Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of years.
Scent can be unexpected... fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake
Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the Poconos, when wild blueberry bushes teemed with succulent fruit and the opposite sex was as mysterious as space travel; another, hours of passion on a moonlit beach in Florida, while the night-blooming cereus drenched the air with thick curds of perfume and huge sphinx moths visited the cereus in a loud purr of wings; a third, a family dinner of pot roast, noodle pudding, and sweet potatoes, during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town, when both of one’s parents were alive. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of years and experiences. Hit a tripwire of smell, and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.
by Diane Ackerman
(October 7, 1948 – )
from A Natural History of the Senses
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Smells can be a wonderful reminder of past time…:-)