Not my idiom (now, with no coconuts!).

[mrissa]

It is a silly thing, but it frustrates me over and over again: I just don't know of socially acceptable modes to say what I'm actually perceiving. If you come across someone you haven't seen in a long time, and you are inquiring after their travel, and you say, "How are you? You look good," there is a way to intone that so that your impression of the other person's sexual attractiveness is not at issue. You can also intone it so that it is that kind of compliment, but there is a way to say it so it doesn't come out that way. You can also say to someone who has been sick, "Are you feeling better? Your color is better."

But that's not what I'm perceiving. What I mean is, "It's good to smell you again," and "How are you? You smell good," and, "Are you feeling better? Your sweat is better." Especially that last. Sweat is on the list of things we are Not To Notice, apparently.

And you can say, "Oh, it's good to finally match a name with a face!" But if you say, "Oh, it's good to finally match a name with a smell!", things will become very swiftly alarming from that point. Possibly for both of you.

And if you say to your friend, "It was nice to meet your sweetie in person, and I can kind of smell what you smell in him/her," that's not good either. Even though if you said, "I can see what you see in him/her," no one would assume that you meant, "I have noticed the visual appeal of your sweetheart but no other, non-visual traits." "I see why you want to go out with him/her," comes out very different from, "I smell why."

All the ways I can think of to say this in English end up sounding like they are comments either on attractiveness in more detail than people expect to hear it in non-romantic relationships or else on basic hygiene standards. Switching from "you smell good" to "you smell all right" makes people feel like a packet of lunchmeat or a gallon of milk: "Has so-and-so gone south?" "Give her here. Nope, smells all right to me."

It's a different data set, is the thing. One misses things the other catches, and vice versa. And I'm sure there are things my eyes are technically catching that my brain is not processing consciously, just as there are probably things many people smell that they're not processing consciously. But having some sense of which is which seems like it might be useful. Reporting in that I see something I don't see at all seems perilous.

It seems that as people get to know me better, I can say more of this kind of thing and they will be used to it more. So this is a good trend. I am less careful than I was about trying to hide smelling things. I have reassured a number of people that a fair amount of what I smell is neutral to me, that it's not a bad thing to smell a moderate amount of what someone had for dinner or that they are a little stressed. I am still somewhat careful when it comes to attractive members of the opposite sex, though, and as I am geek-oriented, this comes up a lot in the social settings I'm most likely to be in.

I'm pretty sure some of you are as sound-oriented as I am smell-oriented: do you have this trouble at all?

(Now markgritter has been up and down most of the night being sick.

All right, autumn! You win! Uncle! Aunt! Whatever other relative you want me to say! Just cut out this petty bullshit! This is insult to a pile of further insult and injury mingled.

I would like to go kick something now.

I have been going around telling people I am going to spend November eating bonbons and reading movie magazines. I started inviting people to join me. In some cases I may even provide the bonbons.)

Comments

[warinbear.livejournal.com]

All the ways I can think of to say this in English end up sounding like they are comments either on attractiveness in more detail than people expect to hear it in non-romantic relationships or else on basic hygiene standards.

Yes, English stinks. <g,d,&r>

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

GROAN!

But see, that's my point: we're much better at saying things smell unpleasant than that they smell reassuring or positive. "I smell a rat," and, "there's something fishy about this," and so on.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

Alas, I've no insights to offer on the hypersensory front (having the opposite problem, if anything -- everything's *clogged* right now), but I'm with you on the bonbons and magazines. I'll bring bourbon balls or lime tarts or summat 'long those lines...

a somewhat geeky reply

[redbird]

That most of us haven't noticed that lack of sensory terminology, and the way the expectations shift, is probably self-reinforcing.

I see discussions of people's dominant senses, and it's generally sight/hearing/touch, often with a note that touch dominance is rare. (ozarque talks about this in terms of matching people's dominant sense in talking to them.) I don't know if there are even fewer people for whom smell is dominant than for whom touch is, or whether the numbers are similar but the expectations you describe make it less talked about.

Different data sets, definitely.

Reporting in that I see something I don't see at all seems perilous. Maybe something like "I get it" or "I'd noticed that," which don't explicitly invoke any sense, for things you're getting from smell if you don't want to startle people with how you're collecting data.

