2:47 a.m. Finally, it's come down to this. The last day of the month and the last possibly chance I have to try to write something coherent about "smells" -- a topic I have been avoiding all month.

I dislike writing about certain things: music and scents and sport and dance, for instance. I don't believe the senses translate all that well, and if I tell you something was lilting or fragrant or vigorous, can you really tell me whether I was talking about Swan Lake or a hike to the backed-up pond in the woods? The words we depend on are inaccurate; all description falters into simile.

It always smells like something.

The referent must be shared and agreed upon -- and we know that's impossible.

My sense of smell is very acute, but in a maintenance kind of way. I am nosey when it comes to my house and all the rooms therein. I like to maintain the status quo, or maybe notch it up a degree to lemon and lavender and spring meadow, although I've never been to a meadow in spring, I am sure.

If something is burning, I can smell it -- in my sleep -- through closed doors and windows and several houses away. I can detect the difference between a wood fire and an electrical fire, a barbecue or a trash can ablaze.

If something, animal or vegetable, has died, ditto. If someone has been through the house who doesn't belong, I can tell by the scent the second I open the door -- and whether he was smoking or sweating; physical labor or sport, a cigar or a Marlboro.

I sniff around all the time and determine my work schedule accordingly. But I can only tell you what something smells *like* rather than what its scent is, exactly. And that's where we begin to part company.

How can you know what my mother's gnocchies smelled like if you never tasted the water in southeastern Pennsylvania? Peeled brown potatoes make a fragrant veil on top of the water as they boil gently; if the eggs are fresh they smell like the prickly bottom of the straw box before they are cracked open and then -- a quick smell of silver quivering.

Puffs of white flour smacked into the dough. Smells dry. Palmed elasticity as gluten is released. Smells like mommy captured in a stolen whiff.

Or take the smell of fresh-cut grass. It always make me feel forlorn. Lawns were for rich people. Carefully, just-cut lawns were for a particular kind of rich people with standards to maintain and fences to lock. Warm summer sun baking the green blood on the mower's blade; get out get out get the hell out.

How about something we can all agree with: perfume. Canoe? English Leather? Musk? Opium? Evenings in Paris? Jean Naté? Or perfumed things: baby's toes, rose petals from the house across the street, the one with the old people and the older climbers? Old people in general? Would that be moth balls or neglect or forgetfulness or despair?

How about that most universal smell of all: coffee.

Just brewed in the morning, ground from fresh beans, expensive and scalding, swirled with a caplet of creamer, and dashed to the industrial tiles before the first sip. Or frothy mocha-latta-cappa, the cost of a computer magazine or a good bar of pressed virgin olive soap, more fuzz than desired, too tired to care, dribbled then sloshed, knowing you were had.

Your memories may vary.