Nosy Interview: Sierra Nelson

Sierra (photographed by Rebecca Hoogs) in A Beautiful Boomerang Nebula, © Hubble Heritage Team 

Sierra's praises are sung so sincerely by Seattleites I hold dear that it is easy to feel fond of her despite the fact that we've not yet met. She seems to possess that rare stripe of real kindness that radiates even via e-mail. I Take Back the Sponge Cake, her poetry and art choose-your-own-adventure book collaboration with the artist Loren Erdrich, can be purchased here, and her new chapbook, "In Case of Loss,"can be found nestled in the Toadlily Press Quartet, Embark. Sierra is co-founder of the Vis-à-Vis Society, a collaborative poetic team; if you live in Seattle, you can see Dr. Ink (a.k.a Sierra) and Dr. Owning (a.k.a Rachel Kessler) in action and get some poetry-science inspiration at MOHAI this Thursdsay. 

What do you smell like?  
For many years I smelled like bread because I worked in a small collectively run bakery in Seattle (Touchstone). That bakery no longer exists, and I think the smell has probably worn off by now. Too bad.

And for a short while, also years ago, I drove a '73 Plymouth Gold Duster: original gold paint on the exterior, front seat an amazing sky blue.  She was so beautiful, and broke down almost constantly; I never knew enough about car repair to keep her happy, or maybe nothing could.  She always smelled faintly of gasoline, a smell that I like, and during that time we were together I'm sure that smell rubbed off on me as well.

I like the idea of perfume but rarely actually wear it. Last summer I was on the small Italian island of Ischia and I was taken with a perfume that smelled warm and green to me, something like cut grass. My Italian is only so-so, but I'm pretty sure the man at the counter commended my choice of "scent of a man." Maybe that's why I liked it! I don't wear it often, but when I do, I find myself surreptitiously putting my nose to my wrist like I am receiving a message from a secret agent.

People have sometimes described a smell they associate with me, and for a long time I wasn't sure what it was because I wasn't wearing a particular scent.  But through some sleuthing I think I've traced it, at least in part, to a leave-in conditioner that lists its main ingredient as avocados but actually smells like honey.
 
What do you like to smell?
I like to shake hands with rosemary when I pass by, especially when it's growing in a gigantic bush as it often does in the Pacific Northwest (including in my front yard). I also really love the smell of sagebrush just after a thunderstorm (I did a lot of my growing up in Nevada, so the scent is nostalgic for me of the silver-grey mountains in Reno and Carson City).  I love the warm, dusty smell of typewriter keys (especially on an old electric that really hums and heats up).  And the red-green smell walking through a cedar forest.  I used to live in a building that always smelled deliciously like laundry soap (the basement laundry room windows were right by the front entrance). I like the progression of smells when making soup (onions and carrots, chopping fresh herbs, how everything smells as it's simmering together).  I love the briny blue smell of the sea, especially when it appears somewhat unexpectedly (like from a seashell picked up from a windowsill, or on a city street when the wind shifts just right). 

Nosy Interview: Cody Walker

Zia & Cody in the NGC 5189: An Unusually Complex Planetary Nebula, © NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage

What wonderful luck to meet Cody during a frigid January residency at the Vermont Studio Center in 2006. His laughter melts snow! When we returned to Seattle, where we were both living at the time, Cody proceeded to introduce me to the greatest people in Seattle, for which I'm forever grateful. Visit Cody's web site and buy his book, Shuffle and Breakdown, here. 

What do you smell like?
After reading through all the interviews in this series, I feel a bit like the guy in “Annie Hall” who, after hearing about the many meetings being conducted around him, complains, “All the good meetings are taken.” All the good smells have been taken, too! Because really and truly: I smell like potting soil and haunted estates and honey. I think I may even smell like a sparrow! But OK. I followed the lead of many others and asked my partner what I smelled like. After a disconcertingly long pause, she said, “Like a good guy”—which was singularly unhelpful. (She’s a fiction writer; she could’ve just made something up.) Maybe I smell like Skin Trip? Or mulched leaves? Or a tennis court? Or maybe a chimpanzee—that’s it. A freakishly clean chimpanzee.

What Do You Like to Smell?
I like a lot of smells that aren’t on everyone’s list: anchovies, for instance, and kimchi, and skunk spray. I like almost any of those glass-enclosed candles that smell like cookies or suntan lotion or pie. I like the earthy upended-ness of the Ho Rain Forest on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. I like almond steamers and leather boots. I like Natures Paradise Coconut Body Mist (which I use as an air freshener in my daughter’s bedroom, and which pleases me so much that I’m willing to forgive the missing apostrophe in “Natures”). And because I went to a hippie college in Florida when I was nineteen, my true elixir is a mix of sweat, patchouli, and clove cigarettes.

Nosy Interview: Kathleen Rooney

Kathleen sits in Zodiacal Light and Milky Way, © Babak Tafreshi (TWAN)

Kathleen Rooney is a nosy nomination courtesy of Elisa, her frequent collaborator. Kathleen is an inspiringly prolific poet and essayist; a founding editor of Rose Metal Press; and, so I've heard, a consistent wearer of dazzling frocks. Her latest book, the novel in poems Robinson Alone, comes out this very day! 

