Andrew Statum

I remember learning from one of my psych classes that olfactory signals, unlike other sensory impulses, travel along a nerve route that passes either through, or very near, the (I think) hypothalamus or the hippocampus or something. Anyway, one of these formations has been linked to the formation of emotional memory and thus, the strong tie between smell and emotional memory.

This is something I find endlessly fascinating, wonderful and tortuous at the same time. It'll happen somewhat like this: I'm doing something, walking down the street, say, noticing the cracks in the sidewalk, and then I'll get this funny feeling, something I can't place, a sensation I can feel in my body and a blotch of mishmashed images in my mind, I'm confused, I can't remember what it was I was just thinking about, but I'm not lost, I'm aware of what's going on around me, there's a car, a nice little dog, and then I'm back to normal, unaware of what just happened. And then, all of a sudden, there it is again, but stronger now, a feeling in my bones, a real feeling, a sense of unease, of disequilibrium, and suddenly, like a flash, I get an image, and then a series of images, and then some sounds. I'm a kid, maybe eight years old, playing frisbee with the dog on the wide lawn of my Aunt's house. I don't know why it is I'm remembering this, what seemed a very inconsequential, moment right now, but the memory is so full that I feel like I AM that kid again, in that moment, in that time, playing with that dog, and I don't register walking across the street and mounting the next block. In fact, I don't come out of it until, like the driver in Carter's introduction, something out of the ordinary happens to pull me back into "reality," like a car horn or a backfire.

Eventually, I come to realize that a landscaping crew is parked next to the apartment complex on my left and the smell of cut grass is overwhelming. That's it! The smell of the grass caused me to remember, no, relive one of what must have been hundreds of childhood moments playing on any number of freshly mown lawns.

So why, out of so many moments to choose from, do I relive this one? Was it strictly an olfactory-triggered memory? Or were there other similarities between what was happening around me and the moment with the dog on the lawn, similarities perhaps too faint to register in my consciousness? Either way, I'm left with a lingering sense of loss for the rest of my walk, a feeling of regret for the loss of a moment in time that lives only dimly in my memory and over which I exert no control as to when I am able to remember it.