Yesterday evening I realized something. I smell more stuff and I smell hints of things other people don't.
I guess when you start consciously smelling or trying to detect certain notes in scents (or anything else for that matter), you actually exercise your sense of smell to a better degree than other people.
I used to think that my entrance into the perfume world would just enable me to differentiate more and better different things I smell, but it actually got me ahead of most people I know in that I can smell things they don't. My reasoning why they don't consists of 2 things:
1) They are probably not consciously aware of the smells around them
2) As they do not try and smell things, their noses just aren't used to picking out smells.
What usually happens is this (this is a situation from 2 days ago) - I'm walking with my boyfriend by our neighbors house and I say, "Oh, the neighbor spritzed the front steps with that cat spray again - yuck!" And my boyfriend says, "I can't smell anything." :) OK, so he is most evidently one of those who can't smell a thing, but it happens with other people as well. Btw, that spray so the cats wouldn't pee on the steps is just horrible. It keeps me away as well.
One last thought for the end. This is something I am aware of for quite a while now. Smelling good food (either while walking through the city or at home) and inhaling it deeply works almost as good on my hunger as actually eating it. You inhale the smell deeply and your hunger is assuaged for a little while longer.
Does this happen to anyone else?
I have experienced much the same phenomenon re: noticing smells. What got me started was my husband. He seems to have a very keen sense of smell. But I notice he doesn't always "hear" things, like the faint sound of the smoke alarm going on in the basement from 2 floors up. He actually could hear it if his brain didn't tell him it wasn't worth his attention.
ReplyDeleteYou probably saw Avery Gilbert's post but in case you did not: http://tinyurl.com/y7lon47 I like the idea of a smellscape and am now trying it out in my own neighborhood.
And as for assuaging hunger by smelling good food well...I'll have to work on that idea a bit more ;-)
QC, thanks for the link, I'll go and check it out. I would never guess your husband was the culprit of your perfume journey. :) That is wonderful - I actually appreciate very much the fact that my boyfriend and I don't share many interests, we have stuff we can do together and then stuff we can do for our own joy.
ReplyDeleteBtw, my boyfriend doesn't hear stuff like that either. Men. ;)
Mr Bonkers smells - and tastes - very, very little in my opinion, but then again he is a musician and his hearing is most acute. I don't smell particularly keenly myself, except for my hyperosmia to all things civetty, which is on a par with that stuff luminol in forensic detective programmes, which highlights the tiniest of bloodstains! : - )
ReplyDeleteHm, flittersniffer, can you be hyperosmic? Because then I think I might be hyperosmic to some musks which stick inside my nose and won't go away. And other people have no idea what I'm talking about.
ReplyDelete