Monday, November 1, 2010

Sense and Memory

I'm always amazed at how my mind works! With the least amount of provocation my mind goes places no human should be allowed to go. Have no fear. We aren't going anywhere near that today. Actually what spurred this post was a little light rain this week. The weather was still warm. There is a certain smell that goes along with rain and warm air. That sense becomes like a transporter because suddenly I was someplace else.

I was back in my old neighborhood. I was probably around 12 or 13 years old. It's summer time and we're al hanging outside at the corner mailbox learning to be cool when there is a sudden downpour. No one wants to go back home so we all huddle together under the awning of the Catholic school on the block. While piled in under the awning we discuss the meaning of life and all the important stuff. Like what life will be like in the year 2000! Rain stops and we return to our original posturing!

Amazing that our senses, particularly the sense of smell is so acutely connected to memory. Damp freshly mowed grass in the early morning and I am back at camp. I loved camp. I wish I could bottle the smell. We would spend the first half of the year before camp talking about what it would be like and the second half of the year going over what happened that summer. It was a unique place to say the least and it had a profound effect on who I would become so I may just try to bottle some Eau de Camp.

I don't do it often enough but I have made homemade pizza. The smell of flour which somehow gets all over my kitchen and the smell of the tomato sauce as the pizza is cooking mix together and bingo I'm in the old neighborhood pizza joint. It's a long journey since a slice was only 25 cents back then! There is also the non food related smell of peroxide which puts me in a hair salon. The hair salon of our mothers. The one where the women would be sitting with their hair in pink curlers under these dryer hoods! The smell of hairspray thick in the air as well. Cans of it full of fluorocarbons!

Music works much the same way. I'll hear a certain song and I'm an awkward teen again. Damn we had good music growing up. So there it is. You wanna revisit the past? Just find the right sensory stimuli to take you there. We all experience it. I love when it catches me off guard. You'll know because I'll be staring out at nothing with a silly grin on my face!

No comments:

Post a Comment