The Pleasure of All Five Senses, Part 2

Seven Sins for a Life Worth Living
by Roger Housden

(Page 2 of 2)

Everything we taste is snatched from death: our responsibility is to taste it completely.

— John Tarrant

Smells can also serve to dredge up long-forgotten memories, and they do so because they are an essential component of our emotional "read" of a situation or a moment in time. Charles Dickens claimed that the merest hint of the type of paste used to fasten labels to bottles would plunge him into the anguish of his early years, when bankruptcy forced his father to abandon him in a warehouse where they made such bottles.

I had my own experience of the power of scent over memory when I was in Branscombe, one of those English villages that seems made for a picture postcard, all thatched roofs and little winding streets. I was walking past a cottage covered with roses and honeysuckle. I was about to lean into the roses when I suddenly caught the scent of something more humble. It was a faint tang, somewhat like pepper, not entirely pleasant but not unpleasant, either.

I turned my head. A pot of geraniums was hanging from the porch, and as I caught their smell, I instantly became eight years old again. On my way to school I would pick a leaf from the geraniums that hung over our neighbor's garden wall and enjoy the tingling sensation it sparked in my mouth. In that smell was the thrill of a private enjoyment, the pleasure of being out in the world on my own, in that exciting stretch of public domain that lay between the familiarity of home and the ordered safety of school.

Our sense of smell matters; it plays a large but usually unnoticed role in everyday decisions. It determines, often against all reason, our attraction or aversion to others. The male essential oil is androsterone. It smells approximately of musk, sandalwood, and a nuance of urine. Experiments have shown women selecting only the chairs, telephones, and theater seats that had been presprayed with this masculine odor. A woman smells sweetest and is thus most attractive during ovulation, when the rise in her blood sugar level adds to the sweetness of her breath.

Your lover's odor is certainly part of their attraction for you. That's probably why you like to wear his shirt or use his pillow when he is away, and why he is always sniffing your hair and around your neck. But we wouldn't want to go so far today as women did back in Elizabethan times. Then a woman would put a peeled apple under her arm for a while and offer the "love apple" to her beloved as a gift. Even Napoleon asked Josephine not to wash in the two weeks before they would next meet, so he could enjoy her natural perfume undiluted.

When we make love in the way Eve — who is the figure of the human soul — would have us make love, then not just our fingers but our toes and eyes and ears and every part and parcel of us is dancing to the thrill the laughter the tears the pathos the exquisite tenderness of being in such intimate communion with another human being. And because we have entered the world of time, we know that the first flushes of love can, in time, give way to the more sober work of forging an enduring relationship, which has its own pleasures, unknown to starry-eyed lovers. There is great pathos — a richness of feeling both poignant and passionate — in every transition from innocence to experience. What life wants of us, in all of our transitions, whatever they are, is that we feel it, all of it, whatever it is. Because the ability to be moved, to feel the bittersweetness of life in time, is the unique opportunity of being physical, one that an angel would give his wings for.

So our lovemaking does not have to be all thunder, lightning, and Beethoven to bring us the profound pleasure of being skin to skin in tender, vulnerable nakedness with another human being. What matters is that we are there, whatever is happening; that we can savor the scent of the other, follow the contours of their body with our fingers, let our eyes linger on them, and above all — greater than any technique, tantric or otherwise — offer them the gift of our presence: so simple yet so often elusive, the gift of just being there; being there, with and for the other, that is our deepest offering.

That is not so easy, though, when we confuse our fantasies and concepts about the physical world with the actual experience of it. To be in the world requires our whole body and mind. To be in the mind alone with our fantasies is to be in a world of our own and ultimately to be lonely. You might think, from the booming pornography business, that we live in the most sexually liberated culture of all time. But no, we live in a world of images; the erotic, on the other hand, is unmediated, directly relational.

Pornography is a caricature of the erotic; it can exist only by denying relationship. It demands anonymity. And without relationship there is no connectedness, nothing more than the tight circle of oneself. Instead of soul there is only sensation, which is only skin deep and for its own sake alone.

Pornography is the legacy of the religious fear of the flesh (of getting our hands dirty) and the split between body and soul. D. H. Lawrence was aware of this a long time ago. In Women in Love, Rupert Birkin says to Ursula:

"As it is, what you want is pornography — looking at yourself in mirrors, watching your naked animal actions in mirrors, so that you can have it all in your consciousness, make it all mental."

"But do you really want sensuality?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, "that and nothing else, at this point. It is a fulfillment — the great dark knowledge you can't have in your head — the dark, involuntary being. It is death to oneself — but it is the coming into being of another."

The gustatory equivalent of pornography is fast food: quick, cheap, and convenient. But pleasure likes to take its time, especially when it comes to sex and a good meal. Slow is best when it's a matter of taking pleasure. Where else but in Italy would a Slow Food movement begin, which it has, in response to the ubiquitous demand for junk food that has penetrated even those bastions of culinary refinement, Italy and France. For the Slow Food movement, everything is in the preparation (as any good lover will know). You choose the ingredients not only for their freshness but for their variety of taste, color, and texture; you steam your vegetables to preserve their life juices; you cook everything over a low heat; you serve the result not all in one course but in two, three, or several; and you flavor the whole meal with leisurely conversation and appreciation of the surroundings. If you are serving lunch, you do not have an appointment before late afternoon — just like in the old days, at least around the Mediterranean.

Copyright © 2005 by Roger Housden. Excerpted by permission of Harmony, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Roger Housden emigrated from England to the United States in 1998 and now lives in New York City. He is the author of numerous books on cultural and spiritual themes, including the bestselling Ten Poems series.