︎ zazen bozo ︎


︎︎︎ October 18th, 2023 ︎︎︎




When is a smell not a smell?
I’ve written previously about how Abby smells, not what sort of perfume she uses, because she uses none, but how she smells. I said she smelled better than anyone or anything, because that’s true. It’s true, but nobody but me has access to that smell, it’s a smell that only I can enjoy. Not in a face that only a mother could love sort of way, but in a, key meets lock sort of way. Something about her scent dovetails magnificently with me. I believe it’s genetic, I think I’ve read that. 

To say that Roby is the same would be an understatement. This is a person who has never once bathed. We’ve used a cloth to wipe away a bit of blood, but soap has never once touched her. The most in the way of not her smell has been a stick of incense I burned today, other than that, it’s eau de Roby all the way. 

Sniffing her head or her toes or her belly doesn’t even really have a smell, it’s more like it has a shape. A complimentary shape more perfectly fit to the interiority of me than could possibly be machined or understood. Again, words do it no justice, but I suppose I gave it a shot. 

This all speaks to the knowledge that having a child is a good thing to do in the same way that making art is, or sleeping is, or eating eggs is, or walking through the forest is, or praying is. There are things that humans ought to do just like there are things horses ought to do, or at least benefit from. 

The rightness of that is communicated to me, the human, in ways that are felt in and by the body. The universe can’t give me a pat on the back, it can’t tell me I dun good, but it can make Abby and Roby’s hair smell better than anything else on Earth, and only to me.

Bozo
Bozo