The Shape of Smells to Come

There is a certain charm to the stiffly drawn illustrations found in United States patent documents. The clear, static, highly conventionalized style evokes comic books and instruction manuals. Yet, in contrast to the ponderous, formal, lawyerly text of the patent, the hand of the artist can give the images a certain style of their own.

Here is Figure 1 from U.S. Patent 3,902,851, “Method of detecting odors and apparatus therefore,” by Andrew Dravnieks. It was granted on September 2, 1975. The illustrator did not sign his work, but I think it qualifies as a type of olfactory art.

Grieving and Thieving

A news headline from Dublin, Ireland, late last year: “Bereaved woman ‘stole nine bottles of scent’, court told.”

My authorial juices start to flow. The narrative snaps into place:

A distraught widow, desperate to recover the sensory presence of her late husband, grabs a bottle of his favorite cologne from a store shelf. Then, hoping to sustain his comforting olfactory ghost for years to come, she stuffs eight more bottles into her bag and flees the store. She is apprehended by mall cops and at trial the judge is torn—should he sentence her by the book or show mercy because this is clearly a case of nasal insanity?

But reality intrudes. Natasha Gleeson of Corduff Crescent, Blanchardstown, was caught on security video shoplifting perfume and aftershave. Her solicitor told the court she was “recently bereaved” but this looks like a lame attempt to invoke sympathy from the judge.

Still, it has the makings of a great story.

Literary Smellscapes: Joan Didion on Leaving New York

When Joan Didion, a native Californian, recounts her change of scene to the East Coast and back, it is scent that drives her back and forth in time, as through a wormhole. It begins with a foreshadowing, the mirage of new smellscape that locates her far from her roots:

“I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again. I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring, or the second spring, they were all alike for a while. I was late to meet someone but I stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peach and stood on the corner eating it and knew that I had come out out of the West and reached the mirage. I could taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on my legs and I could smell lilac and garbage and expensive perfume and I knew that it would cost something sooner or later—because I did not belong there, did not come from there—but when you are twenty-two or twenty-three, you figure that later you will have a high emotional balance, and be able to pay whatever it costs. I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.”

Later, scents pull her back into specific times and places:

“Now when New York comes back to me it comes in hallucinatory flashes, so clinically detailed that I sometimes wish that memory would effect the distortion with which it is commonly credited. For a lot of the time I was in New York I used a perfume called Fleurs de Rocaille, and then L’Air du Temps, and now the slightest trace of either can short-circuit my connections for the rest of the day. Nor can I smell Henri Bendel jasmine soap without falling back into the past, or the particular mixture of spices used for boiling crabs. There were barrels of crab boil in a Czech place in the Eighties where I once shopped. Smells, of course, are notorious memory stimuli, but there are other things which affect me the same way. Blue-and-white striped sheets. Vermouth cassis. Some faded nightgowns which were new in 1959 or 1960, and some chiffon scarves I bought about the same time.”

In the end, the notes of a familiar smellscape tell her that she is home once again:

“The last time I was in New York was in a cold January, and everyone was ill and tired. Many of the people I used to know there had moved to Dallas or had gone on Antabuse or had bought a farm in New Hampshire. We stayed ten days, and then we took an afternoon flight back to Los Angeles, and on the way home from the airport that night I could see the moon on the Pacific and smell jasmine all around and we both knew that there was no longer any point in keeping the apartment we still kept in New York. There were years when I called Los Angeles “the Coast,” but they seem a long time ago.”

Joan Didion
Goodbye to All That (1967)
(Slouching Towards Bethlehem)

ISDP: Cheesy Merchandise Edition

To keep our fingers limber while pecking out each winter-time installment of ISDP, we like nothing better than wrapping our gnarled hands around a hot mug of Ovaltine. It’s also calming to watch the steam rise into the chilly air of our garret atop FirstNerve Manor.