[ckd]

This is the sort of observation that, filtered through a pop-sociobiology viewpoint, would lead to a half page on how noticing unpleasant smells was a stronger evolutionary advantage than noticing pleasant smells, blah blah blah continued theorizing ex nihilo or even ex fundamentum.

Not that I've read too many pop sociobiology articles or anything.

orientation

[aet.livejournal.com]

Strangely enough even the visually oriented can easily get into trouble when they are not face oriented (I mean, what would you assume if I would tell you all the things that I remember about Columbine's belly? Of course she had only to stretch herself once for me to notice both how the hair grow on her belly and the way the scar was not as I had expected it to be ...). So I usually have to edit my visual experiences to fit the canon also.

Not to mention that too often I fail to pay attention to face and so am unable to recognize people when I can see only face (a random example of apology that would probably get strange reaction: "I was not ignoring you, you just walked past me with your hands in pockets, of course I failed to recognize you!")

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Because identifying pleasant sights is more strongly (or at minimum equally) adaptive than identifying unpleasant sights?

Not that I think you're wrong that articles would go in that direction. It's just that I would eye such dissertations askance. Or sniff at them oddly.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I really like hearing how your brain works and how you perceive the world. It's very different from how I do, but I couldn't nail down how I interpret people the way you have. When in doubt, I use 'seem', which isn't perfect-- she seems nice, but wait 'til she gets mad-- but it's something.

[ckd]

Attractiveness = health = evolutionary fitness blah blah blah etc. I've read that one a few too many times, too.

"Hi! I'm Captain Oversimplifying Pop Science Writer! My superpower is to build a three page magazine article out of a random behavior pattern, by turning it into a Deep Insight Into The Development Of Human Intelligence."

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Yes, I understood. I meant that it was suspect as an explanation for the circumstance mrissa observed since there doesn't seem to be any reason why it would be more true for scent than for vision.

But yes, very common and very tiresome.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

You could always go the Native Tongue route and use 'perceive' instead.

Or perhaps not.

Oddly, since I'm part of the seething throng that is vision-primary (although my sense of smell seems to have burgeoned in the past few years, which is fascinating me), I've thought about all this and been annoyed by it too. Probably not with as much feeling as you.

I think it's interesting and very nice that a lot of scents are neutral to you. The other person I know with a very acute sense of smell seems to more frequently feel assaulted by the world, though not specifically about people, except in the cases of cigarette smoke or perfume.

I think it's strange that...now, is it our species or our culture which is so much more strongly oriented to sight than to other senses? In any case, I find it a little weird because scent has been found to be the sense that's generally hooked into memory most strongly and directly. Considering that piece of wiring, I'd somehow expect it to have more prominence in other contexts, as well.

[ckd]

Yeah, it's definitely suspect, and I don't think there's any more reason for it than you do.

While I'm not a biologist, I work for a whole bunch of genomics research folks, and so I notice these oversimplified articles more clearly. I wonder what the evolutionary basis of that is...oh, right, that they pay me money and I can eat.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I have very little smell perception of other people, so I can only imagine how this is for you, but I think I can imagine it from your description.

Feel free to comment on my smell, should you be inclined to.

I find that people frequently say to me, "You look tired" when I'm not. I have this nearing-60 baggy-eyes thing going on, plus the natural darkish undereyes I have had all my life. (Though I'm tempted to reply, "I'm almost 60 and I've raised two kids and am still working on two others--of course I'm tired"--but it wouldn't be true.) So I'd actually be interested in whether you ever perceive me as "smelling tired"--although we may not have had enough interaction for you to recognize such.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Makes me think of somewhat unusual ways to phrase common requests -- "Hey, I've just finished this manuscript, could you take a quick sniff at it and tell me what you think?" That one would even make sense to most people, perhaps after a second of processing, I think. (Or, in Dog, "Please sniff the ass of this story and tell me what you think.")

English seems to treat good smells and tastes as at least borderline sexual. Let's say 'sensual', not invoking the generic "sense data" meaning. While you can give a visual description that leans strongly that way, you can *also* give a very positive visual description that doesn't. But when people describe fine wine, coffee, food, chocolate, and such, there's always some kind of an edge of sexuality being invoked, seems like. Not much, not necessarily terribly direct (one can deliberately choose to go completely ove the top with it, but that's another issue). But it seems like it's always there.

Or maybe that's just me.

If it's not just me, that partly explains why good smell terminology for people is a bit fraught.

