love you, stinkpots

Yow! Happy Valentine’s Day! What could be more romantic than the removal of the toilet in your home, exposing a vast waste-well that dwells just beneath the floor? It is tremendous, really, the smell of so much waste, and contrary to my hyperbolic moans and groans, and the speed with which I fled the scene, I suppose I still believe it is good to be reminded, once in a while, of the shit just beneath the antiseptic pink bathroom tiles. And this shit, forced as it is to linger in the city, underneath so much concrete, confronts with such force precisely because it is indoors, doesn’t even have the benefit of being surrounded on all sides by trees and breeze and grass and dirt and the shit of other animals, powering up the plants that fuel our future shits. [Updated to add: The source of the ongoing toilet drama turns out to be tree roots growing into, and blocking, the pipes. Know our power!, say the mighty trees, even as we rip out their roots.]

I smelled many amazing things in January. Some highlights:

Sniffin' hard

• Early in January, my new friend Mario, who has been incredibly generous with his amazing olfactory knowledge, invited me to a cupping at the Starbucks Farmers' Training Center in Kigali. It was great fun to play around with the coffee notes kits, to sniff and slurp freshly-roasted coffee with expert cuppers, and to gain insight into how professional noses approach coffee. Mario stressed the importance of being able to differentiate between preference and description, something I struggle with when approaching complex aromas. My nose zooms right in on the notes I love (chocolate, maple syrup, and toast when it comes to the coffee I'm drinking most often these days), and I want to work on sussing out those notes that I don’t love so well.
  
  
  

  

  Mario in his element

•  Mario, pictured above with an in-bloom coffee tree growing in his front yard, is also responsible for introducing me to the smell of a coffee flower. It was so beautiful! It smelled of jasmine and lilac, two flowers I adore, and I was swooning at the thought of encountering whole fields of these. Mario and Lucius, resident coffee geniuses, have both spent loads of time in just such fields, and their descriptions have propelled coffee-field-in-bloom to the top of my travel wishlist. 
• I learned that the heady, crazy-making flowers in the previous post are called brugmansia, or, in Kinyarwanda, ikigogo/ikijojo, and that they can legitimately make you mad. (Thanks to Elizabeth and Diana for sharing your plant wisdom.)  

  

  Ice-chip-sized hail!

• In late January, there was a freak hailstorm in Butare, amidst day after day of sunshine and near-90s weather. The ground near the National University was steaming as the huge pieces of hail melted, and this seemed to set off every fragrant plant in the area—my husband and I could smell blasts of eucalyptus and lemongrass from the car even with the windows rolled up. There was also a super-intense curry-like smell that reminded me very much of asafoetida. We found the scratchy little leaves that were giving off the hing-smell, and I'll endeavor to find out what the plant is called (when the leaves dried, they smelled much fruitier, almost plummy or currant-like. Nature is nuts!).

In spite of the hail, it's the short dry season in Rwanda, and this means the return of what I've come to think of as dusty B.O. The hot sun leads to sweatier humans, to be sure, but I think there's a particular bite to the B.O. that's mixing with so much kicked-up dust. It’s one of the first smell-changes I noticed in myself when I arrived in dusty Kigali last summer. I want to learn to embrace elements of this powerful stink, to again distinguish between preference and description, and to fight against the fact that I was, like many Americans, “born with deodorant in [my] hand.” (Click that link for great interview with Sissel Tolaas in Swallow magazine.) To understand a place, to know a person, you must smell them at their worst. Not that I think it’s possible to understand anywhere, to really know anyone, but the joy comes in the endeavor, the trek through all that shit.

new year, new smells

Mwaka Mushya, Nosy Readers! I've neglected this space lately, but I’m still experiencing all sorts of new smells in Rwanda. We’ve relocated from Kigali to Huye/Butare, where the dusty red roads, rows of semi-abandoned storefronts, and legitimate cowboys give the place a real Wild West feel. But the people are warm, and Butare is home to the best ice cream and coffee in all of Rwanda (more on both in later posts), so it’s a good move. I will be back with new Nosy Interviews soon, but in the meantime, here are some of the best and worst things I’ve smelled in the last few weeks:

