Betsy Robinson's Blog - Posts Tagged "hyperosmic"
WE ALL SMELL
An article by Scott Sayare in the New York Times (June 14, 2024) tells the story of 72-year-old nurse Joy Milne who smelled her husband’s Parkinson’s:
Milne’s husband died in 2015, but she went on to diagnose others’ early Parkinson’s and has made a wonderful contribution to medicine with her hyperosmic sense.
I skimmed this very long article with great interest—not in diagnosing Parkinson’s or even in Milne’s ability, but because I was thrilled to finally have a word, “hyperosmic,” for what I’ve called my “canine olfactory system.” I am hyperosmic.
Like Milne, I never talked about this other than saying I was sensitive to smells. And because mentioning people’s odors is rude, it wasn’t until I was in my 40s that I began talking about and exploring my sensitivity. It happened when I attended a healing school and began identifying what specific smells meant. Fear stinks and since I felt so much of it, I was self-conscious. Finally one day I blurted my insecurity in class and was both stunned and relieved that nobody seemed to know what I was talking about—but they were interested.
Fear has a particularly strong odor, but all emotions have odors. All people have odors. Dogs know this and have no judgment about it, and despite our personal oblivion, we know it too: We employ scent dogs to track people; hunters know to stay downwind of their prey; but still we would rather not discuss our odors that are apparent to all nonhuman species and apparently there is now a thriving industry of full-body deodorants.
This is ridiculous. No matter how much stuff you slather on, dogs and hyperosmics still smell you. I know when somebody is angry or seething in resentment without them saying anything. I also know when they have cancer.
Frustrated at our species’ mass delusion that we successfully hide our scent and feelings, I wrote a novel, The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg (Black Lawrence Press’s Big Moose Prize-winner, 2015), about a protagonist with a perpetual stink. I hoped that by exaggerating all the human traits we are so invested in believing we can hide, and writing it with humor, I could nudge people toward self-acceptance. Predictably readers have broken down into those who love Zelda and those that find her disgusting. (I will not psychoanalyze the responses, but draw your own conclusions.)
My new novel, Cats on a Pole (Kano Press, July 2, 2024), goes further into the hyperosmic world. Without having the descriptor, I wrote the story of a hyperosmic woman who is overwhelmed by the smells and energies that bombard her. She really has no recourse but to learn self-acceptance whose side effect is nonjudgment. The book has humor in it but nothing close to Zelda McFigg. Still, I hope it does its bit to nudging people into self-acceptance.
The truth is we all smell. We can accept that or we can continue to delude ourselves and waste enormous amounts of money on products that promise to make us as odorless as AI—an intelligence with no body. Do we really want that? Or we can delude ourselves into believing that we’re pure and odorless and it’s only the “others” who smell.
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Joy’s had always been an unusually sensitive nose, the inheritance, she believes, of her maternal line. Her grandmother was a “hyperosmic,” and she encouraged Joy, as a child, to make the most of her abilities, quizzing her on different varieties of rose, teaching her to distinguish the scent of the petals from the scent of the leaves from the scent of the pistils and stamens. Still, her grandmother did not think odor of any kind to be a polite topic of conversation, and however rich and enjoyable and dense with information the olfactory world might be, she urged her granddaughter to keep her experience of it to herself.
Milne’s husband died in 2015, but she went on to diagnose others’ early Parkinson’s and has made a wonderful contribution to medicine with her hyperosmic sense.
I skimmed this very long article with great interest—not in diagnosing Parkinson’s or even in Milne’s ability, but because I was thrilled to finally have a word, “hyperosmic,” for what I’ve called my “canine olfactory system.” I am hyperosmic.
Like Milne, I never talked about this other than saying I was sensitive to smells. And because mentioning people’s odors is rude, it wasn’t until I was in my 40s that I began talking about and exploring my sensitivity. It happened when I attended a healing school and began identifying what specific smells meant. Fear stinks and since I felt so much of it, I was self-conscious. Finally one day I blurted my insecurity in class and was both stunned and relieved that nobody seemed to know what I was talking about—but they were interested.
Fear has a particularly strong odor, but all emotions have odors. All people have odors. Dogs know this and have no judgment about it, and despite our personal oblivion, we know it too: We employ scent dogs to track people; hunters know to stay downwind of their prey; but still we would rather not discuss our odors that are apparent to all nonhuman species and apparently there is now a thriving industry of full-body deodorants.
This is ridiculous. No matter how much stuff you slather on, dogs and hyperosmics still smell you. I know when somebody is angry or seething in resentment without them saying anything. I also know when they have cancer.
Frustrated at our species’ mass delusion that we successfully hide our scent and feelings, I wrote a novel, The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg (Black Lawrence Press’s Big Moose Prize-winner, 2015), about a protagonist with a perpetual stink. I hoped that by exaggerating all the human traits we are so invested in believing we can hide, and writing it with humor, I could nudge people toward self-acceptance. Predictably readers have broken down into those who love Zelda and those that find her disgusting. (I will not psychoanalyze the responses, but draw your own conclusions.)
My new novel, Cats on a Pole (Kano Press, July 2, 2024), goes further into the hyperosmic world. Without having the descriptor, I wrote the story of a hyperosmic woman who is overwhelmed by the smells and energies that bombard her. She really has no recourse but to learn self-acceptance whose side effect is nonjudgment. The book has humor in it but nothing close to Zelda McFigg. Still, I hope it does its bit to nudging people into self-acceptance.
The truth is we all smell. We can accept that or we can continue to delude ourselves and waste enormous amounts of money on products that promise to make us as odorless as AI—an intelligence with no body. Do we really want that? Or we can delude ourselves into believing that we’re pure and odorless and it’s only the “others” who smell.
Discount Link for paperbacks in USA
