smell

Being present in things as they are...

in doing so, it can be useful to assume the attitude of a naturalist.

A naturalist simply observes nature without interfering or imposing his or her views. The naturalist's perspective is one of respect for what is observed. The word re-spect
(aka R-E-S-P-E-C-T) is a nice synonym for mindfulness practice because it literally means to look again.  

I'm finding this [from meditation teacher Gil Fronsdal - thanks S for recommending him] helpful as a way to deal with the enormous stress of the last few weeks and simply take in what's around me. In the heart of summer I find the easiest way to do that is through the sense of smell since it is so heightened in the heat and humidity,  from gardens to garbage. In fact the scents I most associate with this season are roses and rotting trash with a healthy spray of sunscreen (in pre-cancer aware days, sun tanning lotion) You could think of those first two as polar opposites in terms of how we interpret them: roses have the most exquisite scents, ranging from subtle to profuse depending on the species, and garbage while at the other end of what we generally consider pleasing. Yet given its associations with my favorite summer in the city experiences: at the end of any urban outdoor event - from concert or fireworks to barbecues, jazz festival to Shakespeare in the Park,that smell from overflowing trash cans and the detritus gathered along well traveled paths from people who have been enjoying themselves in crowded urban spaces, creating a happy hour for ants and their cousins and a putrid odor for the humans to endure.

...when we take [our emotions] personally we let ourselves be defined by them: the presence of anger means I am an angry person.  A generous act taken personally is proof that I am a generous person....from a naturalist perspective, one does not see "my anger" or "my generosity". Rather, they are simply observed as "the anger" or "the impulse of generosity"

Hard to believe it was just a little more than two weeks ago (it feels more like two months) I was on a 2 day yoga retreat on a sustainable farm, breathing, eating, moving and sharing with others who understand the enormous burden of being a caregiver, with the smells of the fresh earth and a swimming hole and outdoor shower and fresh cooked vegetables, and the opportunity to feel replenished and fortified to deal with daily stress... followed immediately by those reserves being tested as I experience the disappointment and the sadness of V having to come home after only two days of sleep-away camp because of some new anxiety-driven behaviors we can not understand and therefore struggle to address.  I observe how the distress of hustling for help for him aggravates the anxiety of starting a new job, and the desire to feel the hopefulness of new beginnings is clouded by the despondency towards my own seemingly endlessly challenging circumstances

For a naturalist there is no good or bad, the world just unfolds. 

Each person's nose has about 400 different types of olfactory receptors, and there are 6 million in total, which suggests that each person smells the world slightly differently.

In the span of an hour :  an overheated brake on the train, the newly showered and still waking up smells of soap, hair products, coffee, followed by more coffee and donuts in the station, outside to rotting garbage, marijuana, bacon, a whiff of someone who hasn't bathed in weeks, cheap or expensive perfume, I can't really tell which - it just smells like chemical masking sweat,dog poop (eau de canine), an elevator full of deodorant and cleaning chemicals and yet more coffee.

I like some more than others but as I travel through my morning they all just unfold, and while there's an underlying sense of good or bad,  desired and disliked, I don't personalize any of it and I know that whether they are aware of it or not, everyone else is experiencing their own distinct interpretations of the same air we breathe and smell.  The bereft and the confident, the struggling or successful, we all react to a shared world of scents. We do not wonder "Why is this overflowing trash can happening to me?" or "I'm so wonderful to be smelling chocolate croissants."  There's nothing personal about any of it.

Be both the naturalist and the nature. 

Because of our wonderful power of observation and reflection, human beings can be both the observed and the observer. 

In the game of which sense would you be most willing to lose, smell always wins [I read in the Smithsonian] But in evolutionary terms smell plays an important role: we smell things we need to avoid or that trigger possible danger: spoiled food, gas leaks or fire.  Smell is also deeply emotional, linked to memory and past interactions. The scent of a certain cologne or pastry can evoke a loved one or place in time.
For me, it is smells that connect me to memory, the people and places I cherish: my grandmother's skin, my aunt's kitchen, the cabin in the mountains, the Earl grey tea a friend used to drink, cheese steak. I have not eaten red meat in over 40 years, but I'm a Philly girl, I still love the strong smell of frying onions and meat on a large frying pan followed by the more subtle melted cheese on top. This is my childhood, as much a part of my nature as fresh mowed grass or autumn leaves.

You are here. You are a naturalist. I have to remind myself over and over in the course of days that stretch into weeks of emails and phone calls to interview and schedule for help, setbacks and cancellations, the mysteries of neurobiology and human behavior I cannot solve, getting up at 5:30 am each morning with anxiety gripping my gut, going through the day watching reactions and projections: The fear. The longing for something to be easy.  The dread: will life every be able to be about what I love to do instead of what I have to do? The clinging to the belief that it isn't fair.  But life isn't fair.  Is there a way to feel neither avoidance or obsession with that fact? Breathe. the smell of coffee and an egg frying and gluten free toast, which smells just like the regular kind even if it tastes a little grittier. 

The naturalist sees the longing to have more time to sit here writing, but she sees the must do's that cram in almost every waking hour, except the end of the day when she collapses in exhaustion, grateful that there really is such a things as good TV.  The naturalist feels the determination to change things, and then she smiles and smells coffee, sunscreen, toothpaste and the fresh sultry air as she leaves to take the dog for a walk.