The Blessing of Olfactory Hallucination

 As the group gathered itself by way of a shared meditation, the person guiding it invited us to hold our own hands and picture us holding one another's hands. I closed my eyes and imagined us as a group huddled close together, breathing the same air. 

I felt the heat and closeness of such a gathering.

I smelled it.

There is a pleasant animal smell produced by a close gathering of human bodies. For obvious reasons, I have not smelled it in a very long time. In that moment, I smelled it.

I must thank the leader of the meditation for that.

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Giving thanks is always in order."

It Is All One Thing

 

“It is all one thing.”

I couldn’t tell who had said it. Literally, it could have been me. The way we were all huddled together, our bodies touching, breathing one another’s air, smelling one another’s bodies, it was difficult to tell where one person ended and another began, if that term actually meant anything.

There’s a wonderful animal smell that is generated by multiple human bodies huddled close together, their scents and their exhalations mingled. It’s a beautifully comforting smell that’s not like anything else, not like the smell of being in a close space by yourself or the smell of intimacy between two people. The smell of communion.

At some point, the spell broke, and we began by an unspoken agreement to move apart. The breaking of the communion was as much a proof of its existence as anything that had happened while we were together. I looked around the group, at the friends and co-workers and the friends’ parents and children, thinking about the range in ages among us, which I knew to be from eight to eighty-two, and felt an added delight in that span of time. This was my idea of a utopian society, a community where people came together at all ages. So different from the segregation of race and age and gender that Ernest Callenbach imagined in his novel Ecotopia, where children went away to boarding schools and old people went away to group homes (and eventually to the equivalent of ice floes), while ethnic groups “voluntarily” or sometimes not-so-voluntarily isolated themselves to keep things tidy and keep his imaginary utopia blandly white and youthful and suspiciously able-bodied.

Qurum said, “Did anyone else hear someone say, ‘It is all one thing’?”

“Of course,” Daniel’s father said. “I’m not sure who said it, but it was perfectly distinct. I didn’t think there was any chance it was hallucinatory. Did it sound odd to you, dear?”

“Kind of. It seemed sort of…distant, like it might be coming from outside the group, so I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it.”

“No, it was real,” Carl said. “So, who said it?”

Then Aaron signed, [It came to me, too.]

Everyone was quiet for a bit after that.

 

 

 

https://poets.org/poem/hymn-time

The Magic Eight-Ball Says: "It is all one thing."

She Requires You To Be Beautiful

 

“Nature has certain characteristics which are consistent at all scales, from the microscopic to the cosmic. She displays a clear preference for symmetry over asymmetry, for elegance over complexity, for consistency over peculiarity. She requires you to be beautiful, since you are a part of nature.”

“And as I am a part of nature, it is clear that my own nature, greatly though you may struggle with it, is also a part of nature’s symmetry, elegance, consistency and beauty, even if you are unable to perceive it.”

“So now you are claiming to be part of nature, and acting in accordance with nature, when every action you are performing is contrary to her?”

“Yes. Everything I am doing is in accordance with my own internal nature, and is my own effort to collaborate with the laws of nature to bring my body and my life into conformity with my inner nature. Exactly so.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard you say, and I’ve never heard you say anything but absurdities. You’ve been at war with nature from the moment you decided to reject your true sex.”

“You’re the one who is rejecting my true sex. I’m trying to approach it, with nature’s help. You’re trying to keep me from doing so, with the force of law, but all you can manage is to make my efforts more difficult. Even if you succeed, all you will do is limit my options in seeking help. You won’t be able to change my true nature. That’s the thing you can’t seem to get through your thick skull.

“If I were living a hundred years ago, all I would be able to do is choose what clothes I wore and train my voice, and that would have to be enough. I’m fortunate to be living now, when medicine is more advanced. I’m unfortunate enough to not be living a hundred years from now when medicine will be able to allow people like me to make a perfect transition, and when, God willing, there will be fewer people like you to make life miserable for us. But here and now, I’ll do what I can.”

 

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Md481yOun50W4wpoWN8um_oRkMeEZOA2k8-tPmkApL4/edit?usp=sharing

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "To thine own self be true."