Flavour Country

How do we understand flavours beyond food?

On holidays this past summer, I had a tee time booked with a friend for 8:00am. As much as I would like to be – I’m not a morning person, but for whatever reason I was unusually awake unreasonably early. I woke up in a big way at 4:30am.

With a lot of extra time on my hands before golfing my ball in and out of the rhubarb, I found myself in my study scanning the shelves for a book to chew.

I cracked one I had gotten a year ago at Catalyst (= church leadership conference, held annually in the Atlanta area). The book was by Andy Stanley (& friends) – if I could put my hand on it at the moment I’d tell you the title of it. Something like: 7 Practices of Effective Ministry. Andy is one of the leaders responsible for the Catalyst conference.

As I read the introduction – I re-experienced the flavour of those two jam-packed days spent in the outskirts of Atlanta: 2 interstate-service-station-coffee-fueled-all-night-drives, Cracker Barrels, Peachtree (X20), free books & t-shirts, listening to an all-star line-up of speakers, stocking up on leadership books and ministry resources, and drinking a lot of amazing free coffee (Landofathousandhills.com).

How do you explain that?

It’s not that I was reminded of the experience – the book itself had the . . . the . . . the Catalyst flavour. Sure the guy that wrote it also had his hand in the conference itself, but how do you account for the unmistakable similarity in flavour and impression between something somebody writes, and two days worth of presentations put on by a variety of people, on a variety of different topics?

Where do these flavours come from? Why are some stronger than others? What flavour am I giving off?

Smell Travel to the Future

According to Moby, in a brief WIRED magazine article, the future smells like Washington D.C.'s subway system. So that means that I have yet to get a whiff of the future - but . . . perhaps someday . . .

I can console myself with my suspicions that the past smells like fall. The past smells like leaves once engulfed in flames of colour, but now . . . dry, crunchy, lifeless, and smelling brown and grey.

How great is the sense of smell? Last week I got a new bible. Leather bound, onion paper bibles have a unique smell. When I got it home and took it out of the box, the smell of it immediately triggered memories of a weekend back in 1991. I was visiting my Grandpa and Grandma Loback in Pembroke. I went with my Dad to The Master's Way - and he bought be a burgundy leather bound NIV Student Bible (currently still my #1 bible and nearly falling apart - but still a faithful friend).

The smell of my new bible reminded me of when I got back to my Grandparents house, took my (then) new bible out of the box, and began flipping through it engulfed in that new bible smell.

A smell erased 17 years of elapsed time - helping me relive a moment I wouldn't have remembered otherwise. Smell travel = time travel. Or perhaps smell is the fountain of youth. Eternity must be full of vivid smell . . .