on the exquisite stench of satisfaction

and being a sommelier of flatulence

Back when the refinery still burned, you’d smell it before you’d see it.

How could anyone live with this stench?

These were not my private thoughts. Each time we’d pass through there over four decades I would speak those words, my hackles up with olfactory offense. I must be some kind of spoiled brat, but I do not like stinky places. Actually, I adore stinky places.

But it’s gotta have a certain kind of stink.

The stink needs to be on a human scale.

Swamps, bogs, horse shit and rotting seaweed buzzing with maggots are fine.

My jacket stinky with sweat - I love it. I am a filthy animal. I joyously roll around indulging in the poetry of my own body odour.

I could be a sommelier of flatulence. I am an expert on the varied compositions and expressions of my own farts:

Now dear, I’m about to let one rip, I think you’ll quite enjoy this one. It’s a bold, full bodied crack-popper, heavy nose of sulphur, sharp - from yesterdays’s omelette with mellow undertones of juniper, sage and catnip.

My favourite smell is again one of my own. I’m not certain why this is and I’m not really going to explore the why on this thing too much ok?

But here it is.

While some love the scent of salt air, or of flowers or cooked turnips, I believe the best smell in the world to be me after working in the woods with a chain saw for a few hours.

Wet right through my clothes, any anti perspirant, deodorent - any of that smelly stuff so you don’t smell like you stuff¹

So wet right through my clothes smelling like me at my best, that beauty struts out and mingles with the scents of freshly cut sugar maple, yellow, birch, spruce and fir. Alongside of that are hints of a deep and heavy loamy odour, the living earth alive in my nose and playing with my smell.

Then finally?

The most glorious part of my stench?

Bar oil. Two stroke exhaust. Fifty to one fuel to oil mix. Those old pig skin gloves.

And after it all?

A boisterous belch brought forth by home-brewed kombucha

That combined smell? When I smell like that, I am a gift only unto myself. At that time and in that moment of most pungent glory, I fucking stink and I love every single thing about how I smell and how I got smelly. The combination of elements, and the tasks completed create for me the stench of satisfaction.

My god I love this smell.

When you really work with move with in contact and concert with the earth - and I’m not talking about some woo woo planetary alignment bullshit. I’m more thinking about your alignment with the planet on a more intimate level. You know, how do you move with and in contact with the earth? Cleanse yourself in the stench of the loam, using low tech tools on a human scale. When you do this, you’re not just building or cutting; you’re brewing your own damn essence.

That’s the real bespoke scent, the one that says 'I was here, I did the work, and I have the glorious, unrepeatable stink to prove it.' Everything else is just perfume trying to mask a life un-lived.

And when the question arises, who farted?

Make sure there’s no doubt that it was you.

1. I sometimes wonder if the Speed stick I slap on my pits isn’t some sort of nose camo that we know how to wear. We’ re doing it so that when the aliens come, we can all hide EN MASSE in the cosmetics, cleaners, soaps and what not isles of all of the stores that sell such things.

The aliens would NEVER EVER find us hanging out next to the shampoo and smelling like a leprechaun’s arsehole.