Buddhist Temple
By Layla, Year 10
The swirling smell of bark surrounds each and every statue in the room.
The calming, yet exotic essence follows me with each step.
It reminds me of a couple days before Lunar Year when the smoky aroma clings onto my airways, and lingers in my nose.
I feel as if its pungent and cosy like-hot-chocolate has ingrained itself in my brain and lungs, as it warms around the temple rooms.
The burnt smooth smoke lightly veils across the room, and sinks into the woollen carpet.
Once in a while, I still smell the nutty, ever-lasting scent in my home.
Its scent captures the couches, the coffee table, the shelves, and yet it still finds its way back to me.
The Buddhist Temple remains.
This vignette, Buddhist Temple by Layla, was created in Olfactory. Olfactory is a workshop series where students learn about features of discursive writing. They create a series of short responses or segments that will accumulate to become a personal essay about the olfactory world. From surveying their peers as to what is the most puke-worthy smell, to developing their very own ‘personality perfume’, students reflect on and share their personal connections to the world of smells, odours and fragrances. Lynx Africa, anyone? Student will learn about and employ such features as anecdotes, figurative language, factoids, allusion and anaphora.