I look at the world: I see a lot of wow, I see a lot of ouch.

I wrote that in response to a question from a new online suitor about how I learned to be skeptical. A *nice * question, deserving of a revelation on my part neither too shallow nor too intimate. There was more to what I shared, but in a re-reading, that one line struck me as particularly apt. I look at the world: I see a lot of wow, I see a lot of ouch.

It’s been especially true given the research I’ve been doing lately for Van Jones, champion of the poor within discussions of climate change. I’ve been reading about beautiful things, like organic inner city gardens and green roofs and zero waste plans, and about horrifying things, like the ongoing plight of the Gulf South, and the scientific consensus around the severity of changing weather and conditions, and the endless procession of urban brown boys into lockdown.

Van-style, I’m gonna say it again: I look at the world: I see a lot of wow, I see a lot of ouch.

(The painting of Van, by the way, is by cool artist Robert Shetterly, part of his series of Americans Who Tell the Truth. Definitely in the wow camp.)

Conjunction Junction, what’s your Function?

Apparently a striking planetary/galactic configuration unfurls in the heavens today and tomorrow: an almost perfect convergence of all the planets near or along the galactic center, which is the rotational center of the Milky Way galaxy. Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Mercury, the Sun and the Galactic Center will all be lined up! This phenomenon is made even more remarkable in that it will be accompanied by the Full Moon at about 2 a.m. on December 24.

In positional astronomy and astrology a conjunction means that celestial bodies appear near one another or in alignment. From our vantage point on earth they appear conjoined but in reality there are many millions of miles between them. Without the observer there would be no conjunction at all. The conjunction exists only in being observed.

There’s lots of theories floating around in the ether about the significance of this event: references to the Illuminati, the Mayan calendar, the Book of Revelations. Some say that the planets will form a cross with the sun in the middle, and further, that the Sun will die on the galactic cross and be reborn again after 3 days…

I like what Will Parfitt had to say about it: “Remember it will only be happening because you are observing and experiencing it, so rather than looking at it from the perspective of others, or in books and charts, observe it closely, and deeply, from your own position. Sure, make any astrological calculations you may wish, but also be there at the time of the conjunction, sense it in your body, feel it in your heart, watch carefully the effects it has on your being and your nature.”

Read my love.

I have a crush on a book. Not the characters, and not the author, no, I mean the book itself: a work of brilliance and beauty that challenges and expands my brain, tickles me with its wit, and turns me on with sensuousness. All of this not just at first read, but ongoing, for the book and I have become inseparable. Even as I read others, I find myself putting them down, reaching into my bag, and re-connecting with the pages of my obsession. My wandering eyes are encountering nothing comparable, at least not for now.

The book was a gift from a friend with impeccable taste (thank you, friend). At the enthralling first two chapters my cheeks flushed, my pupils dilated: what characters, what pace and suspense! But certain precious details, like beauty marks hovering by a full upper lip, gave me pause: wait, was this… nonfiction? I stopped, examined the front and back cover for the first time. It was nonfiction!…is: The Emperor of Scent: a true story of perfume and obsession.

Indeed, journalist Chandler Burr’s book is the true story of biophysicist and perfume connoisseur Luca Turin and his adventures in the scientific community and in the ultra-secret world of corporate perfumers, as he develops a new, hotly-contested scientific theory of how we smell things.

Some of Burr’s effusive yet incisive prose:

Turin is an instinctive egalitarian with an exquisitely refined aesthetic and unabashedly elitist tastes, and so he felt completely comfortable in the perfume world, which is populated by former members of the lower classes who spend their time creating outrageously expensive aesthetically oriented luxury goods for the rich.

Turin says:

“People will say, ‘But isn’t smell totally subjective?’ And I’ll say ‘What the hell does that mean?’ It’s not more subjective than color or sound. Real men and scientists feel slightly ridiculous smelling something. I’ll say ‘Let me show you some smells,’ and I start passing out vials and everyone titters, like I’ve just asked them to take off their clothes or something.”

For Turin, who can identify the ingredients of a scent down to the molecular level using only his nose, and can describe them in ordinary (and beautiful) language with absolute precision, smell is anything but subjective. It is scientific, and that’s the whole point. But what, exactly, is scientific? In a fascinating turn, the book reveals the political and petty and pretty darn subjective side of science—the peer review process in particular. Also and above all, it shows the paradoxically magical quality of science.

Burr notes:

The trouble with science is that, as a rule, oddity among scientists—perfume obsessions, strange work habits—is often indistinguishable from inefficiency. What appears ludicrous and implausible and outrageous usually is. And then, sometimes it’s not….

And Turin concludes:

“The problem of smell wasn’t that hard to crack. The catch was that to crack it, you had to know a huge number of disparate facts. It was simply a question of probability. How many people would be aware simultaneously of the recipe for Chanel No. 5, the vibrational numbers of boranes, Blitz, and Malcolm Dyson. And also have my particular approach, which was: if I smell it to be true, it is true…. Metaphor is the currency of knowledge. I have spent my life learning incredible amounts of disparate, disconnected, obscure, useless pieces of knowledge, and they have turned out to be, almost all of them, extremely useful. Why. Because there is no such thing as disconnected facts. There is only complex structure. And both to explain complex structure to others, and, perhaps more important—this is forgotten, usually—to understand them oneself, one needs better metaphors. If I was able to understand this, it was because my chaotic accrual of information simply gave me better metaphors than anyone else.”

*sigh*