The minute and often invisible particles which exhale from most, if not all terrestrial bodies, such as the odor or smell of plants, and the noxious exhalations from diseased bodies or putrefying animal or vegetable substances.
An early memory of New York, late 1990, in my first weeks and months living here, on a crowded subway to somewhere in Queens I found my face inches away from the back shoulder of a Chinese man (it was a 7 train to Flushing) his coat was made of a thready fabric that smelled of many things, many things, many places he had been, the homes and rooms and offices, the tall city became small when the scent of a kitchen mixed with the scent of one man’s cologne and the sound of the huddled conversations flowed like blood through the subway car and into the fabric of his coat, his posture (and mine) made steady by the same dice on which we rolled in.
