios, wood shops, and glass blowing furnaces.

Most of all I love the scent of pens and paper. Love the smell of my dashboard of my old blue Volkswagen super beetle that I learned to drive on. I was told horsehair was responsible for the distinctive scent. I do love the smell of hay and horses.

I love the smell of tractor tires and the hot metal seat, baked in the sun.

Neighborhoods used to be filled with common scents; making home made pickles, boiling cabbage, baking beans and pies muffins and roasts on weekends and Italian bakeries.

My friend told me his puppies paws smelled like corn chips. it was true.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/opinion/summer-in-new-york-season-of-smell.html
Summer in New York, Season of Smell

from Jon Frankel:Smell is very important, yes. And I have done a lot of thinking about how urban dwellers navigate their environment using smell, as of course all people do. If you put a manhattanite down in the rain forest, or the Australian outback, they’d be lost. But on the streets of manhattan, with the eyes closed, you can tell the difference between an Italian bakery and a bagel bakery, between pizza and egg rolls, between dry cleaners and street sweepers, garbage and shit, a fish store and a produce stand, a newsstand and a bookstore. Sometimes it’s human urine that reeks on a hot night, but it’s also dog urine which stains the curbs, hydrant, light poles. If there are feral cats, it’s a different smell. And then there are the smells of steam radiators, roaches and mice. Of chlorine bleach, ammonia and lemon cleaner. Once, walking in the hall at the library, a young woman walked by, very beautiful but very young, and she smelled like bubblegum and perfume! How enticing, how mixed the signal…

A guy I worked with told me he had a reaction to medication after his appendectimy. He said his food smelled and tasted like plastic so he couldn't eat. I always imagine that's what is in those weight loss drops.