variety of thoughts, pt. 3

smell
In some languages you "hear" smells. Certain senses are ranked as lower than others. Zintuigen, I've never made this connection between "sense" as meaning and as our body's observation mechanism; in Dutch it's even more obvious. If I had to give up one of the senses it would be smell, sorry smell. It's the least zin of the tuigen.

When I was walking the Via Francigena, one of the bodily changes I noticed was that my smelling-capabilities became more precise. Unknown flowers, the grass, and sand. I don't know why this change occurred; maybe it was because I was constantly in nature, maybe it was connected to the walking. Other walkers felt the same about this. It was interesting to realise that a sense had been numbed. If my sight or hearing suddenly deteriorated or increased I would be wary, a clear sign of a curse and/or blessing. But when I got back to my usual routine, life in the city, I wasn't struck by the smells, nor did I experience a sense of numbing. In spring I'll smell more flowers.

Another thought on smell: the discovery of perfumes by Gen-Z through websites like Fragrantica. People love to track & compare things, as demonstrated by the rise of websites like Letterboxd, Strava, and Goodreads, so why should we expect anything else for perfume. My first boyfriend was very into perfume; he bought me my first bottle, which was pink and in the shape of a skull (my choice.) He told me where to apply it, but I checked it again online later, as I wanted to know why you had to put it in certain spots. He saw this, and threw a hissy fit about it. I think another reason why perfume has increased in popularity is that it's way to express one's individuality. I have three different perfumes, and all of them express an unique aspect of my personhood.

What's cool about perfumes is that there's no clear beauty "standard." A good smell isn't necessarily a clean smell; in fact, I don't think most people want to smell like detergent or toothpaste. What smell works for a person isn't necessarily determined by an ideal (although I'm sure there are trends in the perfume industry); how the smell interacts with their natural odour and their attitude is essential. At the same time, there are also smells that are 'gendered', which is trivial, let women smell like oil. But this also create the opportunity to play with gender in a subtle way. Stupid gender expectations, fun games.

I haven't been to Berlin in a while, but some time ago I read an article which mentioned, exaggeratedly, that no one in Berlin wears deodorant. It stuck with me because it made me realise: isn't it strange that it's a social expectation to wear deodorant? Isn't this a relatively new standard? Then again, perfumes have been a precious commodity since the beginning of communal living. It's one of the first luxuries, a sign of status - so it's punk to eschew it. Yet in some ways it feels like one of those false nature-culture dichotomies: because something is 'natural' does not mean it is 'better' than something which is 'cultural.' They didn't have deodorant in the past, nor did they have sewers, and everything smelled bad because of it, and it was not enjoyable. It's nice to smell nice, you're not just doing yourself a favour but also everyone else.

taste
I used to be an extremely picky eater until I started dating people. I thought my earlier food logic was embarrassing: I've never eaten this before, so I can't eat it. So I would eat whatever was given to me, and it turned out better than I expected. There were a few things that I had to train myself to eat (I used to not be able to stand the texture of raw peppers, and I still avoid most raw vegetables), but I'm proud of how I've developed my taste. There are so many wonderful flavours in the world, and it's always nice to discover something new :).

touch
Recently, I read an article that mentioned the concept of double touch: if you touch yourself, you have a double experience of touch, which helps discern selfhood. The Persian philosopher and physician Ibn Sina (also known as Avicenna) had a thought experience which goes the other way: the floating man, if you were just floating in space, not touching anything, how would you know if you are a person? by virtue of your thoughts! It's a variant of Descartes' "cogito ergo sum" argument, but before Descartes was even alive. It's funny how we like to point to things as a 'radical shift' into subjectivism when there is always an undercurrent. Nothing is new.

We're constantly touching things, or perhaps, things are touching us. Your clothes, the ground, perhaps a chair. Is the air touching us, or are we touching the air? Hands are actually so sensitive that they can feel the difference in a millionth of a millimetre. I want to touch more textures. Everything is so smooth these days; it's wonderful to go to nature and see how much variety there is in different tree trunks. Not all trees have a pleasant bark, but I think I should hug more trees, it's a good feeling. Is hugging touching? Put more of my body's surface against your body's surface? Whenever I touch another woman's face, I'm always surprised at how soft it is. My skin doesn't feel that soft. Is that because of the double touch?

vision
Vision is different from sight. It's more framed. Of course, you can also talk about 'a vision', i.e. a particular way of framing things. Everything is so visually oriented, yet I'm struck by the general incapability of language to describe our world. It's awkward to denote every detail, the colour, the texture, the way the light falls, unless you're writing poetry about a very particular object. I want to know more names of colours, so I can describe the world more accurately, and I want to know more adjectives for textures, so I can make the reader "touch" by reading words. Sense.

I love to look at the sun for too long, when it's about to set and I know my eyesight won't be permanently damaged. The worst that will happen is that some colourful spots will echo in your vision for a bit. I try to determine the colour: it's not just "light," the sun's halo will go from green to purple to a kind of pinkish. It's indeterminable. It's one of those physical objects that everyone knows, everyone knows what the sun looks like, but do they really "know?" Can they describe the sun from their experience, or from the "general knowledge" of what the sun looks like? Or do we only know the sun through symbols?

A fun experiment: ask someone to draw a bike without looking at one. Everyone knows what a bike looks like, and drawing one should not take great technical skill, but so far I've only had one person pass this test. What, then, does it mean to know what something "looks like"? With most types of knowledge, simply recognising the thing as "true" is not enough. If I read about a theory, that doesn't mean I "know" it - in order to know it, I need to understand it, be able to explain it. Most people's drawings of bikes certainly look like bikes, but they're not cohesive; it's not a proper understanding of what a bike looks like. It's an interesting feeling when I'm trying to visualise something, it's as if I'm trying to look behind my eyes, or see things without seeing. It's dreaming during the day, but not daydreaming.