Had a little aside thought last night. I spent several hours in one of those places most decent people pretend don’t exist. After several hours of sifting through the human detritus and sweating like Michael Moore in Cuba I got back into my car thoroughly soaked in sweat. Aside from stinking like me I also stunk like the interior of the building I had been in. My first thought after getting a moment to myself was a not-so-fond remembrance of Jean Paul Sartre’s famous quote: Hell is other people. After some reflection I think Sartre and the bible left something out of their descriptors of hell: Smell. There must have been some technical hurdles for the guys that penned the bible in attempting to describe the smells of hell. How do you define ‘bad smelling’ in a time and place where everybody rides donkeys and poops into open pits? I think it’s time we did a small addendum to the book of Revelation and add a few adjectives about eternal damnation. Something like this: “You shalt know of hell by its unyielding assault of odor that thou shalt be unable to take refuge from. The miasma shall be a bouquet of scents most evil; the coming together of rotting fast food, vomited alcohol, dehydration piss, unwashed armpit, and wool-encased feet in the Georgia summer.” Odor is one of those things that we do our best to pass through quickly and forget even quicker. It only becomes torturous when it can’t be escaped and persists. Maybe we should have recidivist sinner children clean grease traps for a week straight and then reevaluate?
Ares
1 comment:
Smell is the strongest memory in the brain. During the last big fire season my brother had to clean ash off his boat. He said he flashed to mom's house when we went to trash it out after the fire. I find it really difficult to be in a place where there has been a fire.
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