Smells

Try To Remember 

The sense of smell is the hair-trigger of memory. - Mary Stewart

Smell is such a potent wizard.

It can transport you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived. 

In my childhood house, I remember the musky scent of Auntie Luchie's carnation flowers in the front garden. The sweet refreshing aroma, much like honey, of the sampaguita wafting from outside the living room window.

It can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up merienda afternoons. To this day, if I smell fried bananas, I'm like Pavlov's dog. My mouth starts watering immediately like, Yummy. Gooey, cinnamony turon! 

The sense of smell can be extraordinarily evocative, bringing back pictures as sharp as photographs of scenes that had left the conscious mind. A boating trip at the Burnham Park Lagoon that surrounds you with a pine forest exuding the mellow odor of vanilla and pineapple. Or a chimichanga dinner with its bold and spicy smell competing with the hellish fumes of Phoenix in summer.

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it. Perhaps, the scent of someone that you know and someone that you love. The scent of air. Solid and alive.

All these I try to remember.

Scents as old as the world. 

The hundred aromas of a thousand places.