Your sense of smell is closely tied to your sense of taste. The human nose has 10cm squared, while dogs possess 170cm squared.
Back in the 20th Century Doctor Joyce Brothers theorized that human survival depended more on our smelling bad and tasting worse than intelligence, but not all of us smell the same.
I've traveled on the Mumbai Night Express without a whiff of olfactory discomfort and sat in French taxi wondering if the driver was a dead person.
The famed obituarist Adrian Dannett rarely bathed and never has a offended a soul, while my younger sister regularly whispered at a Christmas dinner, "When was the last time you showered?"
To quote David Lee Roth from Van Halen's HOT FOR TEACHER - "Funny, I don't smell dirty."
Three weeks ago I was at Kibo Hut on Kilimanjaro. None of the Kili Initiative Team had washed in a week. 16000 feet above sea level sweat evaporated from your skin like water on a hot frying pan, but my stench of an old man assailed my nose and I prayed to wear clean underwear and sox. As I descended the mountain, my cellphone came alive and I read of how Covid 19 was ravaging the globe and wondered what awaited us in the world below.
Three weeks later I know exactly how.
I contracted Covid 19.
My friends asked if I had gone to the hospital, but I read reports of Anosmia, the loss of sense of smell, and ageusia, an accompanying diminished sense of taste, have emerged as peculiar telltale signs of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and possible markers of infection.
"Go for what? There's no tests. There's no treatment. I had a low-grade temperature, a cough, exhaustion, dry throat, and no taste and no smell." As a Neanderthal I trust in my genes.
"No taste? No smell?"
"It's not certain, but 1/3 of the infect report this phenomena. I can't smell shit." I won't go into any details about how I know that, but I smelled a lemon today.
Faintly, but I dream of the Paris dawn visit to the Parc de Bagetelle in Bois Du Boulonge and huff the full force of rose attar melting into the mist with the rising sun.
I live for that day and all those that are to come.
"I aints dead yet. I only sleeping."
Celtics Green
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