The Man With Three Senses

“I love the smell of cut grass,” my sister said to me yesterday afternoon as we sat in the shade cast by the farmhouse. 

“Oh?” I was puzzled. “Can you smell cut grass here?” She looked at me in surprise. 

That was the moment I realized the common Covid symptom of loss of smell and taste had struck. 

The day had started suspiciously well with a pleasant dawn walk for me and the vague hope that there may be the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel in this Covid mess. 

Then I sat outside in the afternoon shade cast by the building.  There is landscaping and tree planting planned for these new rental apartments but the details are being filled in between other jobs.  This place is more than a working farm and the complexity of managing a restaurant and a hotel as well baffles me. 

Farming is an unsentimental business. These young bulls will be meat this winter.  The white cattle known in Italy as Chianina (“kee-an-eee-na”) are prized for their meat similar to the way foodies in the US are awe struck by Wagyu. 

I wander the stable making portraits of the condemned and am struck by how for once their shit really doesn’t stink. Thank you Covid. 

To live in a world without a sense of smell and no ability to taste anything is, I have discovered, quite bizarre. 

Everyone loves Italian food - not me, not anymore. The last plate of pasta I got from my sister was a container of tagliatelle in a cream sauce with mushrooms and it was delicious. The next day I could taste nothing anymore. 

The cherry preserves are gone, the eggs laid a mile away and fried in home made olive oil, the home cured pork products, all so much cardboard. My empathetic friend the doctor consoled me with the thought I might at least lose weight. Gee thanks. 

I suppose it’s churlish to complain. So many have lost lives and long term good health to Covid and we all sat through months of restrictions and job loss and uncertainty. 

I hope my lost senses come back and they usually do. To live the remainder of my life with no sense of taste or smell would require some adjustment though. 

So you can’t taste and you can’t smell anything.  

You can see and touch and hear. I can see the colors in the hedgerows. 

I can still hear the cicadas creaking in the fields, the sounds of summer throughout my childhood. The males rub their hind legs together to attract a mate and they do it during the hottest months: they are indefatigable. 

I can feel the cool breezes blowing through the valleys on these hot afternoons. 

For now this will have to do.