The Return of the Senses

Last Tuesday, I completely lost my sense of smell, and with it, my sense of taste (more or less). My sinuses were so congested that my olfactory capacity--normally as sensitive as a Geiger counter--was reduced to nothing, leaving me unable to parse scents or flavors for the last six days.

That's probably a strange experience for anyone. To understand why I found it to be particularly disturbing, though, you have to know something about me: my sense of smell--and the related sensitivity of my palate--is high on my list of Features That I Think Define Me. Strange as it may seem, I pride myself on my ability to sense traces of flavors or scents in the air, on my fork, or in my cocktail glass. Let me see if I can explain.

I like to think of my senses as tools I use to interpret the reality outside of my mind, and each one gives me a very different kind of access to that reality. Vision and hearing are essential to my understanding of the physical and social world I inhabit, and I trust them to "tell me the truth" because I perceive them to be fairly literal in the way they explain what I am seeing and hearing. I see a car-shaped thing; I'm pretty sure there's a car there. I hear a bird sing; I assume there is a bird--or a recording of a bird--nearby. Touch seems more abstract to me. Of course, I use my sense of touch to understand my physical world--and particularly my place in it--and it's deeply important to my perception of connectedness to other people, but I think its messages are less concrete than those of vision or hearing.

Most abstract of all are taste and smell. I find both of these senses--so inextricably linked--to be gloriously evocative, but the objects, facts, and ideas they refer to are much more elusive to me than things seen, heard, or touched. Smells and tastes remind me of things more than they directly refer to things. It is then up to me to make sense of the memory or thought that a flavor evokes. In that way, while sights and sounds constitute literal prose through which the world explains to me what it is, smells and tastes are abstract poetry through which the world suggests what it may be and then invites me to take a guess. I think it's notable that we have so few words to describe smells and tastes without reverting to metaphor or abstraction. Try explaining how milk tastes or how sage smells without using the word "like" or using abstract imagery. I can't do it. Milk tastes clean to me (what does that mean??) and sage smells like a dusty, smoked forest glen.

I think this is why I love food. It provides me with an endlessly fascinating puzzle: can a close reading of smells and flavors help me articulate the essential idea in the dish I'm tasting? Always one for a challenge, I am less interested in assertive, robust flavors than in subtlety and nuance. Give me a delicate cream soup and I will try to figure out what herbs created that heady, earth-spiced autumn flavor that makes me think of hot cider and the woods in southern Minnesota. Serve me a vegetable croquette drizzled with some kind of glaze and I will eat it in tiny bites, deliberating over each mouthful until I can tell that it's coconut milk that makes the glaze taste like summer and mustard seed that gives the croquettes their buttery kick. I can almost always get the obvious ones--basil, rosemary, thyme, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg--and I'm getting better at the others all the time.

One of the katrillions of things I love about living in California is the olfactory and gustatory smorgasbord it offers me every day. Driving south along the coast, the aromas of ocean air, cyprus branches, and wildflowers are as breathtaking as the vistas and the sounds of waves crashing into cliffs. The beauty of Muir Woods is made whole by the scent of sequoia needles underfoot, wet eucalyptis bark, and the deep, green smell of old-growth forest. Walking down the street in north Berkeley, I love inhaling its characteristic notes of jasmine, rosemary, and Marina salt.

In addition to its delightful natural perfumes, the Bay Area boasts an array of restaurants that provides a foodie hack like me with endless options for new flavor adventures. My most successful visits to Absinthe (a favorite San Francisco bar known for its expert bartenders, who elevate cocktail mixing to the level of an art) have begun with my request for "something complex and subtle that's difficult to parse." The best drink I've had there is a magical mixture of prosecco, simple syrup, and fig-infused gin topped with a sprig of thyme. As I nurse the cocktail, my nose nuzzles the herb, mixing scent and taste into a dizzyingly delicious sensory experience. Mmmmmmmm. If a chef produces a dish that is eyelid-droppingly delicious but which, try as I might, I have no idea how to decode (a la Brick or O Chame), I throw up my hands in resignation and delight, because I know I'm in the presence of greatness.

So, this has been a strange week. It was as if somebody had suddenly pulled the plug on two of my favorite senses, leaving me to wonder whether taste and smell had ever really existed or if they might have been part of my imagination. Eating became a bizarrely numb endeavour. It all began with a Surreal Snack Experience. I'm sitting on the couch a week ago, curled up under a blanket, ready to eat some crackers. I pluck a cracker from its crinkly package. My thumb brushes across its sharp, salty edge, and I watch its cracker shape move toward my mouth. (So far, so good). I feel its crisp surface break between my teeth, and then--nothing! Just the sensation of chewing something rough and crunchy.

It reminded me of the curious feeling I get when my leg falls asleep. You can see your leg and you can poke it, and all the usual signs suggest that your leg is still attached to your body, except that you can't feel it. If this goes on long enough, you begin to wonder whether you really do have a leg, or whether your leg still counts as a leg, or what legness even means. That's what has been happening to me all week with my senses of taste and smell. I've been experiencing food in shades of gray, with no vivid flavors to differentiate hummus from chocolate pudding. As flavors faded from my memory (and they do very quickly, in my experience), textures and temperature began to stand out as the defining features of my meals. The borscht was worth eating because of the contrast between the hot, juicy crunch of beets and the cold, supple smoothness of sour cream.

You can imagine my delight when, halfway through a completely flavorless muffin before brunch this morning, a small *pop* announced that my sinuses were shifting their priorities, and the flavors of walnuts, bananas, and cappucino tumbled into my head. I can taste again! Never have I appreciated these precious senses so explicitly before. Never will I take them for granted again.

Several minutes after the return of my senses, and just before we served brunch, Nori asked me to taste her tofu scramble. I turned a spoonful over in my mouth, thinking. Plenty of tangy vegetable taste, salt, and rich, bitter turmeric flavor, but it needed something more before it would taste finished--something to complete the thought. "It's not...round enough," I told Nori. "Add some lemon juice." She did. And we both agreed--it was perfect.

I just live for moments like that.