doomsday_disco Report post Posted October 1 But there is something else about that paper—the smell! I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here. It creeps all over the house. I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs. It gets into my hair. Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it—there is that smell! Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like. It is not bad—at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met. In this damp weather it is awful. I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me. It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house—to reach the smell. But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell. Scorched wood and oversteeped chamomile petals pressed wetly into beeswax, brittle fossilized amber, a whisper of honeyed hay and saffron, and the sweet decay of overripe butter figs. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Invidiana Report post Posted 22 hours ago This is indeed a yellow smell, browning at the edges like peeling wallpaper. You can almost feel the thick golden beeswax, honey and amber oozing from those haunted walls where that wallpaper, with its yellow curlicues of hay and saffron, is coming unglued to reveal scorched wood with an undercurrent of sweet fig. The sweetness is not sickly sweet, just evocative of decay that would be. It's something you actually do want to get in your hair. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites