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I think our sense of smell is one of the most beautiful things about our bodies. You can find me standing in a pine forest, huffing cardamom, taking pics of soaps in restaurant WCs, getting a headache in the fragrance section of the bespoke homegoods store. Some art incorporates smell, such as paint that effuses the scent of shoveled soil or an orchestra accompanied by scent cannons firing plumes across the audience, but I cherish this intangible gift of ours because it’s one that mass media can’t reach. It’s amazing that it’s connected so closely to our memory -- that you can smell a cologne or the inside of a tent and instantly hallucinate a school dance or a family camping trip you forgot about or, at the very least, didn’t mean to think about so vividly today. I know this will sound privileged and silly, but as a relatively young person my biggest fear from the pandemic wasn’t death — it was losing my sense of smell. I just know that it’s something I would miss so much. It enhances taste and experience and I would go crazy without it.
here is a very incomplete list of things I think smell good:
-tomato vines
-Shoyeido friend of pine incense
-garlic, raw and cooked
-anise
-palo santo
-coffee, raw and cooked
-armpits (lemme get in there)
-briney ocean
-tennis balls
-old lifejackets
-bergamot / patchouli stuff from L:A Bruket
Mar 7, 2024
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I love smelling things in the forest or at the beach. It literally makes me feel high sometimes because it is so pleasurable. I think the sense of smell is supremely underrated and underdeveloped in humans. I really feel like an animal most of the time, so I feel like it’s important to rely on/enjoy my sense of smell like any other form of stimulation/data-collecting. I also have a VERY keen sense of smell.
May 27, 2025
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I think that walking through daily life, smell is an underappreciated and underutilized sense. Just as a beautiful sunset or bird song in the park can ignite a really pleasant feeling in us, so does getting a big breath of that humid air after a rainfall, or of a stranger’s heavy floral perfume, or the exhaust of an old passing car.
once I was walking to class, really stressed and in my head about things, and just remembering that I have this whole other sensory facility to enjoy liberated me wonderfully from the internal spiral. it smelled like rainforest in vancouver that day, as it does today.
Jan 30, 2024
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The smell of the midwestern wind takes me back to the happiest times of my life, the smell of morning coming through open windows with curtains that blow in the breeze. I’m thinking of my grandmother’s dairy farm in Cadott, Wisconsin, way way to the north of the state. The smell of a spring day. The smell of a flower. The smell of peppermint tea in the depths of winter. The sanctimonious (yes it is holy!) smell of your bed having gone unwashed, forgotten, for weeks. Good god, stop to smell the roses if you can. I just walked around my apartment smelling three things: the rosemary plant by my window (wonderful!), the donut holes sitting on the counter (they smell like how heaven must feel!), and the cajun seasoning in the cabinet over the stove (I sneezed for five minutes straight!)
Jun 10, 2025
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some people go their whole lives without experiencing something they want to do or allowing themselves to try something. the rules are made up. you are not too old for anything
6d ago
a study issued last month found that dancing is the most effective way of treating and mitigating depression. Walking, therapy, and yoga also outpaced SSRIs. and if you're saying 'oh this was probably funded by Big Dance', there's no evidence of that and if you're saying 'that's just what a Big Dance shill would say', well honey you're right
Mar 4, 2024