magical manure

I'd always assumed that the difference between beautiful (really!) and noxious manure smells was entirely a matter of what the cows ate. But my dad sent me an article this weekend that suggested it's a bit more complicated than that (as matters of poop so often are). If you're not inclined to read a four-page academic report on odor management as it relates to animal waste, let me at least share some highlights:

No single compound has been identified as a good predictor of odor sensation across situations in the field. Because of this, human panelists conduct odor measurements and quantify odor intensity and unpleasantness.

Manure sniffer-and-ranker! My future author-bio could put all those bricklaying, fish-gutting, sex-working writers to shame.

And this:

Based on psychological tests, seven primary classes of olfactory stimulants have been found to preferentially excite separate olfactory cells. These classes are: 1) ethereal, 2) camphoraceous, 3) musky, 4) floral, 5) minty, 6) pungent, and 7) putrid. 

Ethereal in this case refers to Ethylene Dichloride (which the EPA says has a "pleasant chloroform-like odor"), but it's more magical to think of it as that heavenly part of the cow poop. Dirt to dirt and all of that.

Nosy Interview: Saskia Wilson-Brown

Saskia in NGC 2170: Celestial Still Life, © Ignacio Diaz Bobillo

Saskia is the fearless founder of the awesomely innovative Institute for Art and Olfaction. If you're in the Los Angeles area, you should definitely check out their events and stop in for an open session. No matter where you are, I recommend nosing around (how could I resist?) the IAO website and liking their Facebook page (they post great links!), and not just because I'm proud to be have their support for my nosy research in Rwanda. You can find and follow Saskia (and the IAO) on Twitter, too. 

What do you smell like?  
Right now it's Sunday night, and I think I smell like a day well lived: Sun baked skin, myriad bits of displaced leaves and grass, steer manure (unfortunately hard to remove), a smidge of 'Jeux de Peau' by Serge Lutens, and, inevitably, coffee and cigarettes. Every perfume I buy has to compete with a base of cigarette smoke. It's a unique challenge, but I like to tell myself it makes my life a little more Brigitte Bardot. 

So let's just say I smell like Brigitte Bardot (minus the steer manure: I sincerely doubt she gardened).

What do you like to smell? 
Other than the obvious pleasant smells like flowers and frying onions and such, some smells I've always loved are: Los Angeles after it rains (steaming cement, basically: strangely earthy), sandalwood, grapefruits, tacos, an art studio (oil paints make me nostalgic), chlorine, an empty ski run in freezing weather (solitude!), cigarette smoke after an especially long meeting, jet fuel, the nape of my husband's neck... 

What I always enjoy spending nose-time on is an unfolding idea. I've never had a hyper-developed nose like so many folks who are into scent. For me it's been an extremely strange process of learning how to identify and put words onto what I'm smelling. But the concepts behind the scents are what really get me. When someone is using scent as an art medium, and can use elements in a symbolic way-- when a perfume becomes an illustration of a concept or a story. So I guess I love the smell of a good story.

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.

Nosy Interview: Maria Parrott-Ryan

  Maria and her fish friend somehow manage to breathe in the Monsters of IC 1396, © Geert Barensten & Jorick Vink 

Maria and I met during a study abroad semester in London, and have gone on to smell one another in more time zones than most married couples. Things occur to her from time to time at The Mepper.

 

What do you smell like?

It depends on the season. In the cold months my skin gets really dry, so I probably smell like whatever lotion I'm slathering on at all hours of the day. I don't like to buy the really heavily-scented ones, so my smell is (god I hope) pleasant, but subdued. Really, I think the primary ingredient of most lotions I use is water, so maybe I smell like water, which I maintain (and yes, I have had arguments about this) doesn't actually have a smell at all, but takes on the smell of many other things, like salt or chlorine or rusty pipes or musty wells or duck butt. 

When it's hot I still wear lotion, but the heat usually manages to render it powerless against my own natural body smells. The result is what I imagine one would smell like after receiving a gentle, full-body pat-down by a large man working one of the cheese curd stalls at the Madison Farmer's Market on a hot, humid day—a cheesy-palm-sweat smell, if you will.

What do you like to smell?

I love to cook risotto mostly for the moment after you dump the cup of white wine over the oil, onions, garlic, and rice that are simmering away. The great thing about risotto is that you have to stir pretty frequently, so you have a good excuse to stand over the pot and just inhale the warm, boozy smell for a while.

