Monday, May 12, 2025

The Meaning of Things Left Inside the Pages of a Book


Still Life with Guitar by Juan Grís (1920)

Once in a while, I find an unconventional placeholder related to memorable text or art in the pages of a book I’ve read. Something that seems new to me at first. Then I remember why I left it there. Beauty in the bricolage of life exists even if life is showing its fangs on the day you find it. Two recently encountered items stand out.

Item 1: Olfactory-rich text in the “Doldrums” chapter of Tristes Tropiques by renowned anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (left) and a light blue-green “Swimming SW6764” paint swatch used as a bookmark (right). The passage is beautiful, fragrant and highly sensorial. I long for a bottle of its perfume after reading it, a sentiment I had when I first came across the passage 12 years ago.

The traveler approaching the New World is first conscious of it as a scent very different from the one suggested back in Paris by the connotations of the word Brazil, and difficult to describe to anyone who has not experienced it. 

At first, it seemed that the sea smells of the preceding weeks had ceased to circulate so freely; they had come up against an invisible wall: thus immobilized, they no longer claimed the traveler’s attention, which was now drawn towards smells that were of a quite different nature and that nothing in his past experience enabled him to define: they were like a forest breeze alternating with hot-house scents, the quintessence of the vegetable kingdom, and held a particular freshness so concentrated as to be transmuted into a kind of olfactory intoxication, the last note of a powerful chord sounded separately as if to isolate and fuse the successive intervals of diversely fruity fragrances. This can only be appreciated by someone who has buried their face in a freshly cut tropical red pepper, after having previously, in some botequin of the Brazilian sertão, inhaled the aroma of the black honeyed coils of the fumo de rolo, made from tobacco leaves, fermented and rolled into several lengths several yards long. In the blend of these closely allied scents, he can recognize an America, which, for thousands of years, was alone in its possession of their secrets. 

But when, at four o’clock in the morning of the following day, the New World at last appeared on the horizon, its visible image seemed worthy of its perfume.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques. Trans. John and Doreen Weightman. New York: Penguin Classics, 2012, page 78.

Leví-Strauss’ words enter and exit the reader’s mind with the dreamy languor of incense smoke. Transforming the passage into a perfume (an ephemeral creation that triggers and inspires memories) makes perfect sense. The book, originally written in French, was published in 1955. Translations exist, but the same can’t be said for the creation of a perfume based on the excerpt—70 years later.

The second item I found is a pattern made by randomness. A train ticket covering a page of haiku is engaged in a visual dialogue with painting on the opposite page. I didn’t make a connection at the time, as the ticket served as an ad hoc bookmark when the train was pulling into the Larchmont Metro-North train station in Westchester County.

Item 2: A Japanese brush painting titled “Shoots of the Horsetail Plant” by Saitô Shôshû (left) is situated opposite a New Haven line Metro-North Railroad ticket, circa early 2000 (right). The painting, which is next to four unseen haiku beneath the train ticket, uses the same shades of red and black ink found on the commutation ticket. The item on the left is art; the item on the right is art by association. 

I’ve taken the New Haven line infrequently and am better acquainted with the trees, shrubs, plants and long grass that grow alongside the riverside tracks of the Hudson line across from the Palisades. Though I recall specific seasonal views, memories of 14 years of commuting to and from Hastings-on-Hudson and Grand Central Terminal on the Metro-North have merged. 

My mind connects commuting experiences by type versus single experience, unless there's an experience worth recalling that breaks through the monotony of routine commuting. The fact that eidetic memory isn’t common makes sense as it would be a recipe for hell if we remembered everything. One part Sherlock Holmes knack, the other a not-so-friendly invitation into a well-fitting straitjacket with less time to live in the present.

It's interesting how the way we think and remember is reflected in the material things we hold onto. Each item saved serves as a potential catalyst for reminiscence that allows us to organize personal meaning with agency as a witness to our own life. 

This is particularly important when the people who raised us, the archivists of our lives, are no longer here to answer questions about our past that inform our present life. In this respect, meaningful things we save don't leave us empty-handed until we decide that they don't change the fact that unanswered questions are a part of life. 

"A New Day Every Day" (2014) by Sarah Nicole Phillips. The branching pattern of trees (dendritic) is found in nature and appears in the veins of leaves, the pattern of roots, and human arteries, veins and capillaries. The collage is designed using  security envelope papers. 

