The Steampunk World
As I trudged up the stairs from the subway on my way to work, the warm locker-room smell of my city's semisubterranean worker unit distribution system washed off me like all the cheese sliding off of a pizza slice. Stank, it seems, loves company, just as the volcanic, greasy mozzarella holds tight to its stringy brethren and leaves you with a sauce-painted triangle of dough.
There were a few steps worth of fresh air. But as I crested the stairs, I got pounded in the nose by a replacement stench, this one powerful enough to make me feel like someone was playing yard-darts with my nostrils as the target. The chocolate factory was working overtime today.
The picture we all have in our heads of a chocolate factory is no doubt the one painted by Roald Dahl. In reality, it probably looks more like a brewery- take Willy Wonka's, replace the chocolate river with aluminum piping, and replace the oompa-loompas with scruffy union guys in coveralls, horking oysters into the mix as they man the soy lecithin injector and stare boredly at the yellowed pinup of Miss September 1982 as she smiles at the world forever with big hair, airbrushed skin, and a staple in her belly. Manufacturing centers completely drain the romance out of any product, and it's best not to see things get made. Isn't that sad? Not only are we so separated from our food and possessions that we obtain rather than make them, but we don't want to see how they're made because it's always depressing. I mean, there's nothing on Sesame Street that I love more than the Laverne & Shirley-esque shots of ketchup being bottled, but when you don't have the 50's "doodoodoodoo" music to make it seem cartoony it just serves as undeniable evidence of our separation from the earth.
So the air is filled with the smell of chocolate. Some days, when the wind is blowing, it smells good, like one of those stuffed gingerbread-man christmas tree ornaments with cinnamon inside. Those days I can imagine I live in a gingerbread city where the manholes are Famous Amos cookies and the buildings are all nibbled away at the corners. Most days, however, it stinks.
Think about the city. That fresh city smell! Granted, no city in this country smells quite like New York, but Chicago has a nice river to add its own little bouquet to the diesel fumes and factory pollution in the air. Mix that pollution, the exhaust, and the smell of Republicans who tried to run for office rotting in the river with chocolate and you can imagine how disgusting it is. It's like a corruption of chocolate. Did you ever find some fruit in the fridge, and it smelled a little too good, and you turned it over and it was all moldy and you realized in disgust you were smelling rotted fruit? Or you administer the sniff-test to some meat and find your stomach saying, "Mmmmm, bologna!" while your brain says, "Bad! Don't eat! Puke now!". I've heard EMTs say that sometimes they'll come upon a scene where somebody's been burned in a fire and there's that split second where something smells really good, like someone's having a barbeque... and then they realize what the smell is. It seems that smelling a stinky smell is not so bad as smelling a stinky smell with some good smell in it.
So, needless to say, I'm not too into chocolate these days. The street where I work has an overflowing sewer problem, so most days as I skip towards freedom at 5:05 I'm smelling raw sewage and chocolate. It's not like sight, where I can turn my head to the bums and ignore the 7-story Gap ad and pretend not to see the trust-fund babies who don't have to work driving their SUVs to Marshall Fields and talking on their cell phones about the $250 t-shirt they're going to buy. Smell is molecules, tumbling around mixing together inseperably, evoking stronger memories and emotions than any other sense and yet we're completely vulnerable to them. We can put a wall between the houses and the highway, and you can go your way and I can go my way, but we can't escape the smell. Hippies can drown themselves in patchouli but we all know they ain't bathing. Factories can claim a low environmental impact but we all smell the fumes. The mayor can say the river's clean, even dye it to look like it, but the nose knows. Smell is, it seems, nature's conscience.
There were a few steps worth of fresh air. But as I crested the stairs, I got pounded in the nose by a replacement stench, this one powerful enough to make me feel like someone was playing yard-darts with my nostrils as the target. The chocolate factory was working overtime today.
The picture we all have in our heads of a chocolate factory is no doubt the one painted by Roald Dahl. In reality, it probably looks more like a brewery- take Willy Wonka's, replace the chocolate river with aluminum piping, and replace the oompa-loompas with scruffy union guys in coveralls, horking oysters into the mix as they man the soy lecithin injector and stare boredly at the yellowed pinup of Miss September 1982 as she smiles at the world forever with big hair, airbrushed skin, and a staple in her belly. Manufacturing centers completely drain the romance out of any product, and it's best not to see things get made. Isn't that sad? Not only are we so separated from our food and possessions that we obtain rather than make them, but we don't want to see how they're made because it's always depressing. I mean, there's nothing on Sesame Street that I love more than the Laverne & Shirley-esque shots of ketchup being bottled, but when you don't have the 50's "doodoodoodoo" music to make it seem cartoony it just serves as undeniable evidence of our separation from the earth.
So the air is filled with the smell of chocolate. Some days, when the wind is blowing, it smells good, like one of those stuffed gingerbread-man christmas tree ornaments with cinnamon inside. Those days I can imagine I live in a gingerbread city where the manholes are Famous Amos cookies and the buildings are all nibbled away at the corners. Most days, however, it stinks.
Think about the city. That fresh city smell! Granted, no city in this country smells quite like New York, but Chicago has a nice river to add its own little bouquet to the diesel fumes and factory pollution in the air. Mix that pollution, the exhaust, and the smell of Republicans who tried to run for office rotting in the river with chocolate and you can imagine how disgusting it is. It's like a corruption of chocolate. Did you ever find some fruit in the fridge, and it smelled a little too good, and you turned it over and it was all moldy and you realized in disgust you were smelling rotted fruit? Or you administer the sniff-test to some meat and find your stomach saying, "Mmmmm, bologna!" while your brain says, "Bad! Don't eat! Puke now!". I've heard EMTs say that sometimes they'll come upon a scene where somebody's been burned in a fire and there's that split second where something smells really good, like someone's having a barbeque... and then they realize what the smell is. It seems that smelling a stinky smell is not so bad as smelling a stinky smell with some good smell in it.
So, needless to say, I'm not too into chocolate these days. The street where I work has an overflowing sewer problem, so most days as I skip towards freedom at 5:05 I'm smelling raw sewage and chocolate. It's not like sight, where I can turn my head to the bums and ignore the 7-story Gap ad and pretend not to see the trust-fund babies who don't have to work driving their SUVs to Marshall Fields and talking on their cell phones about the $250 t-shirt they're going to buy. Smell is molecules, tumbling around mixing together inseperably, evoking stronger memories and emotions than any other sense and yet we're completely vulnerable to them. We can put a wall between the houses and the highway, and you can go your way and I can go my way, but we can't escape the smell. Hippies can drown themselves in patchouli but we all know they ain't bathing. Factories can claim a low environmental impact but we all smell the fumes. The mayor can say the river's clean, even dye it to look like it, but the nose knows. Smell is, it seems, nature's conscience.
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