Good Will Smelling
“Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I’ll bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that.”
—Robin Williams, Good Will Hunting
Ah, Robin, always gutting those willing to pay attention. I was enraptured. I was taken by these words. I was determined to find out; Is true understanding only facilitated by first hand experience? Could a poem about the Sistine Chapel even begin to capture the flooding sensations (that are supposedly) catalyzed by the one of the holiest places known to man? I was itching to find out.
I gobbled down two Mucinex and inhaled about a tub’s worth of Afrin to clear my sinuses. I was ready after having clocked at least eight miles around the museum, my legs throbbed and beads of sweat clung to my anti-theft fanny pack. In my head, eras of artwork swirled viciously. I was dizzy and determined to make it to the chapel. The chapel itself is at the end of an intricate labyrinth of misleading signs strewn throughout the Vatican Museum claiming the chapel is just ahead.
So, after I finished panting, I was soon rewarded with the site of the white-red, final sign. The real sign. I had made it. Flaring my nostrils wide, I stepped inside. My friend was immediately instructed by a uniform-clad man to cover her shoulders. Reflexively, I straightened my spine, an involuntary response to the tense energies at the chapel’s doorway. My eyes darted across the room, immediately pinpointing the parts of Michelangelo’s work that were most recognizable. Overwhelmed by the vibrant smattering of pastels, I caught my breath on a plastic covered seat. I had seen the painting of God and Adam before, it was iconic. Seeing it firsthand was like a dream that I couldn’t shake. The warm clouds surrounding God and Adam were as textured and as well-blended as I imagined they were in 1512. It’s destabilizing. It’s its own form of magic, of time travel.
“SILENCE,” a non-diagetic voice boomed overhead. Let me just say, nothing detracts from the sanctity of a space like an agitated, masculine, voice yawping commands at squirming tourists. Once I was able to center myself, I could concentrate on the smell, closing my eyes and flattening my ears. Weeding out the smell of sweat, sunscreen, and burnt skin, I got the faintest hint of a different smell. At first I couldn’t figure out what it was. I assumed my nose would be tickled by the dank and musky smell of wet stone and aged wood. However, since the Sistine was blessed with a restorative, steady, circulation of air, its scent was dampened. Nevertheless, my nose grasped onto familiarity, sparking my synapses. My Sistine Chapel, smelled of old books. The kind of leather bound beauties a person could acquire at any sketchy alley-way store in Manhattan.
I now sit in my bed, back home. I wonder, what would the Sistine Chapel smell like to my mother? My father? The Pope? To Robin?…… To you?