What do you smell like?
I wish I could be sure. But just as it’s almost impossible to tickle yourself, it’s almost impossible to smell yourself. Or at least it’s almost impossible for me. At the moment, I smell like Tendre Madeleine, which is what I’m wearing today because it’s a good fall smell. But I just emailed my husband, Martin Seay (who happens to be one of the best-smelling people I know) to see what he thinks I smell like and he said, “I think you smell like dryland herbs being lightly crushed under the hooves of a juvenile bighorn sheep.” Then he added, “To be clear, you smell like the herbs, not the sheep. I just added the sheep because the herbs needed to be crushed by something.” I’ve had other people tell me I smell “clean” and like “cut grass” or “green plants,” so he seems to be onto something. Also, typically, green scents don’t work well on me, so maybe that’s partly because I’m already “green.”

What do you like to smell?
Skunks, cool damp basements in the summertime, and birthday candles that have just been blown out
(which I always associate with the smell of ghosts). When I was little, I thought that gray hair smelled like smoke. I also love—and have always loved—to smell my sister Beth, who is three years younger and my best friend. We used to share a room, and when we were small and traveling as a family we’d usually share a bed, and I always felt comforted by having her near and specifically by smelling her. She’d usually fall asleep before me and I would feel reassured by being able to lean over and smell her hair, her scalp. She still is one of the best smelling people in the world to me. Funny smell story: when Beth was pregnant with her first baby, Rose, before she and her husband had told anyone, I knew by smelling her. She had me and Martin and her in-laws all over to our parents’ house in the Chicago suburbs for dinner (without telling us why, and it wasn’t unusual because we get together often). When I came upstairs into the kitchen to hug her, I could somehow smell that she was pregnant and knew that she was going to announce it. We made eye contact and she looked at me all, “Don’t spoil the surprise,” and of course I didn’t, but it was an amazing feeling to be able to know something so major without being told in words. Now, not surprisingly, I love to smell my niece, who is 14 months old and smells quite a bit like Beth.

Nosy Interview: Lucy Biederman

Lucy in the Orion Nebula: The Hubble View, © NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (STScI/ESA) et al.

When I think of meeting Lucy, I think first of her voice. Lucy has best kind of voice, sort of throaty and excited, a voice that immediately suggests you are in for a very good time should you be so lucky as to talk with her. You can get a taste of Lucy's written voice by visiting her web site.

What do you smell like? & What do you like to smell? 
The world I live in is hypoallergenic, dust-free, air-purified, and fragrance-free. You may not know that there is a difference between unscented and fragrance-free, but I know, oh I know. Fragrance-free is for the more hardcore, superallergic of us, those who cannot tolerate scent and other additives (in fact, my mouth and armpits are itching as I write this, thinking of fragrances); unscented means scents were added, just nothing specifically perfume-y smelling.

Which is to say, I probably don’t smell like much. Most of the products I use, from dryer sheets to tampons, are fragrance-free. There are some rogue regular-person products I use, deodorant and what-not, that for whatever reason don’t give me rashes or reactions; 31 years’ experience suggests that this is less a matter of the products themselves than maintaining enough of a hypoallergenic environment—no flowers, no pet—that my immune system doesn’t hit its very low-set freak-out point.

Anyone who’s traveled with me is acquainted with what one of my brothers once referred to as my “hermetically sealed, hypoallergenic, sterile, silken sleeping sleeve.” I need this because otherwise I won’t take in enough air during the night; if I don’t take in enough air during the night, I will have a migraine the next day. A friend recently asked, ever so delicately, how I am able to have sex in it. It turned out she thought I used it at home, too, silly girl! I explained to her that at home I have my own system of mattress, pillow, and duvet encasings, and weekly extra-hot washings (in fragrance-free laundry detergent) to reduce dust mites.

I hope this doesn’t sound like complaining. There are many things I am perfectly happy to complain about, but this isn’t among them. As chronic conditions go, moderate (occasionally severe) allergies and migraines aren’t bad; and at this point in my life I am mostly able to control them through environment and a lot of medication.

My bedroom is extra, extra scent-free. I love to smell its nothing-cold air at the end of the day. I am so tired. I have lived in so many places, too many places. I think I am the oldest 31-year-old in America, I’ve seen too many things. I love it when I open my bedroom door, and hear my huge Honeywell Enviracaire Air Cleaner’s industrial drone. I even have a little pink rug for it, like a pet bed. My bed is crisp, crunchy, hard with encasements, and that’s what makes it mine. It’s more comfortable to me than any other comfort, those smushy, scent-smelling comforts of other people.

Nosy Interview: Brian McGuigan

Brian & Sonny recline in a section of M16: Pillars of Creation, © J. Hester, P. Scowen (ASU), HST, NASA

I first met Brian at the beloved Seattle literary institution, Richard Hugo House, where he himself is a beloved institution, working as the Program Director and curating one of the most delightful reading series of all-time, Cheap Wine & Poetry (and its spin-off, Cheap Beer & Prose). Learn more about Brian and his work at brianwithani.com.

What do you smell like? 

I don't have a smell, I don't think. When I was a teenager, my nose was broken in a fight, and I never had it fixed. My sense of smell hasn't been the same. Back then, I'd describe my smell as a typical teenage boy's--a mix of sweat, cigarettes, pot and hormones, with a tinge of Cool Water cologne to cover it all up. I've since stopped smoking and wearing cologne, and I shower far more regularly than I did when I was thirteen. My smell is more neutral now, though considering I drink 4-6 cups of black coffee each day, that's probably what I smell like.

