What's that Smell?

Some smells are standard points of reference. When I say, “chocolate chip cookies in the oven,” or “do you smell smoke?” it draws on a common mental experience in the same way that if I were to say, “nails on a chalkboard go ‘SQUEEEE’.” For both archetypal smell and sound, there’s a common concept pops into our minds, even if the details get pinballed around our personal interpretations. But most of the time when we’re sniffing somethin’, whatever we’re processing is much more complex than that. We’re working through a Tetris set of olfactory tones that build upon one another and make up a unique air wave that reaches our noses; and it totally frames the way we relate to a person or a place. What I want to know is why is that air wave so nearly impossible to describe in anything beyond metaphor or personal interpretation; why is a smelly air wave impossible for someone else to ride on? (Insert fart joke here, but then let’s move on to dissecting the question, shall we?)

I’ll give you an example. I grew up doing martial arts in a tiny, tiny square studio rented to the karate school by a church. The floors were matted with large, spongey puzzle pieces – red and white – that absorbed our skin, sweat, and determination over the years. The first thing I can remember about that place is how it smelled. But I feel at a loss for the olfactory sensations that shaped my childhood because I don’t know how to bring you into the experience like I could bring you into the room visually. I can welcome you into the 20’ x 20’ foot room with industrial ceiling fixtures and beige, textured wallpaper; the waist-high red trimming racing the perimeter of the room, breaking for the grey closet doors opposite the front of the room hosting pictures of Jesus and my karate teacher in a perfectly vertical kick into the air (just to be clear, these are two separate pictures - my karate teacher doing the kick; Jesus chillin’ and proudly watching us beat the hell out of each other).

This is the first smell I think of when I think of my childhood. And the best way I could describe that room’s smell is “feet.” Not suffocating-in-a-9-hour-shift-workboot feet, but young, unsullied, unjaded feet that ran barefoot through a meadow to get to the class on time. It was a sweet smell that trails childhood baked into the walls and mats of the room. My karate teacher's cologne swirled into the equation as well. It smelled like safety, strength, confidence, and royalty. Every time I ever catch a draft of someone wearing a similar scent, no matter how foreign the context, I am shot back in time and space to pinning some kid on the mat or sitting in those cold metal chairs in the corner of the room, confiding in my teacher about (fill in the blank here with whatever a neurotic 13-year-old would be fretting over on a given Wednesday evening). So, unless you got distracted by a dog video mid-read, I know you’re more or less with me in this experience. But what is driving me nuts is that as eloquent and evocative as that description or any other could have been, I can’t fully bring you into literal understanding of what that place actually smells like. “Safety, strength, and royalty” and the feelings they evoked in me are as close as I can get, but they might mean something completely different to you. We use references like “smells like home” or “smells like a rainy forest;” but why don't we have everyday descriptive vocabulary for smell as we do for sight or taste or sound?

Here’s another instance: Until I was seven, I spent most mornings and afternoons with a family friend and her daughter in their one-story, cozy-carpeted home. This place was my second home, and its smell nestled around me – I want to say like a cozy blanket, but it was Florida and there were only 9 days a year that a blanket would really be called “cozy” and not “stuffy, extraneous death cloth” – but that coziness was the smell. Maybe I could tell you that it smelled of dust particles that floated dreamily past the large front window; it smelled of creativity, often in the form of Crayola products; tough but profound love; and occasionally of fabulous Cuban chicken and rice. But try as I might, I cannot suck you in precisely, olfactorily.

We have this entire world – a connection to memories and personalities connected to our faces, but no way to share it, express it, or recall it until it smacks us in the nose with a gust of wind and sends us tumbling into the tunnels of our memories. Part of the challenge is that you might get that same smack of smell, but be sent into a completely parallel universe of your own recall. Riding the same wave, I might be shoved into the third row of my college interfaith and ecology class and you might find yourself playing backyard basketball with your neighbor and their cross-eyed labradoodle. When we come back to reality, the common bond is that smell, but neither one of us can actually describe the unique blend of musk and cologne, only the memory to which it catapulted us. And do not get me started on why we cannot smell our own personal smells. Everyone has one and I think it a cruel trick of nature that we do not have the capacity to know our own. But that is a discussion for another time.

Once, someone asked “What’s that smell?” And without really paying too much thought, I responded, “Smells like my grandma is cooking old tomatoes.” I’m quite certain that wasn’t really helpful, or relevant to the person who was asking the question. And yet, it was the most precise answer I could have given. I had no vocabulary to explain, beyond simile, the combination of warm acidity and overly sweet yet inaccurate nod to my grandmother’s perfume that is no longer in production.

Is this unique to just smells? I guess some music throws us back into memories, but no one really responds to “what was that noise?” with, “I think it’s traffic, but I’m not sure - it sounds like the traffic of my childhood”. We can get literal with food: pound cake that starts out heavy, not too sweet and a would be somewhat bland if not for the slight hints of citrus from the orange peel, then melts into a river of buttery pudding as it dissolves in your mouth. I suppose you could make this argument to some extent with all sensory experiences – how do we know if we’re actually aligned in our enjoyment of a piece of fruit or a fireworks display? Or maybe the nostrils are actually wormhole portals – secret gateways to zillions of different universes of different sensory experiences in which we are both simultaneously here, and relatively in college or in your neighbor’s backyard in an intense game of half-court basketball; universes in which you hear a motorcycle on a highway and I hear a rocket siren starting up; universes in which I would add cilantro to every meal of every day and you would have me shot.

Usually with my writing I aspire to arrive at some philosophical conclusion that will guide my actions for the rest of the week, but the smells conundrum has been bugging me for a long time (or times, if you’re down with my wormhole theory). This time, I seem to be only asking questions and arriving at no answers. And now that I’ve opened up the wormhole, I seem to have made myself hungry for a cilantro salad and homemade chocolate chip cookies, which I plan to enjoy before the world implodes. I’ll let you know how they turn out…if I find the words…