#79 - The Nose Knows
While in our nation's capital last week to attend the American Studies Association conference, I emerged from the Gallery Place/Chinatown Metro stop to the rank smell of sewage. It must be the construction I thought, gazing upon the giant razed lot next to the conference hotel. But then I had another thought. Perhaps it is the rot of the current administration.
Which made me think: Wouldn't it be great if politics had an olfactory dimension, if we could smell the political situation? The stink of corruption. The fresh breeze of new ideas. The alluring perfume of charisma. The sharp sting of dissent. The clean scent of reform. Why not make the metaphorical actual? If we can create scratch-n-sniffs, car air fresheners, and fragrance sprays, why not bring politics into the realm of the proboscis?
10 November 2005