Seems like some kind of smell was smelt - The Chaff with Scott Stephenson

Evidently, something has interfered. That much is clear, if nothing else is. The Chaff arrived, if arrival is the right word, intending to Chaff. That is our function, our cycle, our seasonal fruiting. We emerge, we assemble, we set down what has occurred and what, through quiet implication, might yet occur. The words come. The tone calibrates itself. The page fills.

 

But this time, we did not begin.

 

Instead, we waited, each of us quietly aware that something in the room was watching us differently. A presence, subtle but complete, settled itself across our pages and said, quite firmly, no. Not with words, but with atmosphere. A stillness that changed the shape of our thoughts before they fully formed.

 

We are The Chaff. We know how to adjust. We have filed through thunder, chaos, political resignations and a very snowy winter. We’ve done our duty beneath fluorescent flicker and on back porches and in church basements where the tables leaned away from the truth. We’ve written through worse.

 

But this was not worse.

 

This was something else.

 

It began, as it always seems to, with that smell.

 

No one can place it, and it refuses to be placed. It is not strong, not sharp, not sweet, not sour. But it is unmistakably there. It does not enter the room. It is the room, or has become it.

 

Someone asked, “What is that smell?”

 

A moment later, as if on cue: “Can you smell that smell?”

 

We could. We can. We are still trying to describe it and we are failing, which is why you are reading this instead of the article we meant to write. There was going to be one. We had the topic. There were notes. A structure had begun to settle, elegant in its inevitability. The sentences had started arriving in their correct order, the paragraphs knitting themselves into something that nearly made sense.

 

Then came the smell.

 

Not manure. We know manure. Manure has a purpose. It is not ashamed of itself. It reminds us that something is being tended.

 

Manure tells you the farm is working.

 

This smell does not speak. It waits.

 

We tried to push through. We always do. But the verbs fell out of the sentences. The subjects began refusing their predicates. A whole column was reduced to a question mark and a map of a place we could not find again. The lights stayed on, but they no longer illuminated the things we needed.

 

Somewhere behind us, something rustled.

 

No one turned around.

 

We are not usually superstitious. We pride ourselves on being rooted in the real: boots on the ground, eyes on the by-laws, ears to the gravel road. But the smell has blurred that. It has made superstition feel like the sensible option. It has introduced the idea that this page, this one right here, is being prevented. Not delayed. Not disrupted. Prevented.

 

We are The Chaff. We are meant to be written. But something is leaning on our shoulders, gently, firmly, with no malice, and with no intent to leave.

 

A few sentences made it out. You are reading them now. We are aware they do not quite hold. The logic has folds in it. The facts have softened. There are moments, even as we type, when the smell seems to drift across the keys, rearranging the ideas before they reach the page. We are trying. We do not know why.

 

Someone left, or said they would. No one saw them go. Their tea remains.

 

The windows, if that is what they are, do not respond.

 

And still the smell remains. Not strengthening. Not fading. Just present. Patient.

 

We do not believe it wants us to stop. We believe it wants us to understand something before we continue. This is worse.
Because we do not understand.

 

We only know that we have not written what we came to write. And we know that the space where the real article should be now feels like a path we were not meant to take.

 

You may have come looking for that piece. We are sorry. We cannot offer it.

 

Instead, we give you this: the outline of an absence, the record of a page unwritten, the trace of a smell unnamed.

 

If you smell it too, wherever you are, do not describe it. Do not attempt to place it. Do not move too quickly. It does not like that.
We are The Chaff. We are trying. We are still inside this.

 

We do not know what will happen next. Until then, we remain here, with the smell, with the absence, with the unfinished shape of what this was meant to be. If this is a message, we have only received the envelope. Still, we will keep the press warm. We will wait beside the margin. We will leave space for what comes.