I asked my wife this question since she has a heightened sense of smell, like a Bloodhound or a blind person, and is probably most aware of what I smell like. She said my scent was "all-man," though I'm not sure if she's just appealing to my vanity or making fun of me. Sometimes I'm sure I have a hint of dog to my smell since I have two beasts who don't respect my personal space, always shoving their snouts in my crotch and laying all over me on the couch. Probably baby spit-up, too, which has found its way onto all of my clothing, and I rarely notice it until I'm in a meeting and I see someone staring at a stain on my shirt, and I have to say, "No, it's not what you think--that's baby puke!" 

What do you like to smell?  

I love the smell of brewing coffee; fresh mowed grass; the intense saltiness of popcorn when you first walk into the movies; my skin after it's baked in the sun for an hour; pages, real actual pages, of books, preferably old books, the smell of history in the words; pizza; peeled orange rinds; dry erase markers; fried chicken; charcoal grills; mornings when the air is cool and dewy; but, most of all, I love the smell of my baby's head. It's unlike anything I've ever smelled before and won't last forever because eventually he'll grow up, and as Sam Lipsyte said at Hugo House, his head will just smell like another dumb shit's head.

Nosy Interview: Matthew Hittinger

Matthew (photographed by Michael Ernest Sweet) sniffs in The Dark River to Antares, © Máximo Ruiz

Matthew and I met as students at the University of Michigan, where he earned his MFA in poetry, and ran with a group of good-looking poets who really knew how to dance. Pre-order Matthew's newest book, Skin Shift, here, and visit Matthew's web site to learn more about him and his work. 

What do you smell like?

My scent is subtle. People often comment on it when they are in close proximity—in for a hug or to
whisper something—with a “ooh, you smell good.” I like to think my scent mirrors my personality—
best experienced in intimate one-on-ones, not overpowering in large groups or public spaces.
 
Aimee (my wifey, aka best friend and roommate), says I used to smell “surprisingly like a straight boy” after I showered, but this was during my unfortunate affair with the Phoenix scent of Axe body spray, the least offensive of all the Axes. The things I do for my Phoenix obsession.

Other fleeting scents I've had obsessions with and occasionally return to in various permutations
depending on mood and/or time of year: olive scrub soaps (love olives, olive spreads, olive cream
cheese, so why not in the shower?); recently a German liquid soap my boyfriend Michael introduced me to called Algemarin that I save for “special” days (it's made from “the riches of the sea” with algae as a main ingredient); and a revolving door of shampoos (an awful “citrus mint” phase; in summer months shampoos that promise to lighten or add highlights with natural ingredients like honey and chamomile).

But less-fleeting scents I bear and have been committed to for most of my adult life: a baseline of Dial Mountain Fresh soap; a series of tea-tree based shampoos and conditioners; Arm & Hammer Fresh scent deodorant; and clothes washed in Tide coldwater (fresh scent) and Bounce drier sheets. But most importantly my cologne: Rochas Man, which contains top notes of lavender, green leaves, and bergamot, and bottom notes of amber, mocha, and vanilla. It might be the way it mixes with my soap and other scents, but I love during the day when I can catch a tendril of it rising from my warm chest.

What do you like to smell? 

My favorite smells: that earthy, ozone-y scent of a cool spring morning when everything is newly green and dewy; its counterpart in the fall, when the air turns crisp and the air is full of dried chlorophyl and harvest. Balsam and cedar. Ginger. Tea tree. Eucalyptus. A freshly-poured glass of champagne. The floor of a forest and then the ionized air around a discovered waterfall when hiking through said forest. That kelp-y, seaweed-y, sandy, salty sea smell at the shore. The galleries at the Museum of Modern Art after all the people have gone and it's just you and the sterile, humidity-controlled air, and the paintings on the walls and you can smell the oils and encaustics and pastels and canvas and wood frames.

Nosy Interview: Carrie Tebeau

 Carrie in (part of) The Eagle Nebula from Kitt Peak, © T.A. Rector & B.A. Wolpa

Carrie and I met at the University of Michigan, where she was earning an MFA in Poetry. Around the one-year anniversary of Nosy Girl, Carrie sent me a fascinating e-mail with the subject heading "cross-wired," and has graciously agreed to let me share her reflections here, as a Nosy Interview with a slightly different shape. Carrie recommends The Synesthesia Battery for those wanting to learn more about synesthesia and the book mentioned below.  

[What do you smell like? & What do you like to smell?]

Happy birthday, Nosy Girl. I've been reading with interest for the past year, because to me, smells (and tastes) are a strange thing. I have synesthesia, so experience smells as an amalgam of colors, shapes, and textures. As weird as this may seem, it's equally weird for me to read descriptions of smell that don't have a color/textural element. Now, obviously most people do not smell wine and get fuchsia, and I've learned to link up my sensory experiences with the ways other people label scents, so it's not like I don't know what cinnamon smells like, for instance (a thick line of sienna with curvy edges, which is apparently just cinnamon). If you asked me to smell cinnamon I'd tell you "oh, that's cinnamon," and spare you the extra details. I usually keep it to myself because it's generally sure to elicit raised eyebrows, slow nodding, that kind of thing. But perhaps you'd like to know?

