Nosy Interview: Cody Walker

Zia & Cody in the NGC 5189: An Unusually Complex Planetary Nebula, © NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage

What wonderful luck to meet Cody during a frigid January residency at the Vermont Studio Center in 2006. His laughter melts snow! When we returned to Seattle, where we were both living at the time, Cody proceeded to introduce me to the greatest people in Seattle, for which I'm forever grateful. Visit Cody's web site and buy his book, Shuffle and Breakdown, here. 

What do you smell like?
After reading through all the interviews in this series, I feel a bit like the guy in “Annie Hall” who, after hearing about the many meetings being conducted around him, complains, “All the good meetings are taken.” All the good smells have been taken, too! Because really and truly: I smell like potting soil and haunted estates and honey. I think I may even smell like a sparrow! But OK. I followed the lead of many others and asked my partner what I smelled like. After a disconcertingly long pause, she said, “Like a good guy”—which was singularly unhelpful. (She’s a fiction writer; she could’ve just made something up.) Maybe I smell like Skin Trip? Or mulched leaves? Or a tennis court? Or maybe a chimpanzee—that’s it. A freakishly clean chimpanzee.

What Do You Like to Smell?
I like a lot of smells that aren’t on everyone’s list: anchovies, for instance, and kimchi, and skunk spray. I like almost any of those glass-enclosed candles that smell like cookies or suntan lotion or pie. I like the earthy upended-ness of the Ho Rain Forest on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. I like almond steamers and leather boots. I like Natures Paradise Coconut Body Mist (which I use as an air freshener in my daughter’s bedroom, and which pleases me so much that I’m willing to forgive the missing apostrophe in “Natures”). And because I went to a hippie college in Florida when I was nineteen, my true elixir is a mix of sweat, patchouli, and clove cigarettes.