The nose knows. Smells are far more important than one can imagine. A single smell can conjure up long-forgotten memories or emotions by placing you back in time for that brief moment to the scene where you first encountered that smell. The smell of your mother’s secret family Italian tomato pasta sauce cooking downstairs below as the warm aromas reach your room, wafting into your nose as you breathe in softly awaking you with a smile. Pasta dinner is in the near future. Or a time when a cologne passes your nose as you walk along the sidewalk reminding you of a past love. Suddenly, the smell passes your nose, you breathe in as your eyes close for a split second as his face appears before you. The smell leaves your nose, while the vision stays perfectly clear each time you close your eyes for the next few moments. You feel a tug at your heartstrings...
Nearly all the flavor of food derives from its aroma. When we have a cold and our noses are stuffed, the flavor of food becomes not only odorless, but tasteless. Our taste buds sense sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, yet our sense of smell takes in the aromas as our brain registers them assisting our taste buds. Supposedly, the average human nose recognizes as many as 10,000 separate odors.
Animals depend on their sense of smell to survive using it to seek out food and to find a mate. The basics in life: food and love. It doesn’t get much better than that, righ? Animals and insects have pheromones, which are chemicals produced by an organism signaling them to behave a particular way during mating season. These chemicals can be the whiff of an airborne chemical from a female mouse spurring a male to mate. Human mothers can recognize their babies by smell, and newborns recognize their mothers in the same way. Pretty amazing.
Speculation says humans, much like that of other animals, use their sense of smell for social and sexual information. Research continues to see if humans hold these receptors. Humans are tougher than insects and rodents to decipher due to our ornery and independent nature. We are the toughest to work with since the meanings for our actions are never clear. Humans have so much in their everyday life that affects their behavior. Factors include our environment and upbringing.
Smells are a vital aspects in our lives. Smells not only have personal connotation but they can protect us if we smell a gas leak or smoke. We use deodorant for both health and odor suppressing reasons. While we also use cologne and perfume to create our own signature smell each person has their own particular and unique scent. These scents can either make you more attracted to someone or will have you building an invisible fence so you do not have to get too close. There is something about your man’s smell how the wiff of it can drive you crazy, make your heart skin-a-beat even if he is not in the room, maybe you have a hoodie of his you borrowed, his smell all over the fabric making it seem as though he is in the room with you.
Never take smells for granted.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
29
29. Just saying the number aloud sounds like a foreign language, something I dreamt about and woke up in a cold sweat. Twenty-nine. Okay, so it’s not that bad. The worst of it is how well it rolls off your tongue like chocolate pudding, all smooth and cold. Bittersweet.
I remember being 9 years old on my birthday turning 10. I was at my best friend Lorien’s house in San Jose, CA. In between playing in the pool and watching movies, we stood giggling in her kitchen watching her microwave clock as it struck 5:02 p.m. I was 10 years old. Double digits. Once the green 02 showed brightly on the microwave screen for a split second I remember seriousness set in…was I no longer a kid? Am I supposed to act differently? Can I still crawl all over the jungle gym and swing so high I nearly flip over the swing set? Can I still play with dolls?
What does this whole age thing mean anyway? Other than the fact that humankind felt it important to measure each second, each minute and year that we thrive on this planet. The irony of the whole thing is though I may be 29 years of age, I still feel 25 or 21…maybe wiser and mentally more mature. But inside and even out I feel no older than 23.
10 years ago I swore to myself I would be a published author by age 25. Though I had the history of my school published at age 17, which turned out to be an 83-page booklet, somehow it wasn’t the same as a professionally bound book. The smell. My name. Sold at your nearest Borders, Books and Music. Next thing I know 27 arrives with no published novel to my name. I pushed the deadline to 30, and now 30 is 20 days away. Life happens. Now I need to look life in the eye and make it happen. No more wishy-washy “someday….” Today.
10 years ago I figured myself to be good and married, well traveled, with an adorable teething youngster on my hip. Instead, more or less, newly single and both emotionally and mentally in the best place I have been in years – maybe ever. Pinching myself that I live in Washington DC, with a great job, surrounded by amazing people. As I continue to meet wonderful people, while continuing to also reunite with people from my past who remind me just how special of a place California, my home state, truly is and more importantly the friends I left behind when I began this east coast adventure. Life is funny. I have learned to roll with the pain, since from pain comes bliss. The yin and the yang – balance is a daily goal. Life without balance is like a sky with no stars. Dark. Dreary.
