Petrichor

The dead good word of the week appears to be  petrichor. If you've been following the posts from my fellow bloggers over the last few days, you'll have read quite a bit about it already, so indulge me in the briefest of recaps for the benefit of all.

It's probable you'd never come across the word before, but petrichor is the name given to that delicate, delicious smell which fills the air as rain showers onto earth. I use earth quite loosely here to encompass dust, rock, soil and stone. It was only coined about fifty years ago by a pair of Australian researchers who, in the best scientific tradition, reached back to the Greek and compounded the words for stone (petros or πέτρος) with (ichor or ἰχώρ)  - effectively the lifeblood of the gods - to make petrichor, a noun perhaps as elusive of literal definition as the essence it describes.

The science - and we all follow the science these days, don't we? - explains that many plants contain an oil which they exude during dry spells. This oil is absorbed by soil and rocks. When rain arrives, an earthy odour fills the air because the water droplets acting on the porous dust, rock (including concrete), soil and stone release some of that oil into the atmosphere along with another substance, geosmin, itself a by-product of bacteria in the earth. Our nostrils are able to detect geosmin in tiny amounts - 5 parts per trillion - and so we breathe in the 'scent of rain'.  Aaaah, petrichor, we exclaim contentedly. A synthesized version of the aroma is now available.

First posited as a fictional brand in an episode of Doctor Who, Petrichor, 'that very special earthy scent created when rain falls on dry soil' is now being marketed by the American fragrance company Demeter as a cologne spray, a roll-on oil, a body lotion, a shower gel and a diffuser. I leave it up to you to decide if you're worth it.

All of this talk about earthy scents and sensitive noses leads me to recommend a novel to you, something I haven't done for a while, but I read it recently and thought it quite extraordinarily good.  The book is question is Perfume by the German author Patrick Suskind. Sub-titled 'The story of a murderer', and described as a bewitching, darkly humorous fable of desire, obsession and death, Perfume was written in the 1980s but its story unfolds two centuries earlier in France.

It's all about one Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, abandoned as a baby in a Paris slum, but possessed of an extraordinary gift - a sense of smell more powerful than any other human being's. He can read the world via his nose and his prodigious gift leads him to create the most sublime perfumes in 18th century France. His obsession with scent also lures him down the path of serial-killing - but I don't want to give more away.

The tale is an absorbing one, the writing is a tour de force, especially when Suskind dwells on the olfactory and the fascinating details about how perfumes are made. The descriptive language is fabulous. No wonder the novel has become something of an international cult read. It has been made into a film as well apparently, but I can't imagine a movie will be able to match the imaginative power of the writing. Anyway, that's my recommendation for this summer's staycation reading.

As for petrichor itself, I thought I'd add to the poems on theme this week with an excursion of my own into the fleeting realm of scent.

Sweet Like Geosmin
Into our stifling hothouse, a hint of change.
Temperature and pressure drop perceptibly
as sky shades yellow, thick with electricity.

This enervation which has heavied limbs
for countless dusty days is surely set to end
when heaven rends, and showers all beneath.

Some find most favour with the moment
lightning strikes, breaking the tension; but I
savour the first patterings of pregnant rain

on desiccated earth. This simple-seeming act
unlocks rich chemistry; attar of parched soil
and plant oil minutely macerated, waft me

your ancestral perfume of regeneration even
as the longed-for deluge arrives, obliterating
heat, dust and lethargy in cool, fresh green.

As ever, thanks for reading. Keep sniffing - safely, S ;-)

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The Scent Of Rain

Petrichor. What kind of word is Petrichor? If you look it up, you find references to the smell of rain, and an explanation of who made up the word, and what its parts mean exactly.

But what kind of word is it? Does it fizzle in your mouth when you say it? Melt on your tongue? Make you smile in the process of moving your face to articulate it? For me, it does none of those things. It seems to shut things down rather than open them up. It is a word followed by an awkward silence. For an English-as-a-second-language person, the next question is: how do I pronounce this correctly? If you are wondering the same thing, English-first-or-whatever number-language person, it seems that this is a question most of the sites in your internet search results want to answer, even if it is not the same answer every time. Without going into too much detail on the phonetics of the word, opinions are divided where to place the emphasis, on the ‘pet’ (first syllable), or the 'i'   (second syllable), and whether to pronounce the ‘i’ like an eye or like the vowel in ‘bit’. Either way, I think it is an awkward word, not many people know what it means, how to pronounce it, or spell it.

