SMELL OF PENCILS I reek of pencils. I smell of pencils. I collect pencils— thousands by now. My first, a drawing pencil, French: Conté, forest green, an HB. Hone from cedar. Smells like incense sharpened. Shavings fill the sharpener. I throw them on a fall fire, a burning pencil smell— of pine resin or old mold. The lead doesn’t smell like lead. A mix of graphite and clay, its burn can stink of sulfur, paint impurities. Between my finger and …
Tag: Cedar
“Koan” * A Fairytale Poem in English and German * Kerstin & Werner Schulz * Plus Audio
Author’s note: My father, Werner Schulz, passed away last January after a long battle with cancer. He was a retired German professor who taught German language and literature as well as the occasional course on Folklore. He left me his collected creative works which are unpublished except his dissertation on Johannes Bobrowski, an East German early 20th century poet. Over the past year I’ve chosen to translate some of his “fairytale” pieces from German into English. Koan translated by …
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Olfactory Report 3: The lure, the cure, the smells of the forest * Catherine Haley Epstein
Several years ago I made a scent about forgetting: forgetting your ego and the glorious connection we feel to people and things when we do this. Most scent is evocative and reminds us of things past. How about scents that explore the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind? What does forgetting smell like? My conclusion: forgetting smells like the forest. I drew the connection after years of reading the G-rated, PG-rated then grizzly versions of fairy tales, where everything transformative happens …