Cancerous Cerebellum.

I think I have brain cancer. That, or an acute sense of smell. I remember reading somewhere that phantom smells have something to do with having cancer of the most important human organ (arguably).

Upon delving into this recent epiphany, I have also realized that perhaps it is not as bad as people say. Granted, I have never heard/read a testimonial from a brain-cancered person, but I'd imagine that it would go something like this: I don't really feel anything for the most part, but there was this one time I thought a cat came away with the silver medal at last year's world's fair (2007).

Olfactory hallucination, has to be somewhat prevalent. And as far as the severity of this situation is concerned, I am about to lose all credibility. This phenomenon I have experienced has mostly occurred on the subway. I'll give you a second to close this page down.


I was riding the 4 train downtown (for those of you familiar with New York City) rather recently and I happened to stop reading my book and take a gander at my fellow Americans (arguably). Besides noticing the older gentleman across the way, who was far too busy wiping his nose and then going back to his pizza, I became aware of my sense of smell. There is absolutely no way my nose was accurate in what it was smelling at that time. I swear on my life that I was smelling my hometown house. You may now think that my home is gross, but this is not my meaning (its scent is quite comforting actually). However improbable, it was right there, slightly above my mustache. The more loony I thought I was becoming, the more lucid my thoughts appeared. I ended up shutting my eyes and attempted to discern each and every smell in the air. The first one to identify itself was the slice of pizza in front of me, for obvious reasons. I also thought I could sense the old man, but this could have been vicariously through the pizza. My nose then went on to distinguish someone's perfume along with hair product. And soon after it became increasingly difficult to detect anything else in the air; not to mention the subway's perpetual metallic smell along with the general collection of people smell, tunnel smell, and overall rank-ness. Since the fist time I stumbled across this subway wonder, I have taken whiffs of things that could not possibly be manifest around me such as: my defunct car, my old Cobra Commander action figure, and my Xbox 360. You might think these last few things are ridiculous, and they are, but anything is possible with the odor of the subway. On occasion I have come across subway cars that have very few people in it, and after further investigation, I realize it is because there is a lone homeless man huddled in the far corner. Isn't it awful that opening into the actual subway platform is a beautiful respite in the form of air in comparison to aforementioned homeless guy?

Maybe it isn't my brain cancer flaring up but I am indeed somehow smelling these things. But how does it make me feel that on any given moment an amalgam of scents on the subway can produce the smell of the house I lived in straight through adolescence? Oops, I almost forgot, there was definitely B.O. lying around somewhere that first fateful day, and that person shall remain nameless, but only because I do not know who it was, otherwise, I'd rat them out in a heartbeat.