An essay on the way poignant smells.
Merriam-Webster defines poignant as “Pungently Pervasive”, even as my less than attractive voice of my subvocalisation this phrase resonated an air no less than simply intoxicating. It doesn’t simply denote a dreadful sensation, but one that triumphed over the eudaemonia and have taken lodge in the depth of our mind against our will.
The wretchedness Gatsby exudes makes the array of champagne and the glasses of glamour he is bathing in irrelevant, we see through his tear his tailored suit and waxed skin until all that is left of him is a frail figure reaching towards the green flickering light across the waters.
Unlike dread which sits down in the very air we breathe force-feeding our stomach already filled with pungency, felicity is a mirage our hands never grip firm enough. This is probably why tragedy rings within us with such vociferating scent, it is real, it is us. Being human, and what it means is the very montage of a caterpillar struggling to wriggle out of a husk of dissatisfactory, it is the tremble of the amorphous creature, the silhouette of what it could be once fully emerged, and the unending sequence of this very scene which rewinds until the viewers give in and falls asleep. Did it succeed?
Words that denote joy rarely expands wider than the three alphabets that spells it out, for its significance evaporates with the memory of a joyful instance, which is truly an instance. Perhaps that is why I walk through the crowd and swarming screens of advertisements displaying slow-motions of teenagers cavorting in a sun-kissed filter and linger rather in the reflections of the city at night on the screen, thinking I belong more in smudged streaks of shapeless light than anything surrounding me pretending to resemble reality. Maybe one day I won’t feel the same way, maybe. Or I will have a question mark, a curled up string of doubt in the palms of my hand after the reels and stopped flashing and the curtains have rolled down.