I love any rare smell that can take me back to a specific place. I like to smell that whiff of manure I get when driving past the farms on the way to my parent's place in Iowa. The smell of film developing fluid takes me to the back room of the newspaper office in my tiny Iowa hometown. My grandpa was the editor-in-chief, and my dad worked there, too. Sometimes I would visit them both at work, and I'd hang out drinking bottles of Cokes in the break room, which was right next to the dark room. That smell permeated the place so much that the Coke tasted like it was laced with developer. I felt pretty good at those moments, being allowed to hang out with the adults while they did their adult things. That's a smell I'll probably only smell a couple more times in my life, if at all, now that dark rooms are on the way out. Maybe I should see if Kodak is trying to unload any old bottles of film--I'd hoard them in my basement and occasionally pop open a bottle for a quick sniff, just to make sure I don't forget about the back room of the newspaper office.

By far my favorite smell is autumn, which luckily I get to smell every year in the Midwest. Those rotting leaves do something to me. That smell always makes me think something is about to happen. If I were to ever find a secret door to a magical realm, I would almost certainly find it in autumn. If by some cosmic mistake I happened upon one in summer or winter, you know what? I don't know if I'd walk through.

Nosy Interview: Anne Stameshkin

Anne is pictured in the Cat's Paw Nebula, © ESO, DSS2

Anne and I met while studying fiction at the University of Michigan (which is now shaping up to be as fertile ground for nosy-interviewing as it was for friend-making). She is the founding editor of Fiction Writers Review, one the best spots on the internet.

What do you smell like? 

I smell like it’s my job. Note the overdeveloped feature I wear: a summa cum schnoz. Despite an adolescence spent in loathing (and some rather awkward kissing), I can imagine neither my reflection nor the world without it.

Oh. What do I smell like? Like a pillowcase in the morning. Yogurt, too much coffee, and the orangeblossom ginger body scrub I use. In summer I smell like there's seawater somewhere nearby, not exactly here, and like deodorant: a salty peachy powdery person. I attract gulls. My hands smell like the keyboard of my laptop: more coffee, crumbs, plastic heat. If I’ve been cooking, add garlic and a pinch of burning flesh. I own and love Fresh’s Fig Apricot Eau de Parfum, which promises “Turkish apricot, peach skin, lychee, fig leaf, petitgrain, dandelion, green tea, musc, marine notes”— and I go through phases of jubliant spritzing, then of wary dabbing, then of perfume silence, certain I smell of beer. (Like Charlotte, I detest the overly cologned and live in fear of joining them.) To mosquitoes, I smell like sweet-sweet blood; I get fifty bites while my picnic companion gets zero.

What do you like to smell?

I like to smell Oliver’s—my cat’s—breath (warm wheat, scallops) and let him smell mine. White wines. Pillow Talk mead from Drake Brothers: spicy honey. Warm bread doused in olive oil and vinegar, not yet tasted. Horseradish! The smell of Aaron’s omelets sizzling in the pan, and of his head after he’s shaved it. My aunt’s kitchen. Fresh cilantro. Sage, burning. Dried roses. Farmland…I grew up in Lancaster, PA, so that rich, sour smell of manure makes me feel homesick and safe. Campfires. Horses. The air after heavy rain in the summer. Sun on wooden decks. Wet grass, even though it makes me sneeze. An old theatre, when every seat is filled and it’s dark and the overture starts. Rosining a cello bow. The laundry scent that hits you in warm little blasts on any side street in New York. And I know it’s gross, but I relish the odor of a chlorined pool, wet hair that’s been in one. And gummy frogs. What haunts me are those familiar-yet-unnameable smells that waft up and, rather than triggering a memory, fill us with unexpected yearning: something lost. How I wish we could google a smell!

nosy about

Above is a list of how some Google-users recently wound up visiting Nosy Girl.  Welcome, fellow fans of Josh Charles' nose! It is I, your captain, Manure Girl, unsure how to vor-mag water, but very curious myself about that last string of search terms. Was the searcher concerned about her brother picking his friend's nose, or was she hoping to find video footage of such an activity?

blown-out birthday candles

Screenshot of Google Nose^BETA  

Even if you share my rigorous vigilance for April Fools' Day jokes, didn't you move your face a little bit nearer to your screen, hoping? Even in its scentless state, I wish Google Nose would've lasted past yesterday, and expanded its "people also sniffed" options.  I "sniffed" wet dog, fear, and campfire, but didn't even see horse manure!

