Yes: it smells like heaven. (But if you want to know what heaven smells like, you'll have to ask Wittgenstein, since he is now happily ensconced there among the pleasing aromas....)
As a coffee-geek Michael, I can say that the beans in the picture will smell, burnt, ashy and overroasted! But good coffee roasted properly, will smell sweet, rich, fruity and chocolately (at least, the Ethiopian Harar I'm roasting will). :-)
-the aroma -the anticipation -the taste of an excellent coffee -the contentment that follows or -the remembrance of all of the above in a specific instance or -the remembrance of all of the combined acts of coffee drinking as a single experience?
Trying to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer By strength and submission, has already been discovered Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope To emulate—but there is no competition— There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
why do we have such limited words for smells? If we made up new words for them, would they mean anything anyway? Is our language itself drawn from our visual and auditory experience?
It is that special sensation of das Mensch (the They - Heidegger) convincing me that an ordinary addiction has been elevated above the banality of evil to the respectibility of an aesthetic.
This all reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes strip where Hobbes explains that animals (having a far more acute sense of smell) have special words for all sorts of specific smells. So wet autumn leaves smell 'snarky.' I would say that very good coffee smells very ‘roobly’ and a bit ‘escapil.’ But we don't really need many words to describe smells - "the aroma of coffee" is usually sufficient to conjure up that particular smell and get the mouth watering. The risk that we don’t think of the same smell is (a.) hard/impossible to determine as we can only use other words, which run into the same difficulties, and (b.) kind of irrelevant - we all know what coffee smells like! (that's why this challenge is so fun.)
The question is why do you drink coffee anyway? It is an addictive drug with no real nutritional content. And throws the entire nervous system out of wack for a long time so that one becomes incapable of exploring the subtle dimensions of being. It also agitates the heart.
14 comments:
Yes. It smells delicious.
Yes: it smells like heaven. (But if you want to know what heaven smells like, you'll have to ask Wittgenstein, since he is now happily ensconced there among the pleasing aromas....)
As a coffee-geek Michael, I can say that the beans in the picture will smell, burnt, ashy and overroasted!
But good coffee roasted properly, will smell sweet, rich, fruity and chocolately (at least, the Ethiopian Harar I'm roasting will). :-)
Which, of the following, is better?
-the aroma
-the anticipation
-the taste of an excellent coffee
-the contentment that follows
or
-the remembrance of all of the above in a specific instance
or
-the remembrance of all of the combined acts of coffee drinking as a single experience?
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Or something like that.
why do we have such limited words for smells? If we made up new words for them, would they mean anything anyway? Is our language itself drawn from our visual and auditory experience?
Yes - just take a vibrational spectrum of the gas above the cup of coffee.
It is that special sensation of das Mensch (the They - Heidegger) convincing me that an ordinary addiction has been elevated above the banality of evil to the respectibility of an aesthetic.
CP - I second the motion.
That's brilliant, cp, brilliant!
This all reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes strip where Hobbes explains that animals (having a far more acute sense of smell) have special words for all sorts of specific smells. So wet autumn leaves smell 'snarky.' I would say that very good coffee smells very ‘roobly’ and a bit ‘escapil.’
But we don't really need many words to describe smells - "the aroma of coffee" is usually sufficient to conjure up that particular smell and get the mouth watering. The risk that we don’t think of the same smell is (a.) hard/impossible to determine as we can only use other words, which run into the same difficulties, and (b.) kind of irrelevant - we all know what coffee smells like! (that's why this challenge is so fun.)
- JRS
'The aroma of coffee' is the best way to describe the aroma of coffee, without a doubt.
P.S. I was trying to find an email address for Catherine - but guess I can talk to her at church.
The question is why do you drink coffee anyway?
It is an addictive drug with no real nutritional content. And throws the entire nervous system out of wack for a long time so that one becomes incapable of exploring the subtle dimensions of being.
It also agitates the heart.
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