- fragrant: flowers, Serer Ndut (that’s the tribe)
- acidic: donkeys, spiritual beings
- milky/fish: frogs, goats, nursing women
- rotten: ducks, cadavers
- urinous: monkeys, horses, Europeans
Okay, let’s not discuss the shared experience of smell. As I said, smell is personal. Smell affects us emotionally—if we want to know what a smell is like, we look at our own reactions. Whereas light is about the surface of things, smell is about getting past the surface, seeing what is accidentally going on.
I was always nervous about accidentally eating bad meat and getting food poisoning… until I actually smelled bad meat. Man, there’s no mistaking it, even the first time you encounter it. I can’t separate, in my head, the smell itself from the complete revulsion I felt.
Code smells bad too. I’ve seen some code that made me feel sick like that.
I can’t give the smell idea without also talking about taste.