Re: orientation

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Faceblindness is an extreme of this tendency; not sure if it applies here. But I do know what you mean, recognizing people by how they swing their arms or hold their shoulders rather than by how they look. I was able to recognize my friend Andrew from the way he moved from the knees down once when I was looking out a basement window. I would never have known his shoes and pants if he'd been holding still. (So if I was Skade, no problem! Just make them move! But I'd never have gone for Baldr anyway. "The Beautiful," bah. *YAWWWWWN*)

Re: a somewhat geeky reply

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think I recall someone in a discussion on ozarque's journal -- don't remember if it was her, so I don't want to ascribe a viewpoint to her that might not be accurate -- who was being pretty dismissive of the idea of getting data through smell. Which was frustrating to me.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Likewise, on the dark undereyes. A character I played once led a friend to comment that I had a "natural ability to look tragic and haggard," to which I said, gee, thanks. I mean, it's useful when the character's supposed to look tragic and haggard, but it's remarkably difficult for me to look like I've gotten a full night of sleep, even when I have. (Any good solutions that take me less time than makeup, I'd love to hear them.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I do have "seems," and "can't say why I feel that way." But a lot of it is identifiable as smell. eileenlufkin, for example, got filed in "good people I should trust" pretty much instantaneously, and I'm pretty sure it was pheromonal. She has since behaved like a Good People I Should Trust, and I've heard stories from other people that reinforce that impression. But first impressions rely a lot on smell for me.

Sometimes this is very scary, when I trust someone more quickly than I can rationally justify. So far the people I have trusted that quickly have a better track record than the people I distrusted and tried to talk myself into trusting, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Cigarette smoke itself is not my favorite smell (nor, come to that, is pot smoke), but some smokers have a blend of tobacco with other body chemistry or external sources of scent that comes out rather pleasant in my nose. Rare but possible; hugged one such yesterday, and was around a few others who didn't actively smell nice to me but also didn't offend my nostrils. When one of my favorite great-aunt and -uncle pairs quit smoking, I was glad for them but very confused and disoriented to be around them.

I don't like the bases most perfume companies use, although some essential oil bases go awry in different directions, so it's not a generalized solution. But on some people, perfume bases or essential oil bases I don't like in isolation can be fine.

I have felt assaulted by my scent environment, but usually it takes an extreme case, and it's more common with something like illness. And not just a cold or low-grade sinus infection, either -- mostly stuff like kidney failure. I can deal with it, but it's hard.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think these are perceptions that most people are just not going to understand. Most people do not have much conscious awareness of smells and are going to jump to strange conclusions if you talk about how they smell different from last time, etc. Most people don't take those "see" and "sound" comments too literally, so if you are pleased to be in someone's presence because they smell nice, it seems good enough to say "You look good," or "I'm happy to see you," even though you mean "You smell good" and "I'm happy to smell you."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You haven't generally smelled tired when I've been around you. Maybe on a Sunday morning at Minicon a bit more tired than at other times. But not as a general trait.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And I do, I do say, "Good to see you." I say, "I see your point." But sometimes it bugs me when it's specifically smell stuff rather than general perception.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That first example is a good one in some ways -- clear meaning and all -- but mostly people actually do literally look at a manuscript in order to read it, so I'm less bothered by that one in specific. (I do smell letters I get through the mail, though.)

My aunt sent a birthday card to my father that had the caption "Dog Security Guards." Two dogs at a security checkpoint, and one was saying to the other, "I understand that you probably are who you say you are, but the regulations demand that I sniff your butt anyway." The thing I love about my aunt is that she is so refined and proper.

But yes, I don't think it's just you in perceiving a lot of scent-description as sensual, borderline sexual. And some scent stuff can be that way, of course (at least "of course" from where I sit) -- but not all, and not as much as seems to come out that way.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Be grateful you don't have a natural ability to look wholesome.

Hmm, wait. Maybe you do, just under slightly varied circumstances. I would sympathize greatly if you had both.

[lutin.livejournal.com]

Hasn't Shweta tried to talk to you about CogLing? ;)

One answer to your musings, anyway, is to look at English's metaphors. Understanding is Seeing is a really, really old one which goes back to Proto Indo-European, and which is still productive+ in English. (I see what you mean, I can't make heads or tails of it, etc.) So when you're noticing something in English, that metaphor & it's expressions basically trump the others.

(Also, as you or someone else pointed out, smell is a lot more personal than look.)