1
" Are You Ready for New Urban Fragrances?
Yeah, I guess I'm ready, but listen:
Perfume is a disguise. Since the middle ages, we have worn masks of fruit and flowers in order to conceal from ourselves the meaty essence of our humanity. We appreciate the sexual attractant of the rose, the ripeness of the orange, more than we honor our own ripe carnality.
Now today we want to perfume our cities, as well; to replace their stinging fumes of disturbed fossils' sleep with the scent of gardens and orchards. Yet, humans are not bees any more than they are blossoms. If we must pull an olfactory hood over our urban environment, let it be of a different nature.
I want to travel on a train that smells like snowflakes.
I want to sip in cafes that smell like comets.
Under the pressure of my step, I want the streets to emit the precise odor of a diamond necklace.
I want the newspapers I read to smell like the violins left in pawnshops by weeping hobos on Christmas Eve.
I want to carry luggage that reeks of the neurons in Einstein's brain.
I want a city's gases to smell like the golden belly hairs of the gods.
And when I gaze at a televised picture of the moon, I want to detect, from a distance of 239,000 miles, the aroma of fresh mozzarella. "
― Tom Robbins , Wild Ducks Flying Backward
10
" Most of what presents itself to us in the marketplace as a product is in truth a web of relationships, between people, yes, but also between ourselves and all the other species on which we still depend. Eating and drinking especially implicate us in the natural world in ways that the industrial economy, with its long and illegible supply chains, would have us forget. The beer in that bottle, I'm reminded as soon as I brew it myself, ultimately comes not from a factory but from nature - from a field of barley snapping in the wind, from a hops vine clambering over a trellis, from a host of invisible microbes feasting on sugars. It took the carefully orchestrated collaboration of three far-flung taxonomic kingdoms - plants, animals, and fungi - to produce that ale. To make it yourself once in a while, to handle the barley and inhale the aroma of hops and yeast, becomes, among other things, a form of observance, a weekend ritual of remembrance. "
― Michael Pollan , Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
14
" The hour that was for them, for us, for all who had awakened one morning to see their fields covered with blood rather than harvest, who didn't seek to change the world but lived in good faith and prayer offered to an imposing God, for the young women who mended their men's clothing and held their sons' mouths to the purple nipples of sweet breasts, for the man who watched the suns descend behind the mountain every evening and dreamed and when his sons were grown, passed on his dreams, for the black nights when guitars harmonized with the wind's song, to the bottle of regional brew, and a hand-rolled cigarette, to the baptism and a dance of celebration, to the aroma of soups simmering on wood-burning stoves and filled the bellies of those who worked the fields, to a candle that burned in vigil while a hungry mind gulped the printed truth of another's legacy, to the owl that called from between the moon and earth while lovers enwrapped their passion on silver tinted grass, to the history of the world and to its future, to all that had lived and died and had been born again in that moment as i approached am opaque window and pointed my weapon. "
― Ana Castillo , The Mixquiahuala Letters
16
" I was in a copse of pine trees, and the pine was overpowering my scent. The pheromones of the big cat mingled with the pine and I spun around. I was smelling and looking for the flash of white, but I couldn’t see it. I grew angry and I pawed at the earth. The aroma of the soil cleansed my nose as I leaned down and sniffed deeply. I slowly closed and opened my eyes. As I looked ahead I saw something.
There, further on, I had another glimpse of the large white cat. She was stopped and her hindquarters were in the air. I stared, trying to figure out what she was doing. Her forepaws and head were on the ground, but her hind was wiggling. She was next to a tree, marking it, so I slowly paced in a zigzag pattern as I walked close to her. I was being cautious because poachers had been known to employ shifters to entice real animals in the wild. She turned her head and growled at me. I took it as an invite to come closer.
I ran up to her and started circling. She was an albino panther as I thought. I paced closer, breathing deep. I was in the middle of Ohio, outside of a lost cougar and a few bobcats there were no big cats here, at least not counting lycanthropes, and this creature didn’t smell like one of those. Her rump almost wagged in anticipation, and I felt my tiger body respond.
I circled her, taking a swipe in her direction to see if she was going to respond negatively to me. The pink eyes followed me and she growled. I walked up to her, sniffed her face and neckline. I didn’t smell any other male on her, and I walked to her raised rump. Burying my nose in her groin I smelled deeper, and she shifted her body.
I felt it before I could see it. She was shifting, changing from albino panther to human. I sat on my hindquarters as I watched.
Her white fur seemed to melt from her, sliding upwards, starting with her back legs. The flesh and fur on her feet slid forward, leaving human feet and calves. It was fully fleshed, unlike some lycanthrope changes when they’re younger. The calves of her legs appeared, and slowly slid up. The panther flesh was sliding forward, slowly and methodically. Across her ass and groin, now lower back and stomach. The pheromones I smelled earlier were coming from her, the human form. I stood and started pacing behind her, and her panther head shook in a very human gesture. I stopped, fighting the desire to lean forward and lick her wetness with my large tongue. The flesh was sliding forward and as her teats turned into breasts, I growled in need. Next were her shoulders and arms, then her head and hands. As the transformation ended, there was a pile of fur and flesh lying in front of her.
Her human form was beautiful; a full figured woman with long white hair, that was perfectly natural. She looked to be in her early forties, but didn’t have a line on her face that she didn’t want. In the corners of her eyes were small, but beautiful, crow’s feet, laugh lines surrounded her mouth. She laid out with her former form under her, laying on it, propped up by her elbows. She smiled with the confidence of someone who was used to being in charge. Her long hair flowed around her shoulders, framing her body. She reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t figure out who. "
― Todd Misura , Divergence: Erotica from a Different Angle
17
" We've done so much together, wherever I go and whatever I see, I think of you. Newborn babies; the pattern on the plate that you can see under a paper-thin slice of sashimi; fireworks in August. The moon hidden behind the clouds over the ocean at night. When I'm sitting down someplace, inadvertently stepping on someone's toes, and have to apologize. And when someone picks up something I've dropped, and I thank him. When I see an elderly man tottering along,and wonder how much longer he has to live. Dogs and cats peeking out from alleyways. A beautiful view from a tall building. The warm blast of air you feel when you go down into a subway station. The phone ringing in the middle of the night. Even when I have crushes on other men, I always see you in the curve of their eyebrows." " Yet I must remain calm, detached. It's a little like trying to ignore a plate of delicious food when you're really hungry. When it beckons you, there's no problem with enjoying the aroma and appreciating it with your eyes, but at some point you have to separate yourself and realize, like a professional waiter does, that it's not your own. It's my job to ignore those plates heaped with delicious morsels and just carry them where they need to go. "
18
" Darn! what a beautiful night!
Heading towards Pandara Road-Gulati Restaurant, with open windows of my baby sedan and this broad chest guy with big brown eyes.
He hums the oldies well and his Issey Miyake is making me lose the grip over my senses.
One more thing is distracting me, he ain't wearing anything inside but a transparent white, V necked, cotton short Kurta.
I can see the hair winking out and his collar bones!!
Not only men get excited by transparent dresses but women as well.
His broad shoulders and chest is my weakness and he knows it.
This man is not doing good to me!
It's a crime to seduce in this way, when you are not touched, when you are distracted by the aroma of his skin, when you know, he is well aware of the intentions..
when you can't do anything except getting seduced by the corner stretching smile of a man with animal instinct..
I certainly am missing myself to be tied up to the bedpost,choked and groaning his name! "
― Himmilicious , Tapti : A Lover, A Woman, A Mother.