Looking at the meaning of the two parts of the word that the scientists who made it up used, ‘petr’ comes from the Greek word petra meaning stone, and ‘ichor’ is the life blood of gods and immortals (i.e. Zeus and the gang). Quite a long way away from scent, and rain, I think.

I was thrilled when I first learned that there was a word for that smell that you get after the rain, especially if it hasn’t rained for a while. The excitement even threatened to spill over when the word appeared on a list of themes for blogs by the Lancashire Dead Good Poets (as Steve R will be able to confirm). However, it was the idea that there is a word for an experience in which I delight, that I thought maybe I was the only person who notices and enjoys in quite an exuberant fashion (I tend to think that I am the only one with many things), perhaps more than the actual word. Hence this rather lengthy piece about why I don’t like the word itself all that much.

The experience it is supposed to describe, however, is quite beautiful. It is a scent that smells green to me, that embraces many things, from the scent of flowers that seem to be shouting ‘Over here!’ to the pollinators after the rain, to the feeling of cool and somehow clean air on my skin, after a long period of heat followed by a refreshing rain that washes away heat, and sweat, and dust. I always thought that the smell came from the volatile oils in plants, like the flowers of roses, or the leaves of evergreen trees and bushes. A simple natural distillation that involves heat and water, a little like the extraction of essential oils for aromatherapy. Not so. There are different chemicals and processes involved, oils that soak into soil during drought periods, plus other chemicals released by certain plants, and bacteria. (If you want to know more, the UK Met Office page on Petrichor is a good, relatively easy to understand starting point!)

Nature is amazingly clever. It has even given humans the ability to detect the scent of rain in incredibly small concentrations. No doubt very beneficial when our ancestors were roaming the landscape in ancient times, in search of water in order to survive. Water is still a precious commodity, after everything humans have done to the planet’s climate since those days.

So, if you’ve made it this far reading, here is a piece that I wrote about another precious experience with nature that happened recently, during this pandemic. I first wrote about it in a poem, or what I think of as a proper poem. And then I changed my mind, and wrote it like a story, only it’s true and I am in it and it really happened.

Since I have only recently started writing in this format (that I think is creative non-fiction), and want to write more like that, I would be grateful for your thoughts and feedback.

Petrichor

Today, I stepped into the garden, and, ducking under the low-hanging, rain-heavy branches of next door’s willow tree that overhangs our patio, I discovered that on the inside, there is this space, surprisingly big, where even tall me can stand up without hitting my head. It is like the dome of a cathedral, reaching high up towards the light filtered by the verdant green of the willow leaves, a round space, evoking a memory of a white-domed, light-filled cathedral I once visited on a Mediterranean island. The dripping of raindrops is heard rather than felt, and the sound, or rather the far-away-ness of sound in here, makes me feel like I have stepped into a different place altogether. A place that protects and shelters me, and every being within it equally. I hear noises of little birds in the tree and around me, and I suddenly realise that not an arm’s length away, there is a small bird, perhaps a sparrow, sitting on a branch, looking at me. And then I hear a tschilp, and another, coming from high up in the cathedral tree, and that takes me back to what happened yesterday.

 

 

Blazing sun, thumping music from the other neighbours, I stepped outside for some air (!), and out of the corner of my eye spot something in one of the tubs that we collect rainwater in, an old plastic washing up bowl, and I instinctively go to investigate and grab the round wet thing in there and scoop it out of the water in which it was almost completely submerged. While I feared that the bird that it turns out to be was dead, when I whisked it from the water, I feel it moving in my hands, the whole small body being rocked by a heartbeat that feels like it may explode the tiny bird. It must be a young fledgling that has fallen out of the tree whose branches reach to just above the rainwater tubs. I can see the perfectly shaped, elliptical breathing holes at the top of the beak where it merges with the head, just below the eyes which are covered in membranes with a distinctly sickly-looking, blueish tinge, that come up from the lower edge of the eyes. These inner lids are fluttering in the rhythm of the heartbeat, which is quietening ever so slightly, and the shivers in between the beats, and every now and then the membranes withdraw, revealing the eyes briefly, only to quickly cover them up again. The little bird’s feathers are clumped together, exposing pinkish skin on its body around wings and chest. I stand on the patio, holding it in my cupped hands, in the sun, while the bird grips on to my finger, surprisingly tightly, for what feels like a bubble of time that may have been seconds, or minutes, or something much bigger than that. The thumping of the bassline of the awful music from next door is deafening, and yet the bubble that I am in with the bird in my hands leaves even that noise slightly on the outside, while I am willing the sun to dry and warm and calm the little creature that is still shaking and so wet.