I honestly had no idea I had synesthesia for most of my life. You don't really question the input of your senses; it is what it is. When a Sephora store opened up in the mall near my house when I was in high school, I, like every teenaged girl, couldn't wait to waltz in to that clean, orderly environment, and spritz those little white tags with perfume. But I'd pick up a scent whose description promised a powdery finish, and I'd smell pale blue-ish white cotton balls. I assumed I was deficient at smelling. I most certainly did NOT smell powder; I smelled blue. I assumed my assessment of the smell was plain wrong. This experience convinced me to avoid perfume; I didn't want to wear something that clashed (even this color-doubt was not a clue to me; I'd never heard of synesthesia). I thought I just couldn't smell properly, and I avoided revealing evidence of my inability.

Flash forward a decade, and I'd met Tim, whose family is in the wine business. Dinner at his mom's house involves burying your nose deep in a glass of burgundy and calling out scents. I felt panicked, inexperienced, disabled. Both Tim and I thought this was because I'd never learned to appreciate wine; we started wine school at home, and every time we had wine with dinner, he'd ask "what do you smell?" Fuchsia, I'd say (a deep cloud of it, with wispy edges). Try again, he'd urge. Well, if I got deeper into the smell, the fuchsia cloud rose first, and there was a quieter range of line-drawing peaks, like a mountain range sketched by a kid. Beyond that, I could find chocolate brown dots. Tim would correct me: but do you smell cherries? a bit of acetone? A note of tobacco? I learned to smell wine as an act of translation--notes of cherry are always fuchsia, acetone peaks, tobacco brown dots. But I STILL didn't know this was called synesthesia; my color-smell was a family joke.

It took reading a book (recently!) called Wednesday is Indigo Blue for me to really realize what was going on, and moreover, to understand that most other people don't experience smells like I do. I'm kind of excited to go back to Sephora now that I know to trust the colors and shapes. I know what I smell like (pale misty-morning-in-June blue) and would pick colors to complement that (NEVER powdery scents; their blue clashes with mine. This is why I've always hated what people call "powdery" scents, and why their label for the smell finally makes sense to me). I need to wear yellow, coral, other bright opposites of blue, and never scents that are "low" or brown, or blues that clash with mine (musk can sometimes be a rainy gray-blue, though sometimes it has brown undertones too). It turns out that the perfume notes I've always been drawn to (what other people would call fruity smells, maybe even some light florals) are the ones that WOULD match my smell, so I probably could have effectively chosen perfumes all along.

I like clear smells especially; Tim is the most delightful amber, like actual amber that you could hold up to the light and look through. I once dated a guy in college who was a milky green; the opacity of his sweat nauseated me and doomed our relationship from the start. Forests, sunbaked after rain, are like glasses a prescription too sharp, and the dizzying clarity is exquisite. Cedar and pine are undulating ribbons of green; rivers silvery and serpentine.

Anyway, thanks for what to me is a very interesting window into smelling; reading [Nosy Girl] has been an aid to my own necessary translation efforts.

Nosy Interview: Austin Kleon

Austin in Dust of the Orion Nebula, © Nicolás Villegas

I met Austin when we were both seated at the squirrel table at one of the best weddings I've ever attended. He's the author of Newspaper Blackout, which you should already own, and Steal Like An Artist, which you can get in just three weeks.

What do you smell like? 

That's easy: Sharpie fumes. 

What do you like to smell? 

The smell of my wife's skin after she's been out in the sun.

Nosy Interview: Nancy Lili Gonzalez

 Nancy laughs in As Above, So Below, © Boris Štromar

Nancy has a special place in my nosy heart as she was one of the first strangers to wander over here and leave a comment. When you put a new blog out into Internet-oblivion the idea that someone who doesn't know you could find it is both a surprise and a comfort. We haven't met in person, but I've gotten to know her a bit better by reading her blog,  La Linterna del Monstro (where you might head next to leave an encouraging comment for a relative stranger).

What do you smell like?
Artificial smells I rub on:
* Vanilla cupcake scented shampoo by Sephora (birthday gift, will run out soon)
* Mandarin scented conditioner by Herbal Essence (because I'll always love their 1990s-orgasm campaign)
* Oatmeal scented body wash (smells more like sweet milk, not oats)
* Sometimes (very rarely, to be honest) an orange-scented deodorant
* Amber and mahogany scented body lotion (I think it's sexy, but my partner thinks the amber's too strong)
* Cetaphil facial lotion (how would we describe it's smell-less smell? I like it.)
* Vera Wang's Princess perfume, two sprays each morning (in my defense, it was a Christmas gift three years ago that won't run out. The second half of the bottle sits there in it's little heart-shaped container, taunting me. To be honest, its lady apple and "vanilla chiffon" smell has grown on me. Which scent will I switch to when I've finally used this up?)
 