No joke, Nosy Girl is three! How should we celebrate? 

nosy about (again)

Sometimes I think the best reason to have a blog is to see what sorts of things people search for.  I told you before about being tickled by the search for "my brother picking friend nose" but here are two more recent lists: 

I wish I could offer more insight as to how to be interested in a girl's life without being nosy. Ask questions! But don't read the texts on her phone. 

This list is a whirlwind! Barely pregnant to interspecies friends playing with childhood toys, to those manure girls again (I'm starting to get too creeped out to google them), to monkey balls nut--so many smell possibilities--to what must be among the finest ways to end any list or evening: sharing a beer with Tim Riggins.

happy ♡ day

I wish you a day filled with smells you adore. Because I love lists, here is one filled with things past nosy interviewees have said they like to smell:

Lemons, rosemary, beeswax candles, pizza, fig, San Diego, blown-out candles, bus exhaust, coconut water, daughter, ginger, fresh coriander, chaparral, fragrant weeds, new baby, fresh milk, manure, rotting leaves, melting cheese, peat briquettes, cedar wood, sweet plastic, Gravitron grease, farmland, horseradish, warm bread, spicy honey mead, cats’ paw pads, street markets, fresh-cut flowers, sunscreen, red wine, vanilla, bay rum, orange blossoms, vetiver, curry powder, bee balm, gyro meat, fried food, herbs, earth, bourbon, laundromats, donuts, fresh hops, wet wool, Old Spice, tangerines, Aveda shampoo, dusty LP sleeves, cardamom, ocean, almond, cucumber, garlic and onions, old men in elevators, tennis balls, blood, Lemon Pledge, lilacs, pine trees, nutmeg, rosemary, just-cut wood, bacon, brown sugar baby, limes, leather, library books, roasted corn, box of crayons, Earl Grey tea, green apples, tomato, scotch tape, anise, fennel, sun-baked earth, burning pine needles, cumin, plumeria, moss, popcorn, first kiss, sun-dried clothing, warm fur, burning leaves, roasting chicken, clove, chlorine, cinnamon sticks, distant skunks, old books, strawberries, peaches, eucalyptus, night-blooming jasmine, just-lit cigarettes, rotting seaweed, steamer clams, sun-warmed skin.

nosy new year

My bottle acclimates to its Midwestern surroundings.

Happy New Year, nosy readers!  I wish you a 2012 filled with new smell discoveries as well as familiar or forgotten scents that make you swell with emotion.

The holidays were the usual sensory riot. I had a bit of a cold, but still managed to eat more than my share of cookies and breathe in some nice smells:  

• The smokiest scotch I've ever smelled (Pop, if you're reading this, what was that delicious scotch?)
• I drained a full sample of Sweet Redemption for my parents' annual holiday party, and people seemed more eager to hug me than usual (they lingered due to my fragrance rather than their scotch intake).
• I was so happy to unwrap a bottle (pictured above) of Un Bois Vanille (the ideal fragrance to spray on your wool scarf, and I agree it's perfect for layering) and a bundle of beautiful beeswax candles. Both will go a long way towards making the bitter Boston winter warm. 
• The weird, unseasonable warmth in Wisconsin meant that I could smell more manure than usual in winter, when the ground is often frozen. For reasons not exclusively olfactory, I dread the completion of a harrowingly gigantic factory farm under construction right off the highway on the route between my hometown and Madison. (The cows, I heard, are on their way from Nebraska in the new year. Not that I'd prefer Wisconsin cows meet their fate in such a place, but I'm puzzled as to why the Dairy State needs to import its livestock.)
• Alterra Coffee! I visited the main roasting facility on Humboldt, and wanted to set up permanent shop at one of the tables, eating pie, breathing in toasty beans, and talking all day with old friends. 
• A friend had a Mrs. Meyer's Iowa Pine candle going in her bathroom, and I was teased for emerging from the bathroom more than once exclaiming how great it smelled in there. The candle seems to be sold out all over, but I'll be keeping an eye for one out next winter.
• Oh man, if you're ever in Iowa, do yourself a favor and purchase some AE French Onion dip. You may be thinking, I've tried french onion dip in a tub before, and it's not that great. I agree! It usually isn't, but this stuff is so delicious that dipping your chip so deep that your hand comes out creamy is one of my family's most sacred holiday traditions. Viva Midwest!

stars! they smell just like us.

All week I've been wearing By Kilian's Beyond Love and I smell amazing. I'm like this buttery, floral angel of aroma just floating around town, upstaging even the lilac bushes and lilies of the valley. I suspect the only reason more people aren't stopping me on the street to ask why I smell so good is that they're weirded out by how focused I am on smelling my own arm.

