Scent and Sensibility

Smell is of all senses by far the most evocative: perhaps because we have no vocabulary for it - nothing but a few poverty-stricken approximations to describe the whole vast complexity of odour - and therefore the scent, unnamed and unnameable, remains pure of association; it cannot be called upon again and again, and blunted, by the use of a word; and so it strikes afresh every time, bringing with it all the circumstances of its first perception. This is particularly true when a considerable period of time has elapsed.

Stephen Maturin, from Patrick O'Brien's Post Captain

The space which my colleagues and I share as our office is in a sort of basement. A half basement to be precise. The building itself is old by American standards, and made of all types of brick, stone, concrete and wood. I have been privileged to visit the highest heights of the place - little attics that house forgotten treasures, dust and wires - and the lowest depths - more full of treasures and intrigue, and also of dust and dirt. At its pinnacle, the place give one a thrill like soaring, with broad vistas of buildings and people, and a sense of a sprawling future unfolding before you. In the deeps of its foundations, it proves that hell must be both more terrifying, and more intriguing, and certainly a place that brings out something darker and more personal. The future is bright and shared, the past is dark and private.

I was reminded of this today as I climbed the stairs from our lower level, to the food court above. In doing so, I passed from the heat and humidity of our test lab, to the cooler space of a student lab - nearly empty in the early summer - and on to the stairs which reached ground level in a wholly comfortable, dry, air-conditioned space.

All of these came together at a landing half way up the stairs. A place where these joined: the damp and warm of oppressive summers; the cool and dry of fall nights; the bite of spring rain on warm pavement; dusty and dank concretes from levels well below "basement;" many types of food, cooking in the court above; aging woodwork, smoothed by years and shined by the oil of a million hands.

There were scents from my childhood, from old homes and summer in the yard, and smells from my teenage years, excited with a sense of my own powers. There were scents of college, crazed with sex, booze and every extreme of emotion and expression. There were scents of hopeless times when the sweetest and purest of smells seemed to mock me; and scents of triumphant times, when even smells of garbage and filth were bright reminders of life.

I paused on that landing, and inhaled deeply through my nose, with what I suspect was a somewhat sad smile on my face, as I smelled how irrelevant I am to the greater part of the world; that last smell, the one smell we never sense for ourselves, but have breathed in deep as we send loved ones on their final journey.

A voice pulled me back to this world, this time.

"So'd they get the air on yet?" asked the towering figure half a dozen steps up from me as he paused on his way down.

"If they have," I answered, "it hasn't caught up yet."

Painting

I wanted to be a master painter when I was growing up, the next Rubens or Sargent. I put a lot of time (with mixed results) into drawing and painting, and have remained fascinated with painted portrayals of the human form. The fleshy drama of Rubens, the quirky smirk of Sargent. Whether it was the palpable pain and struggle of the Lord’s crucifixion, or the scandal of the beautiful and indifferent Madame X, there was depth and reality to the figures they portrayed.

I managed, at my best, to become quite handy with a landscape, a still life, and, in one notable case, a duck. People always eluded me. A few years ago, determined to round out the gap in my subject matter, I decided to take a long hard look at Ruben’s style, sure that I would find some secret trick that allowed lifeless paint on board to become coiled muscle or sensual relaxation. What I found was a multi-layered technique that I am, frankly, still unable to execute.

The technique starts with a meticulously prepared board. More effort goes into the board than most artwork itself; sanding, priming, sanding, until a perfectly smooth finish is achieved. This preparation seems maddening and tedious to most people, though it is indispensible to the outcome.

A drawing of the subject is done, with particular attention being paid to the areas of light and dark. This drawing is then transferred to the prepared surface, and something like painting can begin. I say “like” because the first layer, in fact, the first few layers, look only a little like a painting. These initial layers are, in fact, like overlaid slices of film. Each layer, a very thin wash of paint, adds a tiny amount of the base color, building up shadows on the form being portrayed.

The thin paint allows the layers to show through one another, so that the viewer experiences this tiny depth of paint as great depth in viewing. The final layers of paint add details, and the object moves from the generic (an apple), to the specific (an apple with a dimple on the left and a flaw in the skin on the bottom right).

There is truth in art, if sometimes more in the technique than the vision. The base of our existence is indeed meticulously prepared, and onto it was transferred a sketch, a vision of our fullness. Over that sketch, we layer religion, country, family, profession, with depth building upon depth, until a perception of a three dimensional form emerges. That form roughly describes a person, and when we finally observe the details of the last layer, we see a vision that brings us close to understanding the individual in their fullness.

There is one final truth in painting, however: the painted apple, no matter how detailed, is still not an apple. No human artist’s layered vision can produce the object itself, and what we see is still only a likeness of that which was sketched.

write right rite

write - Can refer to writing, authoring documents, composing music; write() is a low level IO function in C programming; a "write" command appeared in Version 6 Unix in 1975, allowing the user to send messages to other users.

right - A right is the legal or moral entitlement to do or refrain from doing something or to obtain or refrain from obtaining an action, thing or recognition in civil society. Rights serve as rules of interaction between people, and, as such, they place constraints and obligations upon the actions of individuals or groups.

rite - A rite is an established, ceremonious, usually religious act. Rites fall into three major categories: rites of passage generally changing an individual's social status, such as marriage, baptism or graduation; rites of worship where a community comes together to worship, such as Jewish synagogue or Mass; rite of personal devotion, where an individual worships, including prayer and pilgrimages such as the Muslim Haj.

Wikipedia