My nostril is a shell, a round pink tender shell, opening and closing, closing and opening, My nostril is a flower, an eccentric tulip, the center acute and deep, the scent delicate, the petals gentle but sturdy.

I did not always know this. I learned this in a nostril workshop. I learned this from a woman who runs the nostril workshop, a woman who believes in nostrils, who really sees nostrils, who helps people see their own nostrils by seeing other people’s nostrils.

In the first session the woman who runs the nostril workshop asked us to draw a picture of our own “unique, beautiful, fabulous nostril.” That’s what she called it. She wanted to know what our own unique, beautiful, fabulous nostril looked like to us. One woman with a cold drew a big red mouth screaming with coins spilling out. Another very skinny man with a pointy nose drew a big serving plate with a kind of Devonshire pattern on it. I drew a huge black dot with little squiggly lines around it. The black dot was equal to a black hole in space, and the squiggly lines were meant to be people or things or just your basic household items that get lost in there. I had always though of my nostrils as an anatomical vacuum randomly sucking up particles and objects from the surrounding environment.

I had always perceived my nostrils an independent entities, spinning like stars in there own galaxy, eventually burning up on their own gaseous energy or exploding and splitting into thousands of other smaller nostrils, all of them then spinning in their own nasal galaxies.

I did not think of my nostrils in practical or biological terms. I did not, for example, see them as a part of my body, something between my mouth and eyes, attached to me.

In the workshop we were asked to look at our nostrils with hand mirrors. Then, after careful examination, we were to verbally report to the group what we saw. I must tell you that up until this point everything I knew about my nostril was based on hearsay or invention or MAD magazine. I had never really seen the thing. It had never occurred to me to look at it. My nostril existed for me on some abstract plane. It seemed so reductive and awkward to look at them, getting up in there the way we did in the workshop, on our shiny blue mats, with our hand mirrors. It reminded me of how the early astronomers must have felt with their primitive telescopes.

I found it quite unsettling at first, my nostril. Like the first time you see a fish cut open and you discover this other bloody complex world inside, right under the skin. It was so raw, so red, so fresh. And the thing that surprised me most was all the hair. Hair inside hair, opening onto more hair.

My nostril amazed me. I couldn’t speak when it came my turn in the workshop. I was speechless. I had awakened to what the woman who ran the workshop called “nostril wonder.” I just wanted to lie there on my mat, my legs spread, examining my nostril forever.

It was better than the Grand Canyon, ancient and full of grace. It had the innocence and freshness of a proper English garden. It was funny, very funny. It made me laugh. It could hide and seek, open and close. It was a mouth. It was the morning. I couldn’t keep my fingers out of there. I wanted to trip and touch the tip of them with my tongue. And then I began to feel a quaking, a tickle, and familiar yet exhilarating session. I laid back, flared my unique, beautiful, fabulous nostrils and then it happened…I sneezed!

My nostril is a shell, a tulip, and a destiny. I am arriving as I am beginning to leave. My nostril, my nostril, myself.

Back to Mistress Bernadette Ulsamer St. Claire's Essays