I’m sitting outside on the patio. It’s still pretty warm, a little humid, mid-twilight, and I just heard cicadas kick in for the first time this summer.
I had one of those moments where just exactly the right circumstances fleetingly remind me of something that ingrained a memory years ago.
It’s been probably 20 years since I used to pretty regularly go fishing at twilight. But just a minute ago…man…it felt like catfishing.
ETA: Any references to the practice of “catfishing” or the show or the show “Catfish” will be meet with a :dubious:.
Right about this time of year, especially in the early summer. Makes me slip in a DVD of an old movie or TV, or to pull out an old book I read back then to help recreate the feel of a long ago time.
The smell of cut grass and gasoline on a hot day and BAM, I’m 15 again pushing that goddamn lawn mower. Somewhat better, the smell of campfire smoke on a pleasantly warm evening puts me right back at Camp Bowman in 1987. And in both cases, it’s not the memory of being there, it’s the FEELING of being there, like you’ve been transported to that place and time.
The smell of gasoline brings me right back to being in the boat with my dad at the cabin.
The smell of a campfire also brings me right back to the cabin.
I just heard the song Heard it in a Love Song the other day and I felt like I was sitting in my boyfriend’s (now husband) silver GTO heading to the beach for a summer party.
When I smell raspberries, I am transported to my grandma’s raspberry patch on a hot summer’s day.
Yesterday, I was a few hundred miles away from home in southern Ohio. There was a sunshower, which stopped as we stepped outside to get me to the airport and, boom, I was right back at the family cabin here in Minnesota, with the scent of wet tree bark, decaying cut grass and swampy lake water, even though there was no lake in sight. It was an awesome moment. It just felt so home-y.
I read once that the long-term memory centers of the brain are right next to the olfactory parts.
I’m intrigued with how memory works (maybe because mine’s always been wonky) and have read a lot on it. As a kid, I thought it was like the cartoons where monkeys were getting stuff out of file cabinets. Now I realize that we build a memory on the fly when requested.
Campfires, old songs? Those are powerful requests.
There is a strong correlation! While there haven’t been a large amount of studies done, there is evidence that your limbic system is more activated by smell than by any of the other senses.