Natural smells I pick up:
* Argentinian coffee (because I grind it, brew it each morning for my partner and myself. After working as a barista for four years, smelling daily as though giant, dirty beans lived inside my pores, I now prefer this subtle hint of coffee that stays on my hands and in my breath, making only one pot's worth.)
* Car's leaf deodorant, the black leaf that smells like men's soap (This smell that doesn't seem to fade. Considering I hop in my car at least twice a day, I'm sure some of this man-smell rubs off on me, my pants.)
* Amber- sandalwood- bergamot- scented Glade spray stuff (sprayed in apartment on a regular basis, and sometimes the spray particles follow me)

What do you like to smell?
* Winter and cigarettes-- particularly because this is the clearest smell I identify, and it smells like road trips to Devil's Lake with my dad, when my brother had fallen asleep in the back seat, and it was just us two up in the middle of the night, staring at the lone road ahead of us, everything black except the blue lights from the radio, a talk station on
* My partner, between his armpits and his ears (a mix of Calvin Klein's One and Cetaphil and cedar and sweat)
* Marijuana (Can I say that? I don't smoke it, cross my heart, but I used to-- who hasn't?-- and practically everyone I know still does. When it's good marijuana and it's extra-skunky, I love to smell it, just love it. Sue me. Or walking into a room in which marijuana has been smoked, the quiet, almost clean smell of it is nice, too.)
* Cinnamon sticks (and cinnamon tea!)
* The pines
* Mint (is there such a thing as mint-scented candle? I'd like one of those.)
* Freshly baked bread and freshly made pizza (how to melt a human, deeply inhale this)
* Puppy breath (never dog breath)
* Heads of babies (all babies smell like potato chips!)
* Bleach (every now and then, it's almost refreshing-- in a bathroom, in a pool. Too much of it, however, and it is what a migraine smells like.)
* Toothpaste
* Crayola Crayons

Nosy Interview: Courtney Mandryk

 Courtney in HH-222: The Waterfall Nebula, © Z. Levay, T.A. Rector, & H. Schweiker

Courtney and I met at the University of Michigan, probably first at a welcome-students barbecue. But I better remember a later barbecue where she gave me one of the nicest compliments I have ever received, one that managed to be both morbid and effusive (a combination I often aim to achieve). She makes beautiful things; you can see for yourself at MOTHDRAWN.

What Do You Smell Like to Smell

Cilantro of August, calendula into September,

the pink cream I rubbed on the bites of October.

Now the leaves are holding onto their sugars,

the leaves are letting go of their branches.

The fire is lit. My black dog's warm fur-smell

is of fleece blankets inside of a dryer, a womb.

My gun dog has always smelled like the pound she came from.

I wonder if the dogs smelled the baby through my skin.

My boy was born already not smelling like me.

He smells warmer, a smell beyond me: church incense under Burt's Bees.

Today he made a painting using apples for a brush,

the smell of apple juice and tempera heart-shapes on paper, 2011.

I am the dirt the rain kicks up.

I used to press my nose to window screens in a storm

when I thought rain was the smell of its metallic mesh.

I smell like sun-dried clothing - I smell like clothing half-dried in the rain.

I smell syrup and chlorine on my wrists when I'm afraid.

I dislike the smell of hamburgers and teenagers

and teenagers' painful perfumes even though I have smelled that way.

Stephen smells like a pencil box.

I have never owned a pencil box. I never knew him as a teen.

I never knew him in his twenties.

My furnace husband, the stronger heart that heats a room.

He is right now somewhere in the fields

tending a fire in the rain, rain-face dripping.

I want to be the smell of ginkgo and coconut but I am not that coconut girl,

though sometimes I want to take my arms and whip them around

and around like a helicopter.

I am the smell of skunks far away on a summer night's drive.

I am tomato plants bowing in the garden.

I am leaves loud on the sidewalk.

Original chapstick. A match just blown.

When I smell basil I know I am home.

Now the gun dog smells of rot she found by the pond.

The boy smells of pee and a hot Midwestern sky,

his breath the scent of Elmer's glue.

Now there is a flower blooming that smells like the day is done

but I can't find it in the fields to cut it down.

Nosy Interview: Ayelet Amittay

Ayelet in The Butterfly Nebula from Hubble, © NASA

Ayelet and I met in Ann Arbor, where we were both candidates in the MFA program at the University of Michigan. I think she can bring down people's blood pressure with her comforting voice alone (though unlike Ayelet, I don't have a nursing degree and so my theories are not necessarily medically sound). Definitely don't miss her essay, "Igloo."

What do you smell like?

Ever since my first job, I’ve always smelled like work. Summers working as an art camp counselor I came home smelling of paint, of clay, of the darkroom with its liquid trays of metallic scent: developer, stop bath, fixer, fixer remover. After every 8-hour shift at the university library, my hands would smell of ink and binding paste. In nursing school, I would drive home after a shift at the hospital, strip as soon as I walked in the door, and beeline for the shower to scrub the scent of the med-surg or pedi floor off of my skin. It didn’t matter how many times I’d changed my gloves during the shift, or how many power washes I gave my scrubs. The scent of sweat in the sheets, of plastic tubing freshly opened, of urine, of feet, of sadness, of televisions with the sound off, of blood, of macaroni, of open sores, of fluorescent light—these followed me home.
 

Now I am a psychiatric nurse practitioner and what I smell like seems more complicated. Whenever a patient comes into my room I smell them, and their smell becomes a part of our interaction. Sometimes the way that happens is obvious—if the smell is alcohol, or cigarette smoke, or unwashedness. But usually the smell is something quieter, like an emotion, but more characteristic of the person in that it doesn’t seem to change from session to session. Honey. Black lab. Marijuana. Jasmine perfume. Sweat. When each patient leaves, his or her smell remains in the room,building on the smells that came before. I drive home with the windows down, even if it’s raining. I try to air out the space that is around me. I am trying to learn to leave work and go back to smelling like myself. 

