Scent of Experience
Friday, May 26th, 2006
As we age,
do our bodies absorb
and accumulate the scents
from our lives?
When we are ripe,
grandmas and grandpas,
do we reek
of experience?
As we age,
do our bodies absorb
and accumulate the scents
from our lives?
When we are ripe,
grandmas and grandpas,
do we reek
of experience?
i will reek of love.
I wouldn’t have described the reek as one of experience…
More like boiled vegetables.
Also I have always wondered if we continue to age after we die. When someone dies the news reports it as… Frank Sinatra died to day aged 83. Or Frank Sinatra, 83, died today. If you are dead do you have age? If so do you keep aging? Would we now say Frank Sinatra , 83 , died 8 years ago??
Boiled vegetables seems pretty accurate. Denielle at nxt-door to nowhere described grandma to smell like stale rose potpourri, kielke, and like a vegetable garden. Her poem inspired me to write this.
I mentally clapped after reading this.
Yes, we reek of experiences. Right this very second, as we breathe, as we type, as we read. Each second that passes by is a death. And what remains is the experience.
Hi Cecilia, yes… a continuous cycle of birth and death. This moment has just died, and another born. All we have to do is be there!
whew.
Whew as in whew eewww, or whew as in whew whoah!
The “empty vessel” (to borrow your words) that is us can be seen to be continuously filled as we gain experiences. I think, rather, that it becomes emptier. Instead of becoming more aware of the contents of the vessel, we become more aware of the size of the emptiness. The more we learn, the more experiences we have, the more we realize that we can never know it all. I think that’s why Robert Browning said, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp – or what’s a heaven for?”