One Fart at a Time

Sometimes my mind takes over. It becomes consumptive and crazy.  It goes to work in a million directions.  I think of this, of that, of this.  Frantic attempts at grabbing those ideas, overwhelmed with their force and abundance.  Like a small child gifted a thousand helium balloons at once on a windy beach - each color more striking and attractive than the one before.  I scramble to catch them and just before panic...

I save myself with flatulence.  The pungent smell rescues me from mania and inspires a curious inhale.  The pause… depth like pork with notes of fresh corn.  The aroma is followed by a simple, refreshingly lonely question: why do I like to smell my own farts?

There is something humanly satisfying about the whole thing.  Reminds me that I am breathing my own lucky poison.  That the maddening head I have resting on my shoulders has to shut up sometimes with the stink of my digestive system.  I am not only brain. In truth, the farts coming out of my other end are just as valid as any thought, any realization, any profound moment of insight that seems a product of my mind.  I get so attached to the brain's ideas.  But the farts are important too.  They invite attention to the uncomfortable.  Above all, they remind me that I am breathing. 

Of course, when I am in the company of others, I am praying for innocuous gas.  I search for the scent, expanding my nostrils, shifting my eyes from side to side, laughing a little louder than necessary, making hollow statements to reassure my company that I couldn't possibly be expecting anything unpleasant to suddenly fill the room, "Oh look at that interesting person over there.  Um, no that one."  Watch me gesticulate, watch me agree to whatever you said that I wasn't paying attention to, but please disregard the casual wave of hand behind my rear or the forceful exhale directed at my lower half. 

I call out to the random breeze that might sweep in and save me from the embarrassing admittance of human physiology, heroically carrying away the gaseous faux pas to another place and perhaps planting it on the face of some unsuspecting stranger, one who cannot connect the smell with anyone in particular, most importantly me. 

Yet when I don't have to protect myself from the discomfort of shared stink, I indeed look forward to the brief company of my own miasma. 

I like to smell my farts.  Why?  Because something inside me gets to acknowledge, Hey, I made that.  I made something that changed the environment.  I didn't even have to try. I am affecting this space without having to try...

Yes, smelling my farts reminds me that I am breathing.  It reminds me that I am in this body, alive.  I am breathing and affecting, even when the effect is not aromatically noticeable.

I spoke to Scott MacInnis the other day in a moment of brainy exasperation, "There is just so much I want to do and see!  So many ideas!  I don't know where to start!"

"Kat, take a deep breath," he said.  "Now think about all the air you have breathed until this point.  Think about all the air you will ever breath and picture its volume."

"That's a lot of air," I said.

"Yes, but it happens, it can only happen, one breath at a time."

Later in the week, when I was again spinning in mental circles, eventually brought back to his statement by the aforementioned stink, I relaxed.  Letting one rip is just a louder (and often smellier) exhale.  We all have a lot of gas to pass in this life, but we can only do it one fart at a time.