Without the aroma of car exhaust, hot dogs or coffee, the city was a blank slate. Nothing was unbearable and nothing was especially beguiling. Penn Station’s public restroom smelled the same as Jacques Torres’s chocolate shop on Hudson Street. I knew that New York possessed a further level of meaning, but I had no access to it, and I worked hard to ignore what I could not detect.
— From Finally, the Scent of the City, in which columnist Molly Birnbaum moves to New York City during a time when her sense of smell was impaired. Many thanks to Existentialist for the link!
What an amazing narrative about the power of smell!!! Our olfactory nerve cells are always replacing themselves- thank god! I cannot imagine life without smell or taste; shudder!!!!
Isn't that a great article? And yes, knock on wood…
Great article, I can't imagine not being able to smell, knocking on wood right now…..
I knew someone who lost their sense of smell, and never regained it. The only good thing, she mentioned, is now that food had lost most of it's joy for her, she lost 20 lbs. She also mentioned the danger involved, as the article did about not being able to smell smoke.
It's really tragic to live in NYC without a sense of smell, because New York is the most pungent city I've ever been to (except Bombay). I'll carry with me the synthetically sweet, vanillic cigarette smell that wafts through the streets wherever I am in the world.
Ah, I <3 NY.
Her time living without the sense of smell seemed like an episode from “The Twilight Zone”. I found it scary, like being at a remove from life and other people. Makes me grateful for all my senses.
Yes — there's a diet method that involves clipping your nose so you can't smell your food — I'd rather be fat
It's interesting that I don't think of NY as that smelly, perhaps because those are smells I'm used to. When I travel abroad, *those* cities always seem “smellier”.
Sure does! Although if given the choice, I might give up smell first. Hopefully I'll never have to make the choice…