A Nose

Yesterday I visited the Tanks at Tate Modern in London for the first time since they opened earlier this year. I was blown away by a multi screen installation by William Kentridge, a series of preliminary studies he produced for his staging of Shostakovitch's opera, 'The Nose', which was in turn based on a short story by Nikolai Gogol. I haven't read it (yet), but apparently 'The Nose' tells the tale of a civil servant who wakes up one morning to find his nose has left his face to enjoy itself gallivanting around St Petersburg. 
It's entirely reasonable that the nose should star in a satire. The least regarded of the elements that make up the face- the female face, at least- it generally attracts negative rather than positive consideration, & and is the feature that most readily demands 'improvement' with cosmetic surgery. Well.. but I value my sense of smell extremely highly, so closely it is linked to memory and sentiment. The smell of a Gauloise cigarette, for instance, takes me right back to childhood summers in France.  And I recently came across a lone tree in a botanic garden that gave off the very same delicately honeyed aroma as the miles of spruce forests in Newfoundland, Canada. I hope I've got the right tree there. All very Proust, of course, but I'd seriously miss my nose if it took a holiday.