Peter Levine

Apparently, it is also the case that when you get older you cannot recognize new sense as easily/at all (cannot find the link, my apologies). Learning art history or appreciation, cooking, classical music, etc. are now believed to change what you actually sense and experience. I wonder if this may prove Dr. Maturin (my all-time favorite fictional character by the way - even though I am only through "The Far Side of the World") to be somewhat correct. Since we have to attune ourselves to bother to notice such sensory inpputs as smells for which we may have no vocabulary, perhaps we have, in a manner of speaking, gone out of our way to notice them, and thus we seem to place a greater mental importance to it. I spent many morning walking from the College Park metro to Campus, but habit has blurred them each from each. Still, I can recall as I sit here how the grass smells in the morning, the smell of certain trees on the way, etc. This topic makes me long to finally finish off the Merleau-Ponty I abandoned this summer on my shelf, or perhaps, in the spirit of sensory memory, I should just drink a decent Merlot and call it even.

Interesting thoughts on smells.

I noticed that people don't always smell the same smells. One smell that I smell is decomposing food. My wife doesn't. I recall the streets of New York on hot summers days through the smell of decomposing food, in the garbage and from spills outside restaurants. I have also smelt that smell in carpets, where food has been dropped and not cleaned. I often smell that smell in the dining rooms of cruise ships, although I didn't smell it on my last cruise.

After additional phenomenological investigation, I find that I must visualize the source of an imaginary smell in order to imagine the scent. To conjure up a gasoline smell, I have to think of a gas station. Is this just me?

I don't think you "must visualize the source of an imaginary smell in order to imagine the scent". I have often smelt diesel fuel without seeing its source. That smell takes me back to B.A. and its harbor of sea going ships, and being on ships. I am sure diesel still smells the same.

Something I can not remember is the smell of cigarettes in my youth, when me parents smoked them. But I do think cigarettes smell worse today because of the substance put in them. Perhaps their worse smell is a conspiracy to get people to hate them more.

Just to be capricious, does Democracy have a scent? Perhaps if it did it would be better understood.

I imagine someday there being a scent call Democracy, sold by somebody like an Elizabeth Taylor or a greatly admired president.

This blog is under attack from comment spammers, who are causing a problem for the server. I believe I can block them by upgrading to a recent version of MoveableType. However, I do not have time to do that until late December. Therefore, I have temporarily disabled comments. Please feel free to email me feedback at plevine@umd.edu.