The best:

Image via Mallee Native Plants

1. Eucalyptus seeds! Have you ever seen these? They look like darling vintage buttons, bell-shaped and clustered together, their star-shaped openings secreting the stickiest rich sweet smell of their seeds. I’ve had a dried cluster on my desk for a couple of weeks, and it still yields its plummy (more in terms of the color of the smell than the actual smell), tangy, resinous scent. Let’s hope I don’t get one of these gum nuts stuck in my nostril.

   

   (so overwhelmed by the scent that I've gone blurry)

2. These yellow bell flowers! Their smell is totally insane! (That’s me above, standing under them, drunk with delight. Does anyone know what these are? I must get myself a field guide.) These bloom at dusk and in the evenings and they will give you a new understanding of the word intoxicating, their sexy indolic smell enough to make you wish to become one of the bugs or birds that goes bell to bell, helping these plants propagate.

   

   An inyambo gets scented up 

3. It’s been far too long since we’ve discussed manure around these parts. I recently smelled some very fine dried and burning cow dung (royal cow dung) in Nyanza, where the royal herd is kept. The herders burn a huge stack of dried dung to keep flies away from the cows, and these majestic (and smart!) creatures come over and stand inches from the fire to season their skin with the smoke, and make its fly-repellent power last.

The worst:

1. Burning tires/garbage still holds my top-spot for smells I like least in Rwanda. On a walk, my dear friend D. mentioned how the smell reminds her of her childhood, and because of this, she likes it. People are often surprised to learn that others like smells they consider gross: manure, gasoline, skunks. This might be the first time I joined in such surprise, and even though the odor of burning tires still makes me want to gag, I do think of it a bit differently since she shared her nostalgia with me.
2. A new contender for grossest smell in Rwanda is the sausage-like aroma that rises up from one of the toilets in our new place (Welcome/warning, future houseguests!). Yesterday I think I came closest to an accurate description when I described it as ‘hot-rot turkey carcass.’ We’re working on it (both getting rid of the smell (me & my husband) and figuring out how best to describe it (mostly me, as he doesn’t think it’s quite as bad as I do—hopefully future houseguests will find they agree with him.)).

I’ll be back soon with some recommended reading and more notes on smells, but in the meantime, I’d love to hear about the best and worst things you’ve smelled so far in 2014.

your breath smells in the news

In last week's issue of New York magazine, Jason Feifer tests the Topland Etiquette Checker, a personal breath-stank analyzer that uses a smiley face system to rank your mouth on a scale from "infinitely kissable maw" to "dead animal baking in the summer sun." Feifer "soiled his mouth with garlicky onion dip and coffee," used a series of "masking agents" including gum, mints, mouthwashes, strips, natural remedies, and whiskey, and subjected first the Etiquette Checker, then his wife, to the waft. You can check out a chart detailing the results, and the verdict (a the machine deviated 43% from Feifer's wife!) here. I'm so curious about this project. How many days did it take? Did Feifer use these masking agents in the order listed? How many did his wife smell in one sitting?
 

Screencaps via Jezebel and Huffington Post

In other smell-your-loved-ones'-breath news, Honey Boo Boo Child (aka Alana Thompson) & family recently participated in what Tracie Egan Morrissey delightfully described as "an interesting parlor game" called Guess Whose Breath. You can watch the clip here (scroll down to the second, smaller video screen) and if you're in the mood for more but need a little nudge, let Rachel Shukert convince you that "your mind is [not] too beautiful to sully with the Victorian freak show that is modern American television" in her compelling essay on how the fascinating Thompson family provides "a reflection of the classic immigrant experience."

