I am tired of living by sight,
Tired of letting my eyes mediate my whole experience of reality.
I am weary of sharp distinctions and clear cut lines,
Exhausted from the fine print.
I am done peering off into the distance,
Picking out pixels and putting them in boxes.
But I’m also burnt out from a life built upon my hearing.
I am spent from straining to sift through whispers,
Training myself to trust the Speaker.
I am tired of silencing my other senses in service of a singular voice.
I think it’s time to learn how to follow my nose,
Close doors that smell of foul air and enter openings where the feeling’s fresh.
I figure if it’s good enough for Gandalf, it’s got to be good enough for me.
I want to be immersed in a sea of scintillating scents,
Sensing my surroundings by breathing them in.
I want to integrate, connect,
Not an inspector stuck observing existence from afar.
I want up close and personal,
A visceral relationship with reality
Where my sensory inputs are about more than information.
I want to walk by intuition,
Move to a more primal push and pull, an elemental warning and welcome
That doesn’t always come from the prefrontal cortex.
I want to give ambiguity the respect it deserves,
Like delicious hors d’oeuvres that you can’t quite identify.
I want to open my heart and nose to the shifting landscape of overlapping smells.
I want adventure, the requirement of movement,
Nomadic nostrils mapping the territory.
I want to sniff out the story,
Not static, stuck in an armchair
But out there, on a journey,
Scanning the air for molecules and metaphors,
Moving towards my goals with no expectation of a straight line.
Smell is the great enabler, triggering memories steeped soul-deep in nostalgia,
Nostrils pulling us back to grandma’s apple pie or the campfires of distant ancestors.
It stirs up and gives life to our taste buds,
Feeding flat tongues the ability to fabricate our delight.
It’s the smell info that bumps a burrito from necessary nutrients to an angelic work of art.
So maybe I need a mentor from another species,
A mature African elephant or a German shepherd sensei.
Someone to teach me the way of the nose.
Maybe getting to know someone really IS best done by sniffing their butt.
It’s a metaphor.
See, maybe the best door into understanding another being is not by seeing,
But by taking a whiff of whatever smells drift out from their insides.
Maybe sniffing their vibes is better than measuring the things that show up on the surface.
Perhaps I’m just out of practice,
With domineering eyes and ears
And a neglected nose that’s always picked last.
For too much of my past I’ve chased after echoes.
I chose to build my life on syllables spoken by another,
My nose’s voice smothered and unheard cause it didn’t use words.
And my eyes were just as oblivious,
Dismissing nasal intuition cause it can’t be captured on camera.
I want freedom to follow the scent of fresh from the oven bread.
Knowing something good is up ahead,
Even when I can’t see it around the corner.
And yes, I know that noses can get congested.
I don’t intend to gouge my eyes or shear my ears off…
But I have been off-balance,
Stumbling from sensory inputs that either scream or whisper.
I want inner harmony,
Healthy cooperation between means of observation.
I want “both/and” integration.
I want to reclaim a lost part of my humanity,
Welcome my nose back into the family and finally listen to what he has to say.
The Varied Creations of Bruce Narbaitz 