 

While I am waiting for the healing power of the sun to work its magic on the little fledgling, I call out to my husband who is working inside, and when he comes to see what is going on, he soon finds a box, and furnishes it with a puppy mat as carpet, and brings a water dish that we use to feed the resident garden hedgehog, and after I deposit the bird in the box, now all zipped up eyes again, I find some dried mealworms that we put out for the birds, to feed chicks in the nest. I knock on the beak, which is, like the eyes, firmly closed, with a mealworm, but no luck, the little bird just stands, wobbles, and shakes, keeping eyes and beak tightly shut. Now indoors, the bird moves on to slowly tip forward, resting its beak on the edge of the water dish, and when I start to panic that it is not getting better, and may never do, I decide to scoop it up once more, in the hope that the contact with my hands, will somehow magically heal the poor traumatised being. Alas! the bird instantly opens both its eyes, and swivels its head from side to side, like a boxer stretching her neck muscles, preparing to continue the fight after taking a punch, and it moves to grip a different finger of my hand.

 

 

And so I carry it back outside, to the tree that it probably fell from, shooing away the dog who desperately wants to sniff it, and the bird swivels to face me, releases its bowels on my hand, flaps its wings and flutters out of my grasp, landing on the ground under the bushes. I hear more than see it, moving further into the green world it came from.

 

This morning, standing in the cathedral dome of the willow tree, I imagine that it is the fledgling tschilping away in the top, while its parent is looking at me to let me know that its little one got home ok.

 

Thank you for reading. Stay safe, and look out for nature.

 

Angela McG

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Petrichor - The Lost Fragrance of Rain

Yesterday I walked home from my hospital appointment. It felt so good to be out in the fresh air of tree-lined East Park Drive. I had reached the zoo before I dared to remove my face mask and take deep breaths. This was only my second outside venture on foot since I began to emerge from lockdown and my self-isolating. I was enjoying the freedom.

Being inside the hospital made me feel anxious and uncomfortable, and present circumstances of pandemic meant I had to go it alone. It began on Thursday night when a recurring eye problem, which had troubled me for a few days, took a turn for the worst, completely out of my control and I had no choice but to seek proper help. The 111 helpline referred me to A&E. I was scared, it was the last place I wanted to be. I was in pain from my eye. I felt sick, unsure if it was the pain or anxiety of where I was and not being able to see properly. Blood tests showed my blood sugar was all over the place, my potassium level too low and I was a bit dehydrated. Well, it was after midnight, I was scared, tired, should have been in bed, so I’m not surprised.  I wasn’t offered a drink of water or a banana, but I was looked after very well and as always, I have lots of praise for our NHS. They gave me medication and wanted me back the next morning, Friday, in the eye clinic. On Friday they nodded approval, changed the meds and wanted me back in clinic on Monday afternoon, yesterday. Now they’ve got me, they won’t let me go. I’m on follow-up now for August.

I think it had rained during the morning. I couldn’t really remember. I was concerned about returning to clinic, being there on my own, but I had things to do before two of my grandchildren arrived. Busy Monday, but everything fell into place. My husband dropped me at Outpatients, kids in tow, and returned home to await my call.

I was so glad to be out, reasonably unscathed, and the outside air was very welcoming. I phoned to say I would walk. I only live about twenty minutes brisk walk, or half an hour stroll away. Apart from the noisy traffic, it is an enjoyable path, even more so when you can see where you’re going properly. I’d been administered eye drops and was still under the influence of them. My only problem was overhanging plants along the side of the golf course which I mainly managed to dodge, but didn’t see some of the thin stalks until it was too late. No harm done.

 Everywhere was green and lush. I tried to remember or imagine what it all smelt like. I decided it was fresh and clean, earthy with a hint of pine. I don’t know if my sense of smell will ever return. We’ll see. That’s chemo for you. If it does come back, I hope I will experience petrichor and recognise it.

My poem is a memory of the rain-soaked garden at a relative's home.

I remember when life had fragrance,

Everything from a distinctive scent

To a subtle hint of a substance,

Breathing through, delicate, transient.

The warm sweetness after summer rain

Drenched the rose garden and swamped the lawn.

Leaves and petals floated to the drain,

Sweet peas, bedraggled, soggy, forlorn.

Drips from the sycamore and the beech

Splashing puddles on the patio.

Drooping honeysuckle, out of reach.

Sodden wisteria hanging low.

I remember the heady perfume

Of old-fashioned roses in full bloom.

The smell of rain I knew before,

But not the proper name, petrichor.

Pamela Winning 2020

Thanks for reading, keep safe, Pam x

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