In still timelier breath news, when I went looking for the Neil deGrasse Tyson tweet screencapped above, the first thing I saw in my twitter feed was an assertion that "Romney breath smell like canned yams and taco meat," as speculated by @seanverde and re-tweeted by Heems of Das Racist (@HIMANSHU), who is, at the time of this writing, on a real Romney smells tear, RT-ing lots of poop & bullshit-themed tweets, but also speculation that Romney might smell like crayons, gravy, mildew, or Cheetos. And there are so many post-debate tweets about Romney's smell and breath to choose from (balloon air, baking soda, old bath water, Lay's Dill Pickles + Spicy Ketchup--these all come from real tweets)! As @silvyysilv says,"ppl are going ham on Romney breath."

stinky springtime links

image via

Some fresh stinky tidbits to send you into your weekend (May it be fragrant!):

• Hitting right in the sweet spot of Nosy Girl's Smells & Stories Venn diagram is this New York Times piece, "Your Brain on Fiction:" 

"Words like 'lavender,' 'cinnamon' and 'soap,' for example, elicit a response not only from the language-processing areas of our brains, but also those devoted to dealing with smells."

• Also squarely in that sweet spot, a beautiful, pertinent passage from The Art of Fielding, a book I finished yesterday and highly recommend: 

  "He could smell the way Owen's life and habits--weed and gingery cleaners; bookbinding glue, stiff white soap and garlicky tang of his skin; hardly a trace of Henry except for a faint bouquet of ribbed gray sock--had imagined themselves deep in the walls and floorboards of the place."  

• Nosy favorite D.S. & Durga gives New York magazine a peek at their studio. I love the details and the promise of those tiny bottles. Woodyamber! Beaver extract!  

 The makings of East MidEast must be on those shelves somewhere! [photo by Wendy Goodman]

• In a column called "Politics, Odors and Soap," Nicholas Kristof mentions a study that found people "offered harsher, more moralistic views after 'fart spray' had been released in the area."  He also notes that conservatives "secrete more skin moisture when they see disgusting images, such as a person eating worms. Liberals feel disgust, too, but a bit less." Does this make for sour-smelling conservatives who grow harsher and more moralistic in the company of their sour-smelling brethren?
• Do you read the blog Letters of Note? They recently posted a letter of advice, well worth a read, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to his daughter. The letter referenced Shakespeare's Sonnet 94 and this couplet burrowed into my brain: "For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds/Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." 
• Thanks to Britta, Beth, & my dad for these last quick links:
• Astronauts lose their sense of smell in outer space (so they crave hot sauce and look like Charlie Brown).  
• Hot on the heels of their story that spicy foods may promote heart health, NPR reported that "intense aromas lead to smaller bites." This story does not address the inverse phenomenon of instantly needing to take a giant bite of anything yummy that you smell.
• The pope gets his own fragrance, and you'll never wear it!

mysterious odors of unknown origins

Bad news about the lightsabers. [image via]

After seeing the above graphic in this week's New York magazine, I immediately got to googling, but the news I found didn't yield much additional information about the stink at Staples: 

TWO PEOPLE OVERCOME BY MYSTERIOUS SMELL IN GREENWICH VILLAGE STAPLES  
by Andrea Swalec and Wil Cruz

GREENWICH VILLAGE — Paramedics treated two people after they were overcome by a mysterious odor in a Staples store Wednesday, fire officials said.

Firefighters responded to reports of the smell in the store at 769 Broadway, at East 9th Street, just after 9:15 a.m.

The two people were treated on the scene for smoke inhalation, but were not transported to the hospital.

The cause of the smell was unknown.

Business was back to normal a short time later at Staples.

"The store did not close," manager Daniel Elliott said.

Calls to Staples' corporate offices were not immediately returned.

Call again, Andrea Swalec and Wil Cruz! This mysterious odor, with unknown origins, demands additional description. I tried to think of the weirdest things I've smelled at my local Staples, but the scent of hot copiers and new office chairs dominates. Surely, a smell that required medical attention must be worthy of a few adjectives beyond "mysterious" and "unknown." The shoppers were overcome!

