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Stinky surrounds us. We think our world is clean and fresh and smell-free, but everythink stinks. We are drenched in odors to the point that we simply cannot smell them any more. So when a new one comes our way, our first reaction is disgust, and our second one is fear. What could that smell be? What danger am I in from that horrible, horrible smell? Our forebrains are fast enough to get ahead of our lizardy hindbrains and sort the smells out quickly. No Proustian reverie for us until the analyzer runs its review. But it is classified and categorized too fast for us to even be aware of most of the time. Most of the time. And then there are the times when the smells remain unimaginable, overwhelming, indistinguishable and we react to the stink with conscious intent. Sometimes the stink outdoes our cloaking device for the world of smell and we become acutely aware of all the smells around us. We are given access to the stink and have to hope for our brains to re-engage, lest we be carried away.
How many smells do you think you can distinguish? A hundred? A thousand? Which ones do you know well enough that no other sense is required to correctly identify its origin. At this very moment, my cat is walking back and forth in front of me, and each time his tail runs across my upper lip, I am reminded of his exact smell. In the middle of the night I can tell my cats apart by their unique smell signatures. I can only imagine how much more challenging the world is for them, since their sense of smell is so much more developed.
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