I remain forever in this lovely place inside me where a smell of leather or a glimpse of a lovely elbow or shoulder or earlobe or some movement of air or cast of light thrills me in ways that I cannot put into the safe terms of the mind. I can’t analyze these things in ways that separate them from the ravishment of my senses, because that is how I live, and all the rest - the labels for my feelings, the ways of understanding through my head - all these come later and are grave distortions. Lies, really. I don’t mean to justify anything harmful that I feel or do. I am ready to be profoundly sorry. But more important than anything for me now is to tell the truth about my life in this body of mine, and I have to tell it in the ways that it really happens, through my senses.
Like the smell of ivory soap.
They Whisper, Robert Olen Butler.
