The scent of memory

Strangest thing, memory. Well, I think so. It's probably because I really don't have one (memory, that is) at all to speak of.

I read somewhere that smell is the strongest memory or is most likely to prompt memories, I think it was.

As I walked to work this morning a Cat Stevens tune popped into my iPod (chosen by the very poorly written algorithm, which is iPod's "shuffle.") and I realized I was smelling my bedroom in the mid-'70s. I wore out Cat Stevens albums and 8-track tapes on my quadraphonic (yes four channels instead of two -- didn't last and I wonder why given that humans only have TWO ears)hi-fi. I'll not attempt a description of that room's, ah, scent, shared as it was by two teenage brothers...

I took my bike in for a major tune-up last night. Taking it off the balcony I had to remove a bottled water bottle that I'd stuck in the water bottle rack and realized it had been there since I last rode my bike which was the summer of '03. I remember that ride as I was with Alex and we'd just decided to try to be friends not lovers again after not seeing each other for nearly two years. His bike broke and I had to ride back to the car AND remember how the hell to get back to where he was -- some park we'd reached by bikes-only trails. I found him as it was getting dark and didn't get lost (still so proud of myself ). So, the water bottle became the memory, in a sense, and I found a familiar urge to then not throw the bottle out -- that somehow that would desecrate the memory. Alex made a fire in the middle of that park that we stood around like a camp fire -- can't believe somebody didn't call the cops/fire department. I have notes on a poem about that fire. If I was actually a poet I might turn the notes into a poem and share it here...

Much the same "item becomes the memory" process was involved in my recent tossing out of what must have been 5-year-old tofu from my refrigerator. It, the tofu, was packed in water and never opened and it never even turned colour -- although less tofu white and more "washed the white undies with a black sweater" grey it became. Surely toxic.

The tofu became emblematic of an event in my life (involving the person who bought it) and I couldn't bring myself to throw it out (like he did me, to switch to metaphor). Even now I regret having tossed it, but for gawd's sake it was a rotting food product :) It doesn't help that I've written a poem about that tofu. Maybe I could have sealed it and frozen it. Jesus, I'm such an eccentric. If it makes you feel better about me, I have two lemons from the same era as the tofu -- would have been purchased at the same time as the tofu. They remain in my fridge, totally dried out and weightless, but still strikingly lemon like to look at. Those, as they are unlikely to poison me accidentally, I shall keep.

A small console compartment in my car also contains "items as memory" -- there are small pieces of stone and driftwood, receipts, etc. That I could never bring myself to throw out. I don't even remember the specifics of the memory the items are supposed to recall (!) but they hold a nostalgic power in any event.

I had hoped to interview my mother about her life -- she'd agreed to it. I made one attempt while home for Christmas but she became terribly self-conscious and that frustrated me and the attempt failed. Not easy to go from strangers to mother and son through such talk... Her 79th b-day is coming up. It is imperative that I mine her memories -- the hope being they will work like the water bottle and unearth my own childhood data bank. Or, at least, to give enough details from which to construct a memory full of childhood.