Sense of Smell
Over the past weeks, after following Chat-GPTs recommendation of reading the book Perfume by Jean-Claude Ellena, I have been training my sense of smell, or perhaps more precisely, my olfactive memory.
Nils regularly helps me by handing me random bottles of different odorous materials that I collected over the months – 40 – 50 different essential oils, absolutes and resins – and then noting my closed-eye descriptions and best guesses for the names.
Initially, I couldn't even recognize Rose absolute, but by now I can safely tell whether a Vetiver oil comes from Haiti, India, or China.
I am also almost finished with reading Mandy Aftel's book Essence and Alchemy, which I thoroughly enjoyed and which has strongly influenced my way of thinking about natural aromatic materials.
It feels good to be able to offer almost any type of natural fragrance to the people I love. If you have any unfulfilled wish regarding fragrance, you are very welcome to reach out, I am open to new challenges.
And I deeply enjoy my new curiosity and sensitivity for odour.
Surprisingly, the nose is not limiting our sensitivity, it's the Olfactory Bulb and other parts of the brain. All of my new-found enjoyment of scents has come from making new and breaking old connections in my brain.
The scent of lemon, for example, is widely associated with the scent of cleaning products. It is so omnipresent that even far away from lemon trees, there is nothing special about it anymore.
But once you break away from these associations, once you simply pay attention to the scent itself, it is quite marvellous.
Just a few weeks ago, standing in a supermarket, pressing my fingernail into the rind of a lemon and smelling it, I was filled with joy as never before when smelling a lemon.
This was not because this was the best lemon I ever held in my hands, or because my nose has become more sensitive. It was simply because I didn't think of a toilet, I simply paid attention.