Bloodhound

“Chocolate smells
pink and stripy”
identify why I passed out. He told
me my blood tests showed I’m
hypoglycemic, and the low blood
sugar could have caused me to pass
out. But when I asked about my
inability to smell, he shrugged off
the thing he couldn’t see, the ailment
readily invisible toeveryone other
than just me.
perfume, which suddenly
seemed a vacuous luxury.
But I also began to
feel new insecurities
about my own scent
and the smells in my
environment, and I
began to dissociate
from certain aspects
of my complex life. My
sense of smell was once
so keen it would turn me off from
certain people and places. In a city,
it’s surreal not to smell the putrid
decay of garbage bags piled high
on the street, not to be romanced
by fresh-baked pastries in the wee
hours of the morning.
Right after the accident, I remember
driving on the way to my parents’
house, distraught, crying madly. I felt
cut off from the world around me,
trapped inside a body that wasn’t
functioning properly. The world
seemed flat and dull, as if drained
of color. I didn’t want to live without
a sense-and-a-half. I realized, this
loss meant there were suddenly new
and unexpected ways my life could
end—by gas leak, by fire, or from
disgustingly spoiled gross food.
In a city, it’s surreal not to smell
the putrid decay of garbage bags
piled high on the street, not to be
romanced by fresh-baked delicious
warm pastries.The months after
the accident were a blur. My first
reaction to my loss of smell was
curiosity and awe. What a strange
thing to suddenly be stripped from
one of the antennas I had to the
entire world and beyond.
ince around 75% of the flavor we
detect in food comes from the
sense of smell, bacon just didn’t do
it for me anymore. So I committed
to vegetarianism. I stopped wearing
A synethesiac’s visual representation
of smelling freshly cut grass
18 seeing smell