In class
Walking through Stanley Park, the potent smell of rainforest- of living, dead and the in between was immediately apparent. Sensorially, I have come to associate colour with smell and olfactory experience and this is demonstrated below.
Standing at the shores of the waterfront, the biting cold drowned out majority of the typical seaside scents. My sensory experience was therefore more reliant on the visual and the auditory and consequently, on memorial associations.
At home
Walking down the steps of the Walter C. Koerner library to the underground levels, I am hit suddenly with the intense, overwhelming, and rank smell of decay.
Rats.
It smells like dead rats.
My memory is immediately cast back to a horrible time in my first home where the effective counter to a singular mouse invasion resulted in the intense, overwhelming, and rank smell of the dead rodent emanating from an old, unused storage closet.
Ew.
Unpleasant does not even capture the essence of the stench. It is loud and towering. It engulfs the entire staircase in a stifling hug; everywhere at once, such that one cannot tell its source; the concrete walls? The staircase? The ceiling?
Forest-green, grey-black and piss-yellow- my brain visualizes the scent, painting an image of disgust- of rotting. A putrid fragrance. There are no top notes, no mid notes, no base notes. The smell is all-encompassing and circular: a lingering bitterness, a sickly sweetness, methane, sulfur dioxide.
I close my mouth firmly; a precaution so I do not taste the smell in all its overwhelming glory.
That animal- whatever it is, is at least a week dead. The urge to descend speedily in order to escape this cloud is stronger than ever. I walk faster, finally arriving in the old basement and sliding myself in between the bookshelves. The air is not fresh, but at least the scent of death is gone.