For many years I have been trying to explain how it feels to live without a sense of smell. On the surface it is the most meaningless debilitation, though throughout life it can become the most pernicious. We have a concept of what it would be like to Not See. What does it mean to Not Smell?
Perhaps the distress that some feel when enduring a minor illness is the loss of one of their senses more than the replication of bacteria in their blood. They recover from this loss of connection quickly, as though they had been sick and then recovered. Probably they do not think of that experience again.
When endured constantly, the erosion of a sensory deprivation sinks in. There is the loss of the scent of honeysuckle, of women, of bacon spitting grease on a stovetop, of toothpaste— little by little everything is taken. Connections to memory and minor events of the past gradually wither without this reinforcement. The experience of any new thing fails because nothing smells like anything. There is no potential for angels or misery, only blankness, only the way dust must smell.
But what does a blind man know of sunsets?
Perhaps the distress that some feel when enduring a minor illness is the loss of one of their senses more than the replication of bacteria in their blood. They recover from this loss of connection quickly, as though they had been sick and then recovered. Probably they do not think of that experience again.
When endured constantly, the erosion of a sensory deprivation sinks in. There is the loss of the scent of honeysuckle, of women, of bacon spitting grease on a stovetop, of toothpaste— little by little everything is taken. Connections to memory and minor events of the past gradually wither without this reinforcement. The experience of any new thing fails because nothing smells like anything. There is no potential for angels or misery, only blankness, only the way dust must smell.
But what does a blind man know of sunsets?
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