His nostrils weren't extra large, or hairy -- pretty and delicate if
anything, he just had this incredible thing with smells. Sniffing. Lived
and breathed odors, whiffs and aromas. Ancient, before language,
"minimally adulterated indexical signifiers", he called them. Be that as
it may, they certainly excited him. Apparently, a German had written a
book about this man whose nose was as sharp as a hunting dog's; could
smell at once if someone was lying. Didn't have a smell of his own
though, which caused him to be killed in the end by the stinking rabble.
Oh, he enjoyed the book but didn't think it went far enough. It didn't
get past the cerebellum. Says we've got three brains. Top one: Neocortex--
very recent, came with speech, logos and all that high culture.
Underneath that the mammal brain -- looking after live born, social life
in the burrows. Leaves the fish brain and that's the one that smells.
Smells remember things -- chemical storage -- very reliable. Eats fish
every day now and can easily recreate whole years of his past from the
aroma of burnt toast and applesauce, or conjure his infancy from the
reek of seaweed and egg mayonaise sandwiches and a musty beach towel.
Pushing earlier all the time. Soon get back to the making of his own
brainstem. After that no limit - all life forms available. Driven wild
by the thought of remembering being a slime mold, of becoming an orchid,
a tree sloth, or a smoked salmon in a New York deli. Was working on
sniffing out the future; on certain days thought he could smell the
smoke in his own funeral pyre.