It's kind of hard(1) to justify blogging when I have committee notes to transcribe. It's a little harder to justify when the committee chair reads my blog. But! I finished that last night, so I feel unencumbered to blog away. Until I look over at the mountain of papers that need grading. But the night is young.
On the way home from school Monday, I put the iPod on random shuffle. One song that came up as I got close to the airport was El Condor Pasa, recorded by Simon & Garfunkel. I heard the opening notes and was instantly transported to a scene, about a dozen years ago. I had checked this album out from the library - my senior year, maybe my junior year of high school - and doing my homework while listening to this album. It had to be late fall, because I remember it was dark relatively early. I distinctly remember sitting at my desk in the corner of my bedroom, working on math homework, it was dark outside, and I was listening to this album.
Isn't it fantastic how strongly associative both music and smells are? They are incredible memory-triggers. I know it's a common phenomenon, and I don't know enough neuroscience to know the details of the mechanisms. Why are scents and sounds so associative? I can smell Christian Dior Dune perfume on someone and instantly, I'm back walking the streets of Belgium with a friend who wore that scent that summer. Or I can smell ckOne and it's my freshman year of college again, and I'm at my closet in my dorm room getting ready to go to class. It's weird stuff, the connections between our senses and our memories, but I like it. Now that my grandparents are gone, I fear I'll never smell their basement again. Sort of a mothball-ish scent, something sort of aftershave-y, something kind of kitchen-y, and decidedly unique. One of my favorite smells.
Speaking of late fall evenings, I really want some autumn weather. Now. I want warm sunny days and cool crisp nights. I want shocks of color in the trees, golden sunlight darting beneath leaden grey clouds. I want sweaters and turtlenecks and boots. I want rainy October evenings that plaster leaves to the streets. I want apples and popcorn and football games.
Apparently, what I want is the midwest. I'm insanely jealous of all of you with high temperatures in the 50s. Another day in the 90s...
That said, we had some kind of tropical wave pass through today, which made for a grey all-day rain. Highs in the low 80s, and some wind. If this is what passes for fall weather, I'll take it. One of my favorite weather memories, if you will, is of elementary school and having one of those October days that starts out dark and rainy and never really brightens. The kind of day where the incandescents inside are brighter than the daylight outside, coupled with a constant chilly rain. I don't know why I think of elementary school when I think of this weather, maybe because those classrooms had the most and biggest windows. I think it is the windows - because that kind of weather makes me think of rainy autumn evenings - even those that gave way to snow - in grad school, in an apartment with fantastic windows. Common vitreous denominator.
On the way home from school Monday, I put the iPod on random shuffle. One song that came up as I got close to the airport was El Condor Pasa, recorded by Simon & Garfunkel. I heard the opening notes and was instantly transported to a scene, about a dozen years ago. I had checked this album out from the library - my senior year, maybe my junior year of high school - and doing my homework while listening to this album. It had to be late fall, because I remember it was dark relatively early. I distinctly remember sitting at my desk in the corner of my bedroom, working on math homework, it was dark outside, and I was listening to this album.
Isn't it fantastic how strongly associative both music and smells are? They are incredible memory-triggers. I know it's a common phenomenon, and I don't know enough neuroscience to know the details of the mechanisms. Why are scents and sounds so associative? I can smell Christian Dior Dune perfume on someone and instantly, I'm back walking the streets of Belgium with a friend who wore that scent that summer. Or I can smell ckOne and it's my freshman year of college again, and I'm at my closet in my dorm room getting ready to go to class. It's weird stuff, the connections between our senses and our memories, but I like it. Now that my grandparents are gone, I fear I'll never smell their basement again. Sort of a mothball-ish scent, something sort of aftershave-y, something kind of kitchen-y, and decidedly unique. One of my favorite smells.
Speaking of late fall evenings, I really want some autumn weather. Now. I want warm sunny days and cool crisp nights. I want shocks of color in the trees, golden sunlight darting beneath leaden grey clouds. I want sweaters and turtlenecks and boots. I want rainy October evenings that plaster leaves to the streets. I want apples and popcorn and football games.
Apparently, what I want is the midwest. I'm insanely jealous of all of you with high temperatures in the 50s.
That said, we had some kind of tropical wave pass through today, which made for a grey all-day rain. Highs in the low 80s, and some wind. If this is what passes for fall weather, I'll take it. One of my favorite weather memories, if you will, is of elementary school and having one of those October days that starts out dark and rainy and never really brightens. The kind of day where the incandescents inside are brighter than the daylight outside, coupled with a constant chilly rain. I don't know why I think of elementary school when I think of this weather, maybe because those classrooms had the most and biggest windows. I think it is the windows - because that kind of weather makes me think of rainy autumn evenings - even those that gave way to snow - in grad school, in an apartment with fantastic windows. Common vitreous denominator.
(1) Just kind of.
For the record...
ReplyDelete1. I am not big brother.
2. Random shuffle on the entire music collection scares me just a bit. I don't mind shuffling a playlist (even a large one), but the big shuffle seems like it could end so badly.
3. Smells only do it for me sometimes. Melissa has an incredible association of smell with memory, but that association for me has always been on the weak side. Music, on the other hand...
Ha ha - well, it just seemed like bad form. :)
ReplyDeleteI wonder whether it's a gender division - women, on average, tend to have a more sensitive sense of smell, right? It's the same with taste, too, for me; makes sense - smell is so intrinsic to taste.