Recently, I read something to the effect that humans can differentiate between half a million smells. So I thought I would really make a point to smell the world more. Today I was jogging and I passed a row of some plants or grass or something and was hit with a smell. It was, and I’m amazed I’m using this world to describe a smell, but it was beautiful. Really pleasant and magical.

As I was walking back from my run it struck me that smells are beautiful in a unique way. Generally we use the word beautiful to describe things we see. These are people or objects, and even as we are amazed at their beauty, we covet them. Their beauty creates a yearning. With sound, the term beautiful is usually applied to music. And again, we want the song, we are filled with need. To some degree this is true with strong tastes – food or drink; We must have it again and again. Touch is a more ethereal sense but we do covet a lot of things that appeal to touch – warm things, plush things, rugs, coats etc. (Sex of course involves the sense of touch.)

But smell is different. We don’t seek to own smells, indeed we know we can’t. We’re (mostly) content to enjoy them and let them pass.

Now you might be saying, “What about perfumes?” Yeah, I thought of that, but, speaking for myself, I don’t really covet perfumes. I’ve never smelled a perfume and thought, “I have to have that.” Perfumes aren’t really about the smell itself, they are about making you smell like that smell. A perfume is more like a mask than an object that exists on its own terms.

Thus I have spoken.