10 years ago I studied abroad to Florence, Italy where I had the time of my life. I went to Europe with no expectations just the pure excitement to see something up close with my eyes, to touch it with my bare hands instead of seeing a two-inch-by-two-inch color photo in a book and dreaming of being there. Italy changed my life. I finally had a chance to be on my own – make my own decisions. I received more of an education about life and myself than I ever could have learned sitting in a classroom at a college in the states. Oh to be 19 again and dancing my heart out at Andromeda! l'Italia per sempre!
The past six months have felt like I am back at the drawing board, but this time I have a clear picture in my mind of what I want to paint. I am the artist of my life. No more testing the colors and swooshing lines across the canvas. My 20s were a blur of colors, some bright and some dark like a dance of colors with no real shape or meaning. Though I enter my 30s a single woman, life is taking such beautiful shape and I am excited to see where this picturesque path takes me…
20 days before I turn 30 there is a full moon. Venus, the romance planet in our solar system is beside this glorious full moon…a sign? I sure like to think so.
I embrace my 30s with more passion and clarity than I ever did when I was in my 20s…
I remember being 9 years old on my birthday turning 10. I was at my best friend Lorien’s house in San Jose, CA. In between playing in the pool and watching movies, we stood giggling in her kitchen watching her microwave clock as it struck 5:02 p.m. I was 10 years old. Double digits. Once the green 02 showed brightly on the microwave screen for a split second I remember seriousness set in…was I no longer a kid? Am I supposed to act differently? Can I still crawl all over the jungle gym and swing so high I nearly flip over the swing set? Can I still play with dolls?
What does this whole age thing mean anyway? Other than the fact that humankind felt it important to measure each second, each minute and year that we thrive on this planet. The irony of the whole thing is though I may be 29 years of age, I still feel 25 or 21…maybe wiser and mentally more mature. But inside and even out I feel no older than 23.
10 years ago I swore to myself I would be a published author by age 25. Though I had the history of my school published at age 17, which turned out to be an 83-page booklet, somehow it wasn’t the same as a professionally bound book. The smell. My name. Sold at your nearest Borders, Books and Music. Next thing I know 27 arrives with no published novel to my name. I pushed the deadline to 30, and now 30 is 20 days away. Life happens. Now I need to look life in the eye and make it happen. No more wishy-washy “someday….” Today.
10 years ago I figured myself to be good and married, well traveled, with an adorable teething youngster on my hip. Instead, more or less, newly single and both emotionally and mentally in the best place I have been in years – maybe ever. Pinching myself that I live in Washington DC, with a great job, surrounded by amazing people. As I continue to meet wonderful people, while continuing to also reunite with people from my past who remind me just how special of a place California, my home state, truly is and more importantly the friends I left behind when I began this east coast adventure. Life is funny. I have learned to roll with the pain, since from pain comes bliss. The yin and the yang – balance is a daily goal. Life without balance is like a sky with no stars. Dark. Dreary.
10 years ago I studied abroad to Florence, Italy where I had the time of my life. I went to Europe with no expectations just the pure excitement to see something up close with my eyes, to touch it with my bare hands instead of seeing a two-inch-by-two-inch color photo in a book and dreaming of being there. Italy changed my life. I finally had a chance to be on my own – make my own decisions. I received more of an education about life and myself than I ever could have learned sitting in a classroom at a college in the states. Oh to be 19 again and dancing my heart out at Andromeda! l'Italia per sempre!
The past six months have felt like I am back at the drawing board, but this time I have a clear picture in my mind of what I want to paint. I am the artist of my life. No more testing the colors and swooshing lines across the canvas. My 20s were a blur of colors, some bright and some dark like a dance of colors with no real shape or meaning. Though I enter my 30s a single woman, life is taking such beautiful shape and I am excited to see where this picturesque path takes me…
20 days before I turn 30 there is a full moon. Venus, the romance planet in our solar system is beside this glorious full moon…a sign? I sure like to think so.
I embrace my 30s with more passion and clarity than I ever did when I was in my 20s…
Written: 8-6-2009
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