Scent and Memory

Nava’s piece about the chaos in her personal life and its impact on her sniffer has gotten me thinking about the impact that our emotional state has on our sense of smell. Nava talks at length about how her emotional state is impacted by her shifted world view, which has expressed itself, among other ways, by changing her tolerance for certain fragrances. It got me to thinking about how our feelings and experiences are constantly causing us to reevaluate not just the present moment, but also the past. We look at what has gone before differently as we encounter new experiences. Hindsight, as it were. The past not only project forward, informing the now, but the now is constantly shifting our view of the past, like sand dunes in the wind, revealing new things to us, burying others. I wonder what, in time, I will think of the scents I wear now. I hope they will bring back fond memories, though I am sure that some of them, like certain songs, will remind me of sad moments or finished relationships. I wonder if Prada Infusion d'Iris will, like Catherine Wheel’s “I Want to Touch You,” make me nostalgic, or sad like Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” or make me blush even years after the blushable events, like Morphine’s “Buena.”

I always thought the way you talked was neat.
And I dreamed that when you speak, you speak to me.
But you're always out of reach
and I can't control my speech.
And I'm scared that when we meet, I'll want to touch you...