Does sweat regulate its own smell (or the myth of BO)?

I am just back from another four days of scrambling up mountains, hiking through gullies, entertaining leeches, encountering lyrebirds who have not read the textbook that says they are supposed to be shy, and being out of range of any type of communication. I was also in areas where water is scarce, so washing was something I left behind as an unnecessary appurtenance of wimpiness. But would I smell, I wondered? So I plastered on an extra layer of deodorant, hoping it might last for a bit. It did until somewhere on the second day. By that time my shirt was reeking so strongly, it drove away mosquitoes. One could see the fumes rising from it in a cloud.  But then I sweated some more, copious amounts in fact. By the fourth day, my shirt smelled vaguely used, but  certainly not like it had done earlier. Two possible answers suggest themselves:

1. My nose had lost the ability to smell in its usual way.

2. Sweat, once unencumbered by soap, deodorant, and whatnot, regulates itself.

I’m going for the second option. It’s a bit like hair and shampoo. Toss the shampoo and it takes a while for your hair to get used to its new-found freedom.  Once it does, it regulates its own moisture levels, ceases to smell, and self-cleans.

 

What is a follower of Judith Butler called?

A Butlerite?

A Buttite?

No: a Butt.

 

My latest yoga achievement – headstand!

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Well, I’ve proved them wrong. Following on my earlier efforts at yoga (here and here), today I managed a headstand. I have been trying this one for weeks, if not months. I have almost broken my foot, my leg, my neck, I have thumped up and down, swayed here and there, never getting my legs much past waist high. And then today I decided to use a cupboard as a fall breaker, along with full engagement of the mysterious ‘core’. Up I went into a crouch and then, before I new it, my legs were up. I’ve never done this before in my life.

And then I almost busted my neck, since the shot took ages (tak, Christina).

What’s next? How about this?

 

Embalming a revolutionary leader

Lenin, Mao, Uncle Ho (Chi Minh), the two Kims, and now Chavez – all embalmed or about to be. Lenin’s embalming was the first time a body had been preserved in a presentable state for any reasonable length of time. Others have been embalmed for a time, only to be buried at certain points – Stalin from 1953 to 1961, Georgi Dimitrov from 1949 to 1990. Surprisingly, there is very little serious study of this phenomenon as a whole. Plenty of facile stuff around: pseudo-religion, communist kitsch, manifestation of backward superstition among Slavs, Asians, Latin Americans … Time for more sustained work (and visits to each site), it seems to me, especially after spending a good deal of time investigating the veneration of Lenin.

 

What is the plural of the surname ‘Tooth’?

This one has always puzzled me, ever since I knew a family by the name of Tooth. One at a time was no problem – Mr Tooth, Mrs Tooth, daughter Tooth … But when they all turned up together, I could never determine whether I should call them ‘the Tooths’ or ‘the Teeth’. The former seemed grammatically incorrect; the latter may have given the impression that I was not showing due respect.  I guess I should have asked.

 

On skin colour and the myth of classicism

Two somewhat different quotes, the first of which offered a new theory of skin colour – over against the standard theory, which held until about the eighteenth century, that skin colour was due to exposure to the sun. This one has more to do with cooking time in the womb:

A man of discernment said: The people of Iraq have sound minds, commendable passions, balanced natures, and high proficiency in every art, together with well-proportioned limbs, well-compounded humours, and a pale brown colour, which is the most apt and proper colour. They are the ones who are done to a turn in the womb. They do not come out with something between blonde, buff, blanched, and leprous colouring, such as the infants dropped from the wombs of the women of the Slavs and others of similar light complexion; nor are they overdone in the womb until they are burned, so that the child comes out something between black, murky, malodorous, stinking and crinkly-haired, with uneven limbs, deficient minds, and depraved passions, such as the Zanj, the Ethiopians, and other blacks who resemble them. The Iraqis are neither half-baked dough nor burned crust but between the two.

Ibn al-Fakih al Hamadhani, from Kitab al Buldan (Book of Countries, 903)

And a great example of how the myth of classicism took off in places like Germany in the nineteenth century, turning the Greeks into good Europeans, so much so that the ancient Greeks – with their slave-holding, veils for women, and a penetrating culture (for adult men) – would hardly have recognised themselves:

We regarded Greece as our second homeland; for it was the seat of all nobility of thought and feeling, the home of harmonious humanity. Yes, we even thought that ancient Greece belonged to Germany because, of all the modern peoples, the Germans had developed the deepest understanding of the Hellenic spirit, of Hellenic art, and of the harmonious Hellenic way of life. We thought this in the exuberance of a national pride, in virtue of which we proclaimed the German people the leading culture of the modern world and the Germans the modern Hellenes. We announced that Hellenic art and nature had been reborn more completely in German poetry and music than in the poetry and music of any other people of the contemporary world … Our enthusiasm for Greece was inseparable from our enthusiasm for our fatherland … We looked back to classical antiquity as to a lost paradise.

Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, on student life in a German Gymnasium. From his Kulturgeschichtliche Charakterköpfe (1891).

 

Two sites worth visiting: Wu Ming and The Leaky Boob

Two somewhat unrelated websites have caught my attention recently. The first is Wu Ming (nobody), which was once Luther Blissett, an Italian collective responsible for the great novel, Q (download here). It tells the story of a radical who joins Thomas Müntzer and the Peasants, then the Münster Rebellion, and so on. A thorough and unexpected revival of revolutionary Christian movements, providing slogans and inspiration for the anti-capitalist movement today.

 

The second is The Leaky Boob. OK, I know some of this stuff is a bit too wholesome, so much so it gets a little cringe-worthy, but deep down I’ve always been in favour of a good breast-feed. I believe I enjoyed it when I was a snowy blond baby (thanks mum), and I reckon all four of my kinds enjoyed it (a few years back now). And I get a good vibe when a mother undoes one side of her nursing bra and lets a bub slurp away – makes the whole situation feel much more relaxed … or is that a sign that the situation is relaxed? So let’em suckle, anywhere, everywhere, anytime.

Come to think of it, I’ve actually sampled some breast-milk in my adult years – expressed and in a glass of course. ‘Twas rather rich. And I remember a morning many years ago when I was woken by a kitten trying – in vain – to get some sustenance from my nipple.

 

(ht bn)

 

Smelling like the sea

One of things I love about summer is swimming in the ocean and then letting the salt water dry on my skin. In fact, with a daily swim I don’t bother with any other form of washing – at times for days, if not weeks on end. I’m like a salt shaker and what’s left of my hair gets bleached. But the best part is sniffing my armpits. Why? They smell like the deep blue sea.

 

On sweaty cheese

Carrying a lovely block of Gouda Oud cheese over the last couple of days gave me pause to reflect on the appeal of sweaty cheese. Untapped possibilities lie here, such as a literary simile:

Her skin had the lustre and fine sheen of sweaty cheese …

Or perhaps a line of soaps, deodorants and fragrances known as ‘Sweaty Cheese’, with the slogan:

Forget knob cheese, try sweaty cheese – because you’re worth it!

 

A Hittite Benediction

This benediction was composed for the venerable Hattusili I, king of the Hittites:

His frame is new, his breast is new, his penis is new, his head is of tin, his teeth are those of a lion, his eyes are (those) of an eagle, and he sees like an eagle.

Now that is a benediction.