An Olfactory Memory Opens New Thoughts
Stormy skies in Alabama Autumn is in the air - I can smell it. Olfactory memories are probably the sharpest ones I experience. A certain smell will whisk me away from the present moment, and I'll land, confusingly, at a crossroads of intermingled thoughts. Often, it is not a distinctive memory I have; rather, a feeling - or the memory of a feeling. Now and then a memory will be locatable in time with varying precision. And then, the more confusing part: an olfactory memory of an olfactory memory. Two places in time, interwoven, tangled. Our minds are such complex places! This morning I was partly here and partly somewhere in 2010, by the Thames - sometime later I was projected to a different country and more than a decade back in time. A memory I had not accessed previously through smell. It was all so new, so different - I feel different. This time in my life is strange and exciting, and new, all so new - it is as if I am on a bridge between my teen years and my future - I ...