To ask myself if I have a non-smelling look at life is new to me. Who knows… For me, I know that I am an attentive and fanatic observer, always linking what I see out there with inner perceptions. But then again, that may have been the same if my sense of smell was intact.

I have some perception on smelling but my mind doesn’t connect it with a meaning. You could say I am fragrance-blind, in the meaning of colorblind. I cannot make out the difference between food and flowers, coffee or cabbage. It has been frustrating at times, but compared to losing any other sense, I choose this one. Not knowing what I miss, since it has never been otherwise, that is an easy choice of course.”

“The color of the mud: greyish gravy. Pulling at your feet, as if trying to keep you there. Every heavy step releases a vapor dense with rotting corn stalks, earthy and welcoming.

The perception that the girls are detached from the world is a right one. The reason why is for everyone to fill in and spin their own story around it.”

Ellen Kooi