What do you like to smell?  
Green things: tea, grass, leaves, moss. I live in the Northwest where the rain always smells green and the green smells rainy. I like to smell tea, and coffee, even though I don’t drink coffee. Popcorn. Cookies in the oven. The crooks in the body of my love: nestling my head under his chin or against his back. Newly washed sheets. My mother’s shampoo. 

There are also some smells that I specifically associate with Judaism and that really bring me into whatever season they are linked to. Right after Yom Kippur there’s a holiday called sukkot, which involves (among other things) shaking a bundle of different long branches and a small yellow citrus fruit called an etrog. There is nothing like the smell of an etrog, summery and bright in a season where fall is coming on. Some Jewish smells are in harmony with the season (think apples and honey in the fall for the new year) but some, like the etrog, seem to suggest a time that is already ahead of or behind us, that we’ll catch up to ourselves in some other time soon enough. For me, those are the most reassuring smells.

Nosy Interview: Margaret MK Hess

Maggie reads in a Sky Panorama over Lake Salda, © Tunç Tenzel

 

Maggie was another reason that working for Seattle Arts & Lectures was so much fun. You can get in on the good times by reading her piece for the Funny Women column on the Rumpus, and by visiting Dear Mr. Postman, where Maggie writes open letters to everyone.

 

What do you smell like?

I think I most likely smell of curl cream. At least, whenever someone sniffs me, and compliments me on the results, and tries to identify the source, their nose generally gravitates towards my hair rather than my feet or my armpits or my teeth or knees.

My curl creme smells like (according to the ingredients label) Parfum, or "fragrance" as it is known among scientific circles.

What do you like to smell?

I have such clear memories of the smell of my first dog, the radiator in my first room, the first boy I ever kissed, and the damp mud of a Pacific northwest spring (a little bit of dog poop mixed in with the dirt on my childhood soccer cleats). Now-now I've had years of sinus infections and allergies, and I'll smell almost anything that reaches my nose, confirmation of its (the nose's) existence in the world. I can smell cinnamon and garlic, onions, dumpsters. Cigarette smoke. I can smell pine trees and rotting bananas and hot tar.

On the no-smell list: airplanes and their recycled, stale air fill me with dread. It's amazing the shift of scent along that threshold.

I have trouble smelling people-- their scents, usually, are subtle, require a certain proximity, and for me, that involves burying my nose in your skin and leaving it there (turns out there are few I am interested in engaging in this exercise, and few who wish to participate, and the intersection point is small...I'm still waiting for Matt Damon to return my call).

Salt. I can smell salt when I return to Hawaii, where my father grew up, and plumerias if I put my face right up into the branches of a tree.  And I can smell the clear, clean slate of the mountains, the Rockies, where my mother was raised-really, a smell of no smell at all, a lack of smell, an absence that is particularly noticeable when you first open a car door upon arriving at a lookout point, some place of significant elevation that makes you catch your breath-for lack of oxygen, for dizzying altitude, for shock of recognition.

Nosy Interview: Wilson Diehl

 Wilson in The Antennae Galaxies in Collision, © NASA

Wilson and I met in a conference room, in a beautiful brick building in Pioneer Square. Our work-friend to real-life-friend transition was probably inappropriately speedy, and solidified by a marathon phone date that took the place of a coffee date made impossible by a rare Seattle snowstorm. Join Wilson for some virtual-friend tea-time yourself at Not Quite What I Expected.

What do you smell like?
Wow--that's a surprisingly hard question to answer. On a really good day, I'm pretty sure I smell like melty butter. Salted butter, just to be clear. Not margarine. Definitely not margarine.
 
I have a super-sensitive nose (not as precise and perceptive as yours, nosy girl, but still pretty persnickety) and find most scents-in-a-bottle too olfactorily overwhelming to put on my body. That said, I recently discovered this rosewater hand cream (yes, I'm a 36-year-old granny), which I love so much I apply it to my neck and upper chest region to make sure its warm, slightly sharp rosy splendor is as near my nose as possible. Why don't I just apply it to my actual nose? Unclear. Acne anxieties?
 
One semester in college I bought some cheap but delicious honeysuckle lotion from Bath & Body works (the worst!), and numerous strangers stopped me to tell me how good I smelled. It was almost as exciting as the two times in my life I was told I had a nice singing voice.

What do you like to smell?
It's so much easier to say what I don't like to smell...patchouli, incense, scented candles, dogs, cumin, lilies, the inside of my summer clogs, any garbage can anywhere, rat pee, my rat-filled garage, old coffee grounds (which smell like rat pee), stinky diapers, decay, Tacoma. When I was pregnant the smell of my husband's peppermint foot lotion and (non-peppermint) hair gel made me want to die. Same with the smell of smoke, fish, soap, the compost bin, and my favorite leather purse. Worst of all was the smell of coffee, which is a real problem since I live in Seattle and there is, in fact, a Starbucks on every corner.
 
I like to smell bread, muffins, cookies, pie (notice a trend?), nutmeg, rosemary, just-cut wood, roses, vanilla (again with the baking!), and bacon. When I'm not pregnant I love the scent of smoke, leather, and coffee, too.
 
I like to sniff my baby's head, even when she's three or four (or six) days post-bath and her head smells like wet dog. When she was tiny and exclusively eating breastmilk, her poo smelled like rhubarb, and I liked to smell that, too.
 
When she was just-born she smelled like brown sugar (even my husband with his less-refined sniffer agreed), and it was the best smell in the world. I've been trying to find a close approximation in lotion form, so far to no avail. For some reason every cream that's advertised as smelling like sugar smells like sweetened lilies. Why, nosy girl, why?

