recovered from a dead letter office (1881): a specimen of hair with the inscription, This contains my hair. Charles J. Guiteau, along with a request for 1,000 dollars for a lawyer, and a note: as sure as she's my darling, I will surely die for the murder of James A. Garfield on the scaffold high a lost letter to me in a dead letter office containing a lock of your hair would be considered valueless. memento mori. your hair, or, the smell of your hair, or the memory of the smell of your hair, or the description of the memory of the smell of your hair rational sight analyzable by laws of geometry. olfaction rejects geometry, defies localization in space, primarily exists in time can a smell be described without saying that it smells like something else? being apart allows you to try to describe your memory of the smell of my hair to me, so that I am able to know the smell of my own hair, through you, as you do, or did: an intimacy of language that would allow me to become you, not with a writing about smell, but by writing in the language of smell--which must be possible, since smell comes phylogenetically from the oldest part of the brain, thus all of our brain functions--including language--must have come from our sense of smell. your comb in my hand, your long strands still entwined in its teeth, how can I describe its color to you? how can you explain to a blind girl what brown means? and what do you say when she asks you, what color is think? next