According to an article I read in Scientific American, women have a keener sense of smell than do men, and men's body odor is harder to cover up than a woman's
Smell is cross-wired with taste, and vision with hearing. Your left ear specializes in music, and the right ear language, with the ears themselves biased this way. Your vision shows a similar bias, using an enormous data sieve to rapidly sort through all the data on the way to the back of your head, where a tiny fraction of what you see is interpreted by heuristic networks. Smell, goes up and down in the brain, and is the only sense hardwired into the brainstem. It is a primitive sense and works similar to a child's peg board that you push different shaped blocks through different holes, except quantum mechanics apply and two blocks going through at the same time can be correlated. By processing your senses in different directions, your brain can send brain waves in different directions and to different parts of the brain simultaneously and, likely, access more of the quantum processing in the white matter, or microtubles. Some people's brains are weirdly cross-wired, and they can taste colors, and smell sounds or whatever. The latest research in Quantum Photography promises to make it possible to see different colors we can't normally see, such as ultraviolet, and it may be possible to smell things that are normally impossible as well. Its as if we are learning how to use our senses all over again.
A freshly opened sealed bag of potato chips (crisps for you Brit types), or a newly opened bag of fresh licorice still wet from the factory. Oh shit, I could huff that stuff for hours nonstop. Also, the patties on the fryer at my local hamburger place, when they begin to prepare my order, you just know something good's coming soon.
There’s nothing like the odor of putting a match or lighter to the shoe polish to get that better than spit-polish shine.
The fabulous smell of cooking !!! - the smell of hot cross buns with cinnamon - absolutely delightful. The smell emanating from an Indian Restaurant, the smell of frying onions, to name but three !!!
I remember my old house in another town when I think of shoe polish - my dad had a collection! Different colors for different shoes. Maybe they used to sell you a tin of polish when you bought leather shoes... Either that, or the army taught in basic to shine them. It's also entirely possible he just likes to take care of his shoes. I think the smell of roses is interesting. There are so many thoughts that come up; thoughts and memories.
Oh....I can’t believe I didn’t already post the very thing that makes me drool obsessively, every time I think about it.That warm, musky, tangy, delightfully delicious........- mmmmmmm!!!
I remember a place up Little Fires Creek. A gargantuan hemlock had fallen, opening up the forest canopy. In the resultant sunlight, wild roses had grown up on either side of the trail 6' tall. We'd happened along that morning when they were all in full bloom. We once had an orange tree when we lived in Florida. Any time in the spring that I was in need of aromatherapy, I'd go to the orange blossoms. In college, I lived in my great-aunt's garret. There was an ancient magnolia just outside my window, that could fill the whole apartment with it's fragrance. Every once in a while on the trail I get a whiff of the evergreens; pines, cedars, and hemlocks. Their aromatics contain compounds called phytoncides, which can lower blood pressure and cortisol levels, and elevate mood. Nag Champa. White sage. Frankincense. Though I no longer partake, weed.
Just the different smells of being in the Woods! I Love walking in the Woods and just taking my time to take it All in!
Especially during the spring time, when the air is cool, fresh and crisp, and you can hear the wind gently rustle the leaves on the trees and the birds whistling - taking it all in.....
Walking by the creek, and you realize that the musky smell that you are smelling is a Water Moccasin!
I remember reading an article in OMNI magazine many years ago entitled the scent of the sea. It was the authors contention that men are attracted to the odor of women, because blood is primarily made up of saltwater and it's our desire to return to the sea from which we emerged as tetrapod's some 400 millions years ago. So next time you take a good whiff it's the primitive part of the brain that controls your actions.