Nosy Interview: Raymond McDaniel

Ray in Abell 2744: Pandora's Cluster of Galaxies, ©NASA

I met Ray on the mean streets of Ann Arbor, and though he was without the "Jesus-grade hair" he mentions below, he had the definite aura of a guru. Purchase Ray's latest book of poems, Saltwater Empire, and read his poetry reviews on the Constant Critic.  

What do you smell like?

Since I can no better determine my own scent than know what I look like when I'm not looking at myself, I had to consult others. There are conflicting reports.  

Some say I smell like summer: Queen Helene's Cocoa Butter and salt. Some insist I smell like cashmere: cream and cardamom. Yet others suggest I smell like suede and book dust. One claims I smell like a weak solution of Halloween, payday and lust. You can take from the variety of these answers one of two things: you can imagine I smell like eating a vanilla cupcake on the beach while reading a used copy of Ficciones, or you can simply imagine that I smell Good, whatever Good smells like. 

What do you like to smell?

Sadly, my sense of smell has deteriorated over the years. I blame this on living in Michigan, where for vast, icy stretches of the year I cannot smell at all, because my nose is clotted with frozen snot. That said, I still have fond recollections of many scents, as per Proust's famous madeleine. I love the smell of things in transition, of matter as it changes form - how a tangerine aerosolizes when you peel it apart, how cedar turns in fire, how rain activates soil by turning it into mud. I know it's merely chemical, but what is more magical than science? There's something about the way scent seems to hide until some action reveals or releases it that has always struck me as essentially erotic. My favorite example of this is the unbinding of hair. Once, many years ago, unbelievably, I had long, thick, Jesus-grade hair, and at the end of the day, when I took it down and shook it loose, there would issue an olfactory cascade of whatever product I had a washed and conditioned it with (usually Aveda, bless its botanical heart). Nose-thrilling! Nose-enthralling! Even now, when on those rare occasions I find myself in a grocery store, I will loiter in the shampoo aisle and surreptitiously sniff from the array of products, each of which might as well be bottled nostalgia, stamped with years and memories otherwise inaccessible. Smells are the external hard drive of experience, the horcruxes of days past. I wasn't drinking when I wrote this, but now I'm drunk. How did that happen, Nosy Girl?

Nosy Interview: Kate Lebo

Kate is in A Hidden, Massive Star Cluster Awash with Red Supergiants, © NASA 

The jury is out on whether Kate and I have met in real life, though chances are good that we at least attended some of the same literary events when I lived in Seattle. (Though I regret to report that I have not yet had the chance to taste her award-winning pie.) Kate is a poet and a pie queen, and you can learn more about both roles by visiting her blog, Good Egg, and purchasing her zine, A Commonplace Book of Pie. Read more of Kate's poetry on Ink Node.

 

What do you smell like?

I love this question. Usually it goes the other way--I ask you what I smell like, probably because I’m worried about BO. Asked from this direction, it reminds me of driving through the Peach Arch Gate from Blaine, WA, on the way to some dingy Gastown bar or all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant in Vancouver. The border guards would lean out their little tinted booths and ask me where I was born as if they were curious to know something about me that wouldn’t be apparent unless they asked, the way you do when you’re getting past small talk with a new friend. I knew they were just doing their jobs, and that they didn’t care what I answered as long as I had ID and wasn’t bringing fruit or explosives into the country, but, like your questions, they made me feel like the miscellaneous personal data I’ve collected about myself over the years might have some empirical use after all.

After exercising, I smell like honey. The scent sours as soon as my sweat cools, and since it’s rude to ask someone to smell your armpit after a half hour on the elliptical, no one has ever confirmed that I really do smell like honey. I also like the way my underwear smells during my period, all coppery and briny and organic, which makes me think that as long as the smell comes from me, I’ll like it. Perfumes and lotions all start to make my skin smell like mosquito repellent or dusty potpourri after a half hour, especially on a hot day, so I stay away from them. I’d rather smell me, even if I smell bad. It’s a way to love how my body does its job.

What do you like to smell?

Jason, my partner of five years, wears Old Spice. When I think about what he smells like, I think of the warmth and texture of his t-shirt. Trying to describe that scent is like trying to describe what an orange smells like--the best description is orange, and Jason just smells like Jason. Most of my boyfriends have worn Old Spice, so it’s a scent that feels both safe and dangerous, like nostalgia. A whiff from under their arms as they raised them to hug me made me want to burrow into their chests.  

Nosy Interview: Britta Ameel

Britta pictured in "The Comet and the Galaxy," © J.C. Casado

Britta and I first met at a party. She was a prospective student at the University of Michigan, and I (already a student) remember hoping she'd decide to attend. Lucky me, she did (and the rest is ongoing, rather than history). Internet haunts where you might encounter Britta include Oh, the World is Very Big and Tavern Books.

What do you smell like?

My mother will tell you I smell like garlic. I’m not as embarrassed as I used to be, my breath an identifiable record of a good meal. And it helps that the person with whom I spend most my time smells equally sweet/strange/noxious/earthy. My mother is convinced I have a particular intolerance to it, that garlic smells more intensely on me than anyone else she knows. Physiologically, I can understand how this may be possible, but I’m not yet willing to admit I might be one of them.

