The Sense of Smell
As I posted earlier, before working on the EVP section of my book, I re-read A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman for inspiration. Great, great, book. She has a section for each of the five senses, but the best section by far is the one about the sense of smell. It’s just such a poweful thing.
And this memory popped into my head, of a toy from my childhood. Super Elastic Bubble Plastic. You’d put this gooky stuff on the end of a small, plastic tube and blow up very fragile balloon bubble things. Except I could never quite get it to work. Maybe I blew up a few delicate balloons. But the smell. It’s the smell of childhood. I remember our house, our porch, the lawn, our dog, everything.
So, I bought this cheap, knock-off in a drugstore. It was very satisfying. It still doesn’t really work, but the smell is exactly the same. I love smelling things from my childhood. Like playdough. They are comfort smells.
(The picture is from a website called http://www.bigredtoybox.com)
This doesn’t even begin to capture the ethereal beauty of this window. It’s for a children’s clothes store on Bleeker between Perry and 11th Street. It’s stunning in person.
Some people are probably going to get sick of my Christmas shots. This is the library at 42nd Street. I was there on Saturday doing research. By the way, as I was heading up there I was thinking I was insane to go there on a Saturday, and it was insanely packed, but with people looking around, not with people doing research. I was actually in and out faster than usual. Found almost everything I needed. It was a good day.
As you can see, Finney is foregoing ornament destroyage and going straight for the branches. Here he is, chomping on a branch. Chomp, chomp, chomp. Well, you can’t kill it evil little fur-dude, because IT NEVER LIVED.
The streets all around my block (but not MY block) have been decorated. It looks really pretty. Who did this?? This is Waverly something. (I’ve lived here 30 years and I still don’t have the streets straight.)