We recently tired of the chipped, crack-spidered mug we’d been using for years and decided to splurge on a new one. We designed it ourselves and may we say we are very pleased with the results. So pleased, in fact, that we have made it available for purchase on CafePress.com. (Follow the link or look for the FirstNerve store).

You know you want one. Especially if you or your loved ones work in a medical examiner’s office, the county probate office, the homicide squad, or the maintenance department of any largish apartment complex. Imagine how delighted they’ll be to get one as a gift!

And with that we return to our regularly scheduled programming.

The Lone Star State has been on a tear, with items in the previous three editions of ISDP. The Houston Chronicle’s Dale Lelzon had a story on November 24 that looked to extend the streak: “A 29-year-old man has been arrested after the body of his common-law wife was found wrapped in a blanket in a closet at her apartment in southwest Houston.” However, since the woman’s body (and associated “foul odor”) was discovered only after her concerned family came looking for her, the case fails to meet our strict criterion. Sorry, Dale.

But wait! Two weeks later another Houston incident kept the Texas streak, uh . . . alive. On December 9, Karla Barguiarena from television station KTRK filed this story: “Amber alert remains in effect for baby after mom found dead in refrigerator.”

Maintenance workers at the Braeswood Oaks apartments made the gruesome discovery after residents reported a strong, foul odor coming from the air conditioning vents.

Police estimate the victim may have been in the fridge for nearly a week. The 11-month-old baby and his 38-year-old father are both missing.

Three New Nominees for the Norman Bates Award, International Division

That’s So Cold

The headline says it all: “Man kills, hides cousin’s body in freezer for 9 years. Duo fought with each other over financial issues.” Well, almost all. How was the frozen corpse discovered?

Due to the power cuts [in Alexandria, Egypt], the freezer had broken down, which led to the spread of the dead body’s foul smell in the neighbourhood. The neighbors informed the police about the foul smell. Police rushed to the scene and opened the fridge only to find the body, which was still intact.

Mummy Dearest

Woman shared a bed with the body of her dead mother for FIVE YEARS in Germany… and it had mummified by the time social workers found it.

An 83-year-old woman’s mummified remains were found by social workers who visited her home in Munich after neighbors became suspicious because they hadn’t seen her in years. The woman’s 55-year-old daughter had been living there since her mother died in 2009, and was evidently sharing a bed as her mother’s corpse.

Apparently once you get past the odoriferous, active-decay phase of things, it becomes just regular creepy, not epic creepy.

The Family That Prays Together

A 52-year-old Hamilton, Ontario, man died of an untreated illness because he and his family believed that God would cure him. Afterward, his wife sealed the bedroom door and air duct to contain the odor of decay, and continued, along with her five children (ages 11 to 22) and seven live-in adult friends, to pray for the man’s resurrection. It hadn’t happened by the time, six months later, that the sheriff arrived to evict them for nonpayment of the mortgage. FirstNerve nominates the entire Canadian mini-cult for this year’s Norman Bates Award.

Department of Closure

There’s been a resolution to an ISDP case we reported on three years ago. In the middle of his murder trial in Pitt County, North Carolina, Joey Owens decided to take a plea deal. He pleaded guilty to two counts of second degree murder, and will serve a 30-year minimum prison sentence. He shot and killed Samuel Bradley and Alice Hardy in their mobile home in 2011. Their bodies were discovered after neighbors called deputies to complain of a foul odor.

UPDATE December 16, 2014
Commenter Tara C. points out that we posted a CafePress.com link which didn't go to our specific store. The link is fixed now and goes directly to the FirstNerve store. Or click here. Thanks Tara, and happy shopping!

A New Kindle Edition of What the Nose Knows

I recently received back the rights to What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life. Today I released a new Kindle version of the book on Amazon.com. It has a new cover (above) and corrects a few typos. Best of all, I lowered the price to $5.99. If you don’t have a copy, now’s the time to grab one. What are you waiting for? Get yours here.

P.S. The original hardcover printing has long been sold out. Right now I’m working on a print-on-demand paperback that I hope to make available soon.