Sensory Candy Land

I’m gonna be blogging everyday this month! I’ve lost the momentum to blog following my month-long European trip in May so I’ve also signed up with NaBloPoMo, where you pledge to blog everyday for a month based on a suggested theme. September’s theme is “Beautiful”.

I love Septembers. It’s the start of the rainy season here. I have mentioned a couple of times  here about my love for rainy days. The day gets cooler, the colors of the leaves get more saturated and there’s a thick, fresh smell of evaporating grass perfume. Wait, did I just say grass perfume?

I see the world as a candy store of magical sensory experiences. Smells to be smelled, interesting textures to be caressed, poked and squeeze. The world is indeed a beautiful place.

One of my favorite sounds is the gentle clicking of Ricola breath mint boxes when you open/close them. I could go on an on opening and closing them. When I walk into a bookstore, it’s not just words and pictures that invites to be explored. Paper is one of my greatest weakness. The multitude of textures, the different smells when you browse through the pages, the feeling a certain tone of off-white gives me.

I had an interesting experience at the bookstore the other day. A book was inviting me into its pages (creamy and pockmarked with miniscule pits). Through experience, I can tell how a certain type of paper is going to smell like (No, no I don’t spend all my time smelling pages of books, I have a lot of common paper samples as a graphic designer) but this one was a mystery. So I decided to do the necessary — I drew my nose closer to the book and took a deep whiff somewhere between pages 100 and 165. The smell was a delicious combination of vanilla and grass perfume. I didn’t notice that someone was beside me until I closed the book, let out a very tiny, “mmmh” and smiled to myself. After getting giving me a derisive stare and unapproving sneer, the stranger walked away slightly disgusted. I looked at the rest of the folks in the bookstore. They were either grabbing something purposefully or reading the first few pages or blurbs at the back covers. I strolled to the kids section and was met with a boisterous littly boy negotiating with his mum about how he really wanted a book because some of pages are bouncy. A girl was seated on the floor touching a drawing of a colorful fairy, totally entranced.

Somewhere along the road to adulthood we lose this sense of wonder and delight in seeing normal things in a novel way. I’m glad I didn’t lose that gift because there’s just so much beauty all around just waiting to be discovered and enjoyed. Why don’t you join in the fun some time?

PS: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movie is coming out soon (I just love that title). Pancake rain sounds good in small doses.

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