An ode to memory

The sense most strongly linked to memory is smell. The amygdala is in charge of emotional memory. One of the places in the brain that processes smell is also the amygala. There are so many ways our brains creates, stores, and retreives memory that it's no wonder that they are so confusing, so subjective.

Last night when I was taking my dogs out for "last call" I smelled lilacs. It was the faintest whiff and it was gone. I was flooded with memory. I remembered my first spring at my wonderful house on Maplewood Drive. I remembered getting married in the spring of 2005. And I remembered how 361 days later I drove out of the alley behind our bank and turned left - the wrong way on a one way street. I remembered that it was such a beautiful day.

Now sitting here three yeears and 343 days later, those days seem so far away. It's like that part of my life is less than a memory - just some distant myth so disconnected from me that I scarcely recogniize it. There is only now, day to day, running on empty and wishing I could just sleep until life magically gets better.

I think that pain makes a little whole in your soul, and you crawl inside it, and the world gets smaller and smaller and smaller until there is nothing left of the before time. There is only now, lonely and alone.

PS I wish I could make this post "scratch and sniff". There is google image search; there could be google scent search. And then, ah the smell of lilacs.