They say, and you know they are always right, that our sense of smell is our strongest memory sense. There are, of course, a number of minor scents that will always be around: fried chicken on Hayes St., fresh cut grass before soccer practice, donuts at the farm, Mt. Shitski on the 5 freeway.
But there are also those sensual memories that are so thick, so heavy with feeling that they have the power to overwhelm the present, to literally knock you off your feet in the dislocation of time.
My first olfactory memory will always be Santa Ana Winds Of A Southern California Fall Morning. Andi always laughs at me when I talk about the seasons in Southern California, but that's just because she hasn't stood on the side of Old Highway 101 on a crisp fall morning, looking off the cliffs at a perfect swell rolling into Terramar knowing, or really feeling with your whole body, the imminent, and immanent, arrival of perfection. Feeling, just before it happens, the next two three four hours, however long the grace lasts, when there is no time and life is, in a limitless moment, complete and whole. The feeling of that moment in what is too weakly called Santa Ana conditions. And it is the smell that lasts: the Santa Ana winds carrying with them hints of their desert beginnings, filled with the foothills, and maybe just a touch of a late summer fire, returning to its origin a coastal sea-salt air, becoming together a richness thickness that fills more than your lungs. It is also a quite nice coincidence of life that this smell became the feeling of meeting Andrea, of Danish's and coffee and the Farmer's Market in the Village, so that this is and will always be the smell of joy complete.
My second olfactory memory is Santa Barbara Summer Night. This is for me no less distinct than the Southern California Fall but much harder to describe as it is, simply, the smell of the cacophony of life, the overwhelming feeling of life in bloom. It is the smell of every single flower and plant and shrub and grass in Summerland (no seriously, that's the name of the town I lived in in Santa Barbara; yep, California is just that ridiculous) in full bloom, letting go of the last moments of the day in the endless sunset of a California summer night. Even today I will catch a hint of just one of the Summerland flowers and with it will come the rush of the entire moment.
Finally there is what we will call, for now, Ontario Becoming Bangalore. Here we arrive at that strange phenomenon where we can be so immersed in a sense for so much of our lives that we don't even recognize it. And so it wasn't until my first return home, flying into Ontario International Airport, that I realized that smog has a smell. It hits you, passing over the San Bernardino Mts., beginning the descent into the Los Angeles basin, filling the plane: the slightly sweet slightly bitter shallow but still able to permeate everything smell of smog. The smell of home only recognized in being left.
The occasion for all of this is the hard to understand over-writing of memory that seems to be happening here and now. For better and worse, Ontario is disappearing into Bangalore, and the memory that is the feeling of our first moment here: arriving early one morning in February, after a mid-flight engine-out four hour delay in Frankfurt, checking in to our hotel in this city in this country that we had never been to before about to begin an adventure we couldn't even dream to imagine, stepping out on the balcony as the sun came up over what would soon be our new home. And being overwhelmed: by the seeming infinite, or at least indefinite, distance of this city of 8.5 million people, by the parks and buildings and gardens that were sprouting up everywhere and in every direction, trees fighting with cranes for the space of this horizon, by the sounds of a city waking up, of a million and one rickshaws put-putting along, and at least as many two-wheelers honking their sometimes angry sometimes pleasant greetings to each other, of the calls to prayer mixing with the chants welcoming the day, all of it brought together in the slightly sweet slightly bitter shallow but still able to permeate everything slightly toxic smell of burning tires and trash. It is a smell that makes Bangalore, as in so many other ways, so close to LA. And it is a memory that comes back today as our neighbors are, apparently, in a trash burning kind of mood, overwhelming this morning with that, the contentment of the normal and day-to-day with the excitement of the new and beginning, and, it seems, overwriting a city we left with a city we will (too soon) be leaving.
But there are also those sensual memories that are so thick, so heavy with feeling that they have the power to overwhelm the present, to literally knock you off your feet in the dislocation of time.
My first olfactory memory will always be Santa Ana Winds Of A Southern California Fall Morning. Andi always laughs at me when I talk about the seasons in Southern California, but that's just because she hasn't stood on the side of Old Highway 101 on a crisp fall morning, looking off the cliffs at a perfect swell rolling into Terramar knowing, or really feeling with your whole body, the imminent, and immanent, arrival of perfection. Feeling, just before it happens, the next two three four hours, however long the grace lasts, when there is no time and life is, in a limitless moment, complete and whole. The feeling of that moment in what is too weakly called Santa Ana conditions. And it is the smell that lasts: the Santa Ana winds carrying with them hints of their desert beginnings, filled with the foothills, and maybe just a touch of a late summer fire, returning to its origin a coastal sea-salt air, becoming together a richness thickness that fills more than your lungs. It is also a quite nice coincidence of life that this smell became the feeling of meeting Andrea, of Danish's and coffee and the Farmer's Market in the Village, so that this is and will always be the smell of joy complete.
My second olfactory memory is Santa Barbara Summer Night. This is for me no less distinct than the Southern California Fall but much harder to describe as it is, simply, the smell of the cacophony of life, the overwhelming feeling of life in bloom. It is the smell of every single flower and plant and shrub and grass in Summerland (no seriously, that's the name of the town I lived in in Santa Barbara; yep, California is just that ridiculous) in full bloom, letting go of the last moments of the day in the endless sunset of a California summer night. Even today I will catch a hint of just one of the Summerland flowers and with it will come the rush of the entire moment.
Finally there is what we will call, for now, Ontario Becoming Bangalore. Here we arrive at that strange phenomenon where we can be so immersed in a sense for so much of our lives that we don't even recognize it. And so it wasn't until my first return home, flying into Ontario International Airport, that I realized that smog has a smell. It hits you, passing over the San Bernardino Mts., beginning the descent into the Los Angeles basin, filling the plane: the slightly sweet slightly bitter shallow but still able to permeate everything smell of smog. The smell of home only recognized in being left.
The occasion for all of this is the hard to understand over-writing of memory that seems to be happening here and now. For better and worse, Ontario is disappearing into Bangalore, and the memory that is the feeling of our first moment here: arriving early one morning in February, after a mid-flight engine-out four hour delay in Frankfurt, checking in to our hotel in this city in this country that we had never been to before about to begin an adventure we couldn't even dream to imagine, stepping out on the balcony as the sun came up over what would soon be our new home. And being overwhelmed: by the seeming infinite, or at least indefinite, distance of this city of 8.5 million people, by the parks and buildings and gardens that were sprouting up everywhere and in every direction, trees fighting with cranes for the space of this horizon, by the sounds of a city waking up, of a million and one rickshaws put-putting along, and at least as many two-wheelers honking their sometimes angry sometimes pleasant greetings to each other, of the calls to prayer mixing with the chants welcoming the day, all of it brought together in the slightly sweet slightly bitter shallow but still able to permeate everything slightly toxic smell of burning tires and trash. It is a smell that makes Bangalore, as in so many other ways, so close to LA. And it is a memory that comes back today as our neighbors are, apparently, in a trash burning kind of mood, overwhelming this morning with that, the contentment of the normal and day-to-day with the excitement of the new and beginning, and, it seems, overwriting a city we left with a city we will (too soon) be leaving.
I will miss these stories from overseas
ReplyDeleteHi Alan,
ReplyDeleteThis is your cousin, Amanda. My dad forwarded along this blog post. It is beautiful! Thanks for writing and enjoy your time in Bangalore (if you are still there, that is)!
Hi Amanda! Thanks for the read. And yes, we are still here! We are in month 20 of a 2+ year assignment, with no idea how long the "+" of 2+ years is going to be. We are thinking we will be back in the US sometime in 2014. Hope all is well!
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