Some research suggests that “olfactory training” — practicing to improve your olfaction, or sense of smell — can actually improve your cognitive abilities. So in the interest of self-improvement, I open my pack of what look like markers and sniff at them one by one. I get whiffs of citrus, lavender, driftwood. From a marker enigmatically labelled “hairy,” I register a greasy smell. From another, ominously labelled “barnyard/fecal,” comes the distinct smell of ass.
More appealing is a little bottle that, when opened, emits a scent of plum so vivid it brings to mind the deeper red closer to the pit, the exact feeling of cutting a piece, the interplay of taut skin and juicy flesh as you bite and chew. It brings to mind not a Platonic plum, but a specific plum I must have enjoyed on some long lost summer day. And yet the particles I inhale to recapture that sense memory were never part of a real fruit. They are a re-creation of the molecular structure of scent particles emitted by a real plum in a different country from where I sit, transported to summer on a January day, courtesy of Osmo, a New York software development company which sent me the samples.
