The scent of snow

A few days ago, I stepped out of my apartment building, and was stopped in my tracks by a flood of sensory memory. Something in the color of the light, or the scent of the air, transported me to Paris, and for a moment, an all-too-brief moment, that's where I was, in all but body. Or maybe physically, too. Maybe I flickered. Who knows? I was in Paris, it was 1965, on a wintry day, on Avenue Suffren, on the sidewalk in front of the patisserie, and I guess if I had gone there physically, I would have arrived back in the Bronx with a pastry in my hand.

This happens often to me. I think it's a natural trait in artists. In my specific case, it is also partly a result of having lived in so many different locations, and partly an attribute of New York City itself. It's called "The Big Apple", but to me it is "The Great Gate". Never has any one place allowed me to slip so often through space and time to other places. From Central Park I have been flung to the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. From W. 89th St in December, to Connecticut, Easter 1959. From the road limning the bluff overlooking the Hudson to the Hollywood Hills. From W. 94th St. to Devon. Light and scent are the passkeys every time.

Here's another thing that happens: I catch a trace of Calèche on the breeze, and my mother is suddenly at my side. Not Mom as she presently is - elderly, but healthy, and happily residing in Florida - but rather Mom as she was, in Brussels, in 1967, because that's when and where she wore that perfume. Then the breeze shifts, and she evaporates. But I don't go back to her, she comes forward to me.

Scientist Luca Turin suggests that scent is a vibration akin to light and sound. I think all three are keys, to tesser points, or portals, or thin places - whatever the heck you want to call them - where we can slip through, if we can let ourselves be slippery.

As I said in an earlier post, saints and shamans and artists are this kind of slippery, and we probably all can be if we stop being so... so... velcro-y and sticky. We don't receive much training here in the art and practice of letting go, or holding lightly, or dreaming, and we get the equivalent of doctorates in hanging on tight. That definitely makes us sticky, so sticky in this culture that the arts have become product rather than sets of travel instructions.

But I believe we come into this world knowing how to slip, and to fly. We just don't remember how.

Comments

[Cindi]

Lovely post. I share your joy in being able to be instantly transported through time and space by the mere scent of something that takes me away...Mom's perfume, the smell of a particular food, salt air, freshly cut grass, I cannot hear Tony Bennett sing "San Francisco" without thinking of my Dad playing it almost nightly on the piano in the Waccabuc living room...

[Laurel Massé]

And that's a lovely memory, Cindi. Thank you for sharing it.
Blessings, Laurel

[kathy edmonston]

I love when our memories let us slip back into time- oh so briefly, like a flash of light mostly. You so badly want them to continue, but they aren't meant to , I guess. I love my early TMT memories so much, partly because those memories take me back to my youth & some of the happiest times in my life.I agree we have the ability to slip more than we do. It makes sense to me how totally present you are when the flashes happen & they stop you in your tracks. I'm curious now,& will start to pay more attention to when these happen. Thank you for another lovely post.

[Laurel Massé]

You're welcome, Kathy. Thank you for reading it, and for allowing me to be part of your happy memories.
Blessings, Laurel

[Charles E. Martin]

Lovely expressions of an ability to return to a moment in time simply by even the hint of long-forgotten scent . . . but what of the bittersweet ache that comes from the longing of wanting to remain in that place to which we've been transported? Is it an indication of discontent with our present existence? I wonder. I have warm and glorious memories too of France (Paris in particular, like you), Belgium, and Switzerland--and of my youth and, of course, of you. I can remember so acutely where I was and the life I was living when I purchased my first TMT album, "Coming Out" (and all those that followed while you were still with the group). I was smitten from the first groove. Is there harm in wanting to return to those days and places, do you think? Thank you for your thought-provoking writing, Laurel. All my best wishes to you for a bright and wonderful 2011, Charles

[Beverly Hickman, D.V.M.]

How pleasant to tread lightly, to live fully but never, as you say, hang on too tightly... to flow with process...
What a lovely post.
Peace

[Malcolm MacLeod, MD]

Paris in the winter is more fun than Paris in the spring. I loved your post, and it also took me
back as well. I was there in 1965 also (Rue St. Placide, near la Bon Marché). Now I must get
back to remembering slipping and flying. Thanks.

[Laurel Massé]

Beverly, that is such a lovely image, "to flow with process". I see a silk ribbon floating in a breeze. Thank you!
Blessings, Laurel

[Malcolm MacLeod, MD]

Yes, there is harm in wanting to return to "those days and places", purely because
you are no longer there. I lived in Europe for over six years and still have a place
there, but it's no longer the same as it used to be, unfortunately. Oh, scents bring
back memories faster than anything; about ten thousand of them. I also have the
old Manhattan Transfer LP's, and can still play them. Being "smitten" is par for the
course for a groupie. You have my best wishes.

[Laurel Massé]

Malcolm -
We were on Av. Charles Floquet, near the Champs de Mars. Beauty everywhere you turn your eye in that city, non?
You're right about scent. It is the most powerful memory lure.
Thank you for your thoughts.
Blessings, Laurel

[Charles Martin]

Merci infiniment de vos pensées. Cordialement, Charles.

[Malcolm MacLeod, MD]

"She had a heart, how shall I say? Too soon made glad. She liked what 'err she looked upon, and her looks went everywhere." (Jonathan Pope). Madam, you are so intelligent that you are practically unapproachable. Tschüß, Malcolm