I went to the Class Day ceremonies at Harvard today because I wanted to hear Amy Poehler speak (like every smart young lady in America, I am morally bound to support any event at which she is featured). The crowd was full of girls in bright, floral dresses, hair and skin and smiles gleaming. Poehler herself wore this gorgeous shade of saturated teal and a metallic blazer, bright as the blonde froth of her hair. There were huge Veritas flags strung up everywhere, and the trees in Harvard Yard were shedding the tiniest golden leaves, like tasteful, perfectly-timed confetti. A sucker for ceremony (even ones I am not a part of), I walked home feeling restless and nostalgic, optimistic but a little bereft.

The blue was much better than this.  © Reuters, via

Poehler told the students that if they could manage to add kindness and the ability to fix a tire to their existing smarts and bravery, they would just about be the perfect people (not just sweetness & light, she did flip off the kid who referred to her as the "blonde Tina Fey" at the start of his very funny speech). She was more earnest than any of the student speakers. She told them to put down their iPhones and look at people's faces. Her own face—not just that custard-colored hair—was radiant, but I believed her when she said she'd stayed up late writing her speech. I get the feeling that she is the sort of person who, even when exhausted, emits a kind of sunshine. She just seems so undeniably good. Though there is nothing goofy about Beyond Love (apart from its stupid-high price), it is also undeniably good.

My mom has said that if writing doesn't work out for me, I should try to become a scent adviser to the stars. (Is this a real job? Has anyone seen a "Scent Adviser to the Stars" offer intimate-seeming insight in US Weekly followed immediately by a disclaimer that they have never met, let alone sniffed, the celebrity in question?) If writing and manure-ranking both fail to keep me in perfumes, I'll start with Amy Poehler: Get your hands on some Beyond Love! No doubt you'll look adorable even with your nose buried deep in your own elbow crook.

Nosy Interview: Rebecca Hoogs

 Rebecca pictured in The Seagull Nebula, © Michael Sidonio

Rebecca was my boss at Seattle Arts & Lectures, and though I am no longer paid to brainstorm with her, I still consider the activity one of the most valuable ways to spend an afternoon. You can buy Rebecca's chapbook, Grenade, at Open Books, and read some of her poetry here.

What do you smell like?  

Well, you can't smell yourself, or if you can, that's usually a bad sign, so I can only imagine the things I must smell like, which are the things I've come into contact with in the past 24 hours or week or life. Right now I probably smell like box wine and wet wool. I probably smell a bit like my cats and though I'm fond of how they smell, I know this is a bad thing. Luckily I'm not a spinster. I have a husband who smells like cats, too, so that must make it more ok. I probably smell like Tom's of Maine honeysuckle deodorant which I've used for so long I can't smell it any more but I can still smell the word "honeysuckle" which I love. I probably smell l like old house given that the one I live is was built in 1924; and spilt coffee, since I'm always spilling it on myself on the way to work as I attempt to drink it from a defective to-go mug; and cheese and crackers. I love cheese and crackers. Sometimes I might put on Tocca's Aqua Profumata, Amalfi, but then I smell too perfumey and will feel a little pukey if we drive anywhere. 

What do you like to smell?

I love to smell lilacs in the spring, and rosemary, especially when I'm walking in my neighborhood, and raspberries in the sun in the summer in a field. I love to walk into a house where someone has been cooking, and smell that. I love the smell of the heat traveling through the vents the first time you turn it on in the fall. I love the hot woody smell of a sauna. I love the smell of the Korean Spa in Lynnwood, WA. I love the smell of coffee in the morning, and especially coffee in Italy. I love the smell of Rome, the smell of heat and even the smell of garbage. I remember returning from Italy and being fond of the smell of Pioneer Square in the morning in the summer because it reminded me of Italy, and then realizing that was because the streets smelled like urine. I still liked it. I love other bad smells, like manure, because it reminds me of home and hay and the farm. I love the smell of hamburgers at a ski slope. I love the whooshy smell of a new can of tennis balls. I love the smell of new clothes. I love the smell of a vintage clothes shop, or any thrift store, which is the smell of the possibility of treasure. Which is also the smell of sadness. I like passing someone in a crowd that smells like an old boyfriend and being whisked back in time for a moment. Now you are making out on a horsehair couch. I like the smell of a fair: elephant ear, roasted corn, Gravitron grease, prize chicken shit. When I was a kid I loved the way my Cabbage Patch kids smelled, especially the preemies; I loved sweet plastic. There are so many smells I love: salt air, lake water, campfire, cedar wood. My husband. Home.