(This compound, allyl methyl sulfide, is a byproduct of garlic digestion and is directly aerated through your skin and lungs a few hours after eating your favorite spaghetti sauce. In 1936, doctors proved it was the GI tract and not the mouth’s responsibility: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,756476,00.htm)

I read somewhere that, although our sweat is mostly water and trace minerals, some ridiculously small percentage is a laundry list of less-abundant and not-always-identifiable odiferous compounds that vary much more between people than in an individual’s lifetime. We sense these on each other as our individual scents but not on ourselves because we are so used to them. I am always amazed by this, that even rolling over on his pillow in the deepest sleep tells me that it’s his pillow, distinctly him, even if we just did the laundry.

I can smell myself after skiing, brewing beer, cooking, and working on a motorcycle with my husband (read: holding greasy parts). I am also keenly aware of smelling like Burt’s Bees classic lipbalm. When Elizabeth and I are in the same room, building, hell—even city, she always notices when I reapply.

I would have told you in college that I smelled like Pikaki, an oil I bought at the local perfume shop. I was intensely proud of wearing what I thought was a rare scent, picking it out myself, being known for smelling as such. So when my roommate came back from winter break with another Pikaki perfume, I was, as any idiotic, self-obsessed adolescent is wont to be, pissed. I got over my frustration—it did smell good on her—but the obsession is still there. In looking up pikaki, I learn it is Jasminum sambac, closely related to the jasmine in my new favorite perfume. Some desires never die, I suppose.

Perfumes don’t last long me. I am intoxicated with my jacket cuffs for days after the rare spritz. It might have been Kiehl’s Musk layered with their Coriander or Grapefruit oils, Le Labo’s Jasmin 17, Stella McCartney’s Stella. I used to smell like Acqua di Gio, but now the bottle won’t spray anymore and I’ve forgotten its scent. Recently I’ve been into Kate Walsh’s Boyfriend—Elizabeth is right in that it smells a little pineapple, a little benzoin, a little beastly. But I love that it also smells like pencil shavings.

What do you like to smell?

Pencil shavings.

Fresh hops. Sawdust. Sage, rosemary, lavender, spearmint, basil, cilantro. Hyacinths. Jasmine. Grapefruit. Buddha’s hand. Honeycrisp apples. Ginger. Coffee. Lumber yards and pine forests and peaty scotch.

Wet sweat when I take off my ski jacket at lunch. Wet wool. Wet leather (car interior—my first car, drowning in the winters of Oregon and refusing to start all spring). Wet grass. Wet soil. Bark. Moss. Snow.

Heating the cast iron pan for dinner. Regardless of its last dish, it smells like my favorite chana masala recipe by Madhur Jaffrey (thanks Charlotte, for introducing me).

I loved the headiness of smelling the distilled compounds in the otherwise tedious organic chemistry labs. These absolutes, though you might know what they are, never smell like what you think. Linalool smells incredible: spice and floral and chemistry heaven (side note: in looking up the ingredients to Acqua di Gio, I spot linalool among plenty of other smells mentioned here). Once we made methyl salicylate, the “wintergreen” gum smell, and my lab partner had to pinch my nostrils to get the collecting beaker away for disposal (into the organic waste bucket—good god, that’s a smell I hope never to whiff again). It was like sugar and lavender and mint times a million, but all wrapped up in a smell that only smells of itself, so pure your brain can’t even really understand it, grasps at straws for comparisons. Another time we made limonene, serious orange—perhaps the only time I’ve come close to synesthesia. I sniffed and my brain flashed orange, orange, orange like the time I fell off my bike days after moving to San Francisco and ended up concussed and peeing in a plastic basin in the hospital. (My man knew to call the ambulance when I told him everything looked orange, that I had dreamt of this.) I love the smell of clementines. I discovered them for myself when I lived in France and ate clementines, Nutella, bread, tomatoes, Babybel cheese and wine for just under a year. I must have smelled delicious then.

I love the smell of my husband and his closest boys smoking cigars on a porch. Bourbon, clove, cinnamon, and lemon steeping for his hot toddies. The added honey. The hatband inside his driver’s cap that we bought together in Sweden one afternoon when it rained so hard my purse filled with water. The apartment of the poet we went to visit reminded me how much I love the smell of old pianos. And books. Bookstores, good lord, bookstores. I could sleep in that smell, and I can smell it on my husband when he comes home from Portland, hours spent in Powell’s blue room. Or Ken Sanders here in Salt Lake—it smells like covered wagons and desert dust.

I absolutely cannot stand the smell of synthetic fruits—my gag reflex gets the best of me, likely because I inhaled all the scented ink out of those awful fruity markers in fourth grade and went home sick. I also do not like perfumes that smell like something you should eat for dessert. But I love dessert.

I love the smell of metals, particularly silver and copper—Gilt, in Portland, smells incredible, especially if Jessie is behind the counter and wearing Kiehl’s Imperial Body Balm.

I love smelling the women in my life. I get teary thinking about leaning in for the hug that prompts wrist-sniffing and rifling through our purses or dresser drawers for the new perfume we’re into. I live too far away from the women I love. I spent an evening with a woman in Stockholm who wore Acqua di Parma and had real Picasso sketches on her wall. That perfume, almost more than any other scent, reminds me of the incredible, strong, intelligent, elegant, light-giving women who inspire me to smell, look, think, smell again. And then tell them about it.