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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!)
2d ago
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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 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
🌳
First thing in the morning I open my widow, press my nose into the screen, and take a big inhale. Taking this pause to breathe reminds me to be grateful for the things we can sometimes overlook, like the gift of clean(ish) air. One of my favorite smells is that of moist summer air through a window screen. Not sure if anyone else can relate to that, but it’s something I’m looking forward to smelling during this morning ritual.
May 7, 2025
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made a joke post on substack notes that i honestly still think is pretty funny but it turns out it went whoosh right over a lot of peoples' heads, especially on twitter people thought it was serious,—and so here i am with my phone blowing up because friends and people i haven't heard from in years are just seeing it on their feeds and texting me allll about it
Sep 9, 2024
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this feels like a crazy little window of time in which everyone on this app is cool,
i'd follow anybody here honestly
Jan 27, 2024
Sep 17, 2024