a bush flowering cottony white blooms leans against the red brick wall near the hospital's back entrance and throws off its caustic scent. but most of the night shift people coming in noticed only the stench wafting from the morgue, its loading bay slightly ajar. the rotund security officer stationed nearby fended off politely all questions about the fetor. some refrigeration malfunction, later i heard.
on my initial rounds, an 18-year-old trauma patient - he punched raw a concrete wall after breaking up with his baby mama - asked me, just out of the blue, (bedbound as he is, he could not have known of the malodorous morgue) if we hospital people could smell the impending death of our patients. i brushed him off, promising, instead, to bring his pain medication an hour earlier. he smiled and corked on back his ear phones.
something about smelling that is so immediate. something, perhaps, about the nose close to the brain. but so are the eyes, and the ears, and the tongue. something, perhaps, about the lack of any mediation against the world's onslaught at this most direct of senses.
when i got home, my tivo has, on its own, recorded a documentary about the life of some kyoto geishas. in a segment, an older geiko was training her teen-age protegee (a maiko) on a centuries-old song and dance number. the non-smiling apprentice tried over and over in perfecting the slight move to cover her nose with her silk fan. this is to hide her awe, her fright, upon smelling the scent of lotus blossoms, an unmistakable signal of the presence of an unseen divinity.
