Olfactory dreams
Aug. 15th, 2011 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teaberryblueI woke up very suddenly in the middle of the night, startled awake by a smell that was caustic but unidentifiable.
I lay in bed, sniffing...the smell had dissipated as I had reached consciousness. I went out into the hall, smelled the hall...I thought, maybe, I could smell a tiny bit of the scent that had been so strong and noxious when I slept, but it didn't seem nearly as bad. I went into the kitchen, to check the gas, and I smelled nothing.
Certain that the smell was no longer there, if it had ever been, I went back to bed and went to sleep.
I was in the midst of a dream, and I'm not sure what kind of dream, when I started to smell the warm and delicious scent of vanilla and pipe tobacco, burning and delightful. For some reason, this scent caused me to wrest myself from sleep as urgently as the caustic and chemical scent I had smelled before did.
I woke. There was no smell. Not even a whiff-- how could there be? Again, I got up, looked around my apartment. No smell. Not the tobacco, not the poisonous scent of before.
I looked at the clock: it was 7:02. My alarm is supposed to go off at 7 on the button. I frowned-- the alarm is set, isn't it? And then checked. I had set the alarm, but I had set the second alarm, the one I use for when I have to wake up at a different time, say, on the weekends if I have a morning engagement, or if I take a nap.
The tobacco scent had woken me up at just the time my alarm normally would. I have this vision in my head now of a pipe-smoking fellow not unlike the sandman, who does the opposite job: instead of wafting into our rooms to put us to sleep, he hurries in on his way to work to make sure we aren't late, trailing the scent of his morning smoke behind him.
I lay in bed, sniffing...the smell had dissipated as I had reached consciousness. I went out into the hall, smelled the hall...I thought, maybe, I could smell a tiny bit of the scent that had been so strong and noxious when I slept, but it didn't seem nearly as bad. I went into the kitchen, to check the gas, and I smelled nothing.
Certain that the smell was no longer there, if it had ever been, I went back to bed and went to sleep.
I was in the midst of a dream, and I'm not sure what kind of dream, when I started to smell the warm and delicious scent of vanilla and pipe tobacco, burning and delightful. For some reason, this scent caused me to wrest myself from sleep as urgently as the caustic and chemical scent I had smelled before did.
I woke. There was no smell. Not even a whiff-- how could there be? Again, I got up, looked around my apartment. No smell. Not the tobacco, not the poisonous scent of before.
I looked at the clock: it was 7:02. My alarm is supposed to go off at 7 on the button. I frowned-- the alarm is set, isn't it? And then checked. I had set the alarm, but I had set the second alarm, the one I use for when I have to wake up at a different time, say, on the weekends if I have a morning engagement, or if I take a nap.
The tobacco scent had woken me up at just the time my alarm normally would. I have this vision in my head now of a pipe-smoking fellow not unlike the sandman, who does the opposite job: instead of wafting into our rooms to put us to sleep, he hurries in on his way to work to make sure we aren't late, trailing the scent of his morning smoke behind him.