Black ink in a journal smells erudite. There is something about the combination of the black ink with the pages that gives a journal the smell of a library, and this evokes a sense of all of all the thought that went into the pages of the books and journals. It is just a good smell anyway, one that I am happy to open up to a random page and sniff when in need of comfort and clarity. It is a smell that reminds me of childhood where the most important thing was reading and learning. I am comforted by thoughts I know are contained in the journals. The smell brings to mind the work and thought that went into them. While my journals have almost nothing to hide, they are neigh unbreakable codexes where I have written in my own script in Latin. They contain thoughts even more random than my odes and were mostly started as an exercise in practicing the language rather than a need to record my thoughts or feelings. Nevertheless, they are the first books that I have filled. They proved to me that I can produce a large volume of text over time, and the smell of them reminds me of that. There is a moist, perhaps slightly moldy smell that brings to mind the moister climates that I have lived in and my grandparent’s basement. It is a comfort, a distant place, a feeling of achievement, the smell of knowledge itself if any such thing could be attributed.