The search term "unidentified odor" returns fewer Google results than I would have expected: a relatively modest 6,400. "Mysterious odor" is more common, with almost 53,000 results, including this one, about a "widespread and mildly irritating odor." What mildly irritates me is the lack of even a gesture towards describing the smells in these news stories. I thought reporters loved a good, gross quote. What was the smell like? Was it human or elemental?  Human and elemental? Sulfurous? Chemical? Medicinal? Like death? Did it have a color? That sticky fuchsia of some cough medicines? Was it putrid or acrid? Stale or just shat? Was it rotten? Or sharp in a way that scraped at your nose hairs? We don't know how to talk about smell, but isn't it better to try?

a modern girl

I thought the dogs would chase me around Fresh Pond tonight. In e-mails, women often confess that they, too, like the smells associated with menstruation (but few say so in the comments).

On Friday, I smelled Kiki Smith's perfume at the ICA and it was enormous. It was juicy and purple and rotted--something much too sweet that had just turned but wouldn't quit with its blooming. In some ways its insistence was awful, but we all kept leaning in to smell one anothers' hands and agree it was much too much. I didn't know until I looked it up just now that she was inspired by the smells of "cat pee and plant sex."

 "Born," Kiki Smith [via]

In December, I scandalized a small cluster of people at a holiday party by admitting that I preferred not to shower every day. They shocked me in turn with their disbelief, their small shudders.

Earlier today I was reading Carrie Brownstein's piece about bearded toothlessness in indie rock, lamenting  "wit and heart [without] bite." Why should we smell nice all the time? Or at all? It's true that sometimes I wish to smell like a buttery angel, but it's also true that I should sometimes stink, smell decay, be fearless, or at least less afraid of "volume, ugliness, and bombast," whether I'm breathing it in or giving it off.

bad smell, good news

         via (I have chosen some well-manicured toes here, but can't recommend
        that you get too deep into google image results for foot cheese.) 

It's not every day bad smells get good press, but did you read the news of how the odor of stinky feet might be used to fight malaria? Fifteen years ago, a Dutch scientist discovered, by standing naked in a dark room and recording where he got bit by mosquitoes, that the bloodsuckers loved his stinky feet. Now Dr. Okumu, a Kenyan scientist working in Tanzania, has built on that discovery by developing the most effective footstinky blend of chemicals to lure mosquitoes, and he's working on incorporating the stench into an affordable trap.

I can imagine what this device might smell like (clipped big toenail times two thousand?), but will freely reveal the extent of my interest in stink and say that I would also be curious to actually smell one of the traps. In the meantime, if you're inclined to do something other than sniff your gym socks and toenail cheese, might I direct you towards Nothing But Nets? According to the Gates Foundation (one of the groups funding Okumu's research) a child under the age of 5 dies from malaria--a preventable, treatable disease--every thirty seconds. If you buy a net and let me know your address, I'll send you something that smells good in the mail.

summerfester

 [image via]

I'd hoped to kick off Pie Week around these parts, as tomorrow's Nosy Interview is a pie wizard (and the smell of pie in the oven, particularly my mom's rhubarb pie, is one of my favorite food smells for sure), but it has been too hot in Boston to bake pies. It's not just the foolhardy notion of further heating up an already sweltering apartment, it's also the fact that pie crust and I share a reaction to humidity: it brings out the worst in us.

Also keeping me from my kitchen is a sink/dishwasher issue so disgusting that the repairman who came this morning told me that this was one of the "top worst smells" he'd ever encountered, and that he was surprised he didn't "toss" (tossing is underutilized as far as synonyms for vomiting go, no?). This is a man who, as he explained to me in perhaps slightly too rich detail, once lost an entire entertainment system to rogue fecal water that had come up through his bathtub. Needless to say, I'm writing from a secure location. But I trust that your kitchen smells much better than mine at the moment, and that, as far as your visits to the nosy blog go, you'll bear with me through the bad smells, too.