These are my first shaky steps in the attempt to blog about perfumes in the way I experience them. english is not my native language, so its not gonna be easy to translate what I perceive and already need a lot of energy to manage putting down in words. But its worth a try, right?
Who am I and what do I perceive? I am a huge fragrance enthusiast. I love perfume and spend a lot of time smelling it, talking about it, reading about it, researching about it... What I've learnt is that my way of perceiving and expressing my experiences of perfumes differs from many others. Not so long ago I learnt why. A session with a pretty new therapist led to it when he asked me "your synesthesia, is it only linked between olfactory and tactile sensations?"
Well, before that I didn't even know I was a synesthesist. It's not that uncommon actually (not being aware of it, that is) since the way I perceive has always been that way, hence is totally normal in my world. It has never occurred to me that this might differ from other peoples perceptions. He explained further that it was obvious to him after a few meetings with me, hearing me describing experiences and thoughts regarding my olfactory interest. Olfactory sensations in forms of perfume very often translates to my fingers, meaning - I feel what I smell. Not what I smell per se, but the picture or feeling of the olfactive impression brings a tactile sensation to my fingers that feels as I am actually touching something.
Most often, I experience perfumes in a mixed kind of olfactory and tactile way. Therefore, it feels natural to me to describe perfumes in terms of tactile terms as well. My synesthesia is not the most common kind, I don't read or hear in colors, as many of you might think of when hearing about the functional diversity. From what I can tell thinking about this a bit more since I have gotten aware of it, it is only my olfactory sense that is affected. It's only stimulation of my olfactory sense that leads to automatic response in other sensory pathways. As I wrote earlier it's mostly tactile sensations that are stimulated, but different combinations exists as well. Olfactory - auditory for example, meaning olfactory impressions perceives as sounds. Sometimes it's a mix of these.
Experiencing perfume through your nose "only" is fantastic as it is. There is so much out there that speaks in different voices, being multidimensional. But also feeling and hearing perfumes, that is what makes them so special to me, that is why my interest has grown so big it's undoubtedly a part of my every day life.
My hopes and thoughts with this attempt of a blog is to share my views and thoughts - with others ones as crazy for fumes as I - maybe adding a new perspective or hopefully broaden the minds of the olfactory writing and reviews. Might be interesting for someone else than me, might not be. Either way, it's mindful and destressing for me to write about perfume and olfactory thoughts, and I might as well do it here as in my notebook.
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