I've begun collecting security envelopes that accompany bills, the kind with designs on the underside that obscure the contents inside the envelope from being seen on the outside. Common designs include confetti, linen, burlap and crosshatched patterns printed in blue or black ink. Once in a while, a security envelope with an ornamental pattern arrives and breaks the monotony. 

I consider repetitive patterns in nature and stumble across an unexpected find. A recording of Salvador Dalí talking about logarithmic patterns in relationship to the unique spiral pattern of a rhinoceros horn (an obsession of his). 

Then it becomes clear to me. It's not the safety aspect of security envelopes that I'm attached to, it's the meaning of patterns and the way they connect and disconnect in earthly and spiritual ways. It's why I can't help wondering whether Dalí, an artist fond of using found objects in his sculptures and assemblages, left traces of his personal life behind in the pages of the books he owned. 

Notes & Curiosities

It's not uncommon for secondhand booksellers to find personal items inside copies of used books sold by their previous owners. There isn't an all-encompassing word for the items found inside a previous owner's books as contents vary, though most are relics of life experience. Glass Petal Smoke leans towards "personalia" as it complements marginalia. Curious about what people leave inside their books? Begin by searching for "things booksellers find inside used or antiquarian books". 

Note to haiku lovers. The second "find" in this story was located in A Net of Fireflies: Japanese Haiku & Haiku Paintings, translated by Harold Stewart. 

Monday, March 3, 2025

Recommended Reading: The Forgotten Sense by Jonas Olofsson

Interview with scientist Jonas Olofsson, author of The Forgotten Sense

There are many things one can say about The Forgotten Sense: The New Science of Smell—and the Extraordinary Power of the Nose by Jonas Olofsson. Exemplary is the first word that comes to mind as books written by academics don't always resonate with the public; no matter how remotely curious readers are about a particular subject, or how devoted the author is to sharing the latest information about a subject they deeply care about that resonates with others. 

Olofsson cares about the sense of smell and how smell loss has and continues to have an effect on patients who didn't find the support they needed when COVID-19 anosmia took hold in the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. It's why he wrote the book, but there's more. Smell loss isn't new, but the number of people suffering from anosmia (whether they've recovered or not) is more widely acknowledged due to the pandemic and ensuing variants. It's a silver lining.



















This silver lining is entwined with the fact that Olofsson has interest and compassion in amounts that exceed the boundaries of his native Sweden. This is reflected in the book's contents and the informed, conversational tone of the book, which draws the reader in like a good friend. The author bridges research (psychology, neurology and other disciplines) while bringing the reader up to date with regard to what is known about the sense of smell as it relates to health, quality of life and society.

I purchased The Forgotten Sense shortly after it was released in January 2025 (and plan on reading it again after I finish Sun City by Tove Jansson). The reason for the re-read is that books like The Forgotten Sense are rare when it comes to non-fiction books about the sense of smell, and that's as good a reason as any to recommend it on Glass Petal Smoke. Attendees at Smell & Tell: Get Inside Your Olfactory Mind will learn more about The Forgotten Sense at the Ann Arbor District Library on Tuesday, March 11, 2025, where I'll also introduce an analog smelling device called the Smell Rolodex. Ah, smell life...

Notes & Curiosities:
I discovered the video that accompanies this post after finishing The Forgotten Sense. It's a great way to get acquainted with the author, his research and the book. To learn more about Jonas Olofsson's research, visit Google Scholar and the website for the Sensory Cognition Interactive Laboratory, where Olofsson is Principal Investigator.

Are you a non-scientist that wants to master reading articles in scientific journals? The best way to engage with journal articles is to use naiveté as fuel for critical thinking. "How to Make Sense of a Scientific Journal Article" is an interactive tool that lists the components of a science journal article and explains their function/purpose. Simply click on each component (Overview/Abstract and Main SectionsMethods,
ResultsDiscussion/Conclusion, and References) and scroll down to read the contents and learn more. This resource is part of the Know the Science initiative. 

Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau
via Encyclopedia Britannica


















An informal, but effective approach to reading articles in scientific journals is a little something I cooked up called Clouseau It!, an homage to Peter Sellers in his role as Inspector Clouseau in Pink Panther films. Apply the following seven steps once you're comfortable reading articles in scientific journals:

Step 1: Investigate the Paper 
Step 2: Interrogate the Study
Step 3: Treat the Paper Like a Suspect
Step 4: Question the Method Used by Researchers 
Step 5: Confirm the Motives Based on Funding 
            (Conflict of Interest)
Step 6: Evaluate the Outcome in Relationship to the 
            Conclusion
Step 7: Look out for Cato Fong