episodic memories
close your eyes and think about Sunday
“Smell with your nose, not with your eyes” he told me as he handed me a tester dipped into two different samples, both strong, woody, and animalique. Visually, they’re different as they’re marked 1 and 2, while the former is stained and the other colorless. If I didn’t smell with my nose, I would’ve said the stained paper is stronger with a better dry down. But I used my nose, I closed my eyes, and I felt the scent register deeply into my brain. Both are the same.
I.
One afternoon, I was going through the bases and I picked up Jasmine HC. I dipped a tester, and closed my eyes —and a memory hit me like a truck.
There I was clear as day, back in Bali. Staring at the white chapel by the beach, I whispered to myself “I’d like to elope there” unsure if I see myself with him, or with someone else who will love me right and honestly. I kept it to myself.
My hair was frizzy from the bleach I’d gotten two weeks before, the salt water, and the chlorine because we spent the afternoon going through the lagoon, piggybacked and chatting about the most random things. I could barely fit in the lace cover-up we bought at the boutique. Our sweaty skin mixed with the coconut-scented sunscreen, and the villas were filled with trees of Frangipani. The vision was clear yet distorted at the same time. Cut into the time we were sitting on the day beds by the pool, surrounded by more Frangipani trees —and the smell of Jasmine. We left our phones in the room, and we caught up with each other as if we didn’t talk daily. That’s the price you pay for signing up for a long-distance relationship. I was lying on his chest, his musk combined with magnolias —hmm Mojave Ghost.
II.
In 1919, Proust found the perfect words to describe an “episodic memory”—in it, he wrote:
“The memory suddenly appears before my mind. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before church time) my aunt Leonie used to give to me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or lime-flower tea, leading him to the conclusion that ‘When for a long-distant past nothing subsists … the smell and taste of things remain poised for a long time … and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”
Our nose is the oldest working sense in our body. It is the first to help me find home, to register the scent of my mother and her milk, the first to guide me to my first meal, to introduce me to my second sense—taste and somehow make sense of how to use both together. It was the first part of my body that allowed me independence, despite having no skills to crawl, walk, or run just yet.
It grounds us back to who we truly are, animalistic in our ways –we can sense fear just as much as we can smell the coffee we shared with our mothers or the Marlboro lights lingering in your past lover’s jacket as you shared a kiss two years ago in the sketchy streets of Poblacion. And just like animals, in those two memories I’ve mentioned –one felt safe and familiar, the other too, but in a way that makes your pussy crave to text him past two in the morning.
There’s something so beautiful about how we register scents and how we recollect the memories we have with them. It isn’t as powerful as auditory memory —when a song you’ve played a thousand times five years ago, randomly played on the radio. It’s both nostalgic but it doesn’t transport you back the same —it doesn’t make your heart skip a beat. It doesn’t make you feel their presence.
The role of our senses in retaining these memories can differ from our age. Olfactory memory is a lot stronger when we are in childhood, and our auditory memory is stronger in our teenage years. That’s why we can remember the Sundays we shared in our grandparent’s house and the smell of freshly baked pandesal, margarine, and instant coffee strongly relates to home. Meanwhile, words that sting in our teenage years sting just the same today. It still lives in our insecurities especially when we hear it echoed by someone new.
III.
Episodic memories can be emotional, but it can also be plain and generic. Isolongifolanone, a dry, woody, and amber that will poke your nose with a subtle sharpness. This raw material smells a lot like the ground during the first few minutes of rain —petrichor. A familiar scent for someone who grew up in Manila, the smell of rain feels like comfort. A feeling of staying in, with packets of Swiss Miss topped with marshmallows and the dirty childhood blanket. Hydroxycitronellal —floral, aldehydic, and smells a lot like lilies and my favorite corners of the house, whether on a bar cart, my nightstand, or lately under the gallery wall. Lilies always remind me about romance, about how friendships are romantic on their own, and relationships are friendships persevering. It reminds me of the 10-dollar bunch that you give and receive. It blooms one by one, day by day, just like any developing attachment. Ambroxan and Orris—warm, powdery, and smells like the fur of my cats. Bourgeonal —green, aldehydic, and floral that smells like spring when my father’s mom Prudencia is back in Cavite and all the bougainvillea and orchids are blooming. Tonka Bean —sweet, caramel, and vanilla. It smells like a dessert my grandmother Soledad would come home with after her Sunday mass. It smells like brown sugar, or the top of a créme brulee —it may be a generic, shallow, and fuzzy memory, but we can’t deny the fact that these are just as pleasurable.
IV.
One of my favorite hobbies is to go around fragrance stores but I consider it self-harm as I walk store to store, smelling something new, and old. An activity to haunt myself with ghosts from the past. Who doesn’t remember the guy who wears Dior Sauvage? or in my experience, the twink I thought was my friend.
Sometimes, the ghosts are old versions of myself. The black, backless silk dresses drowning in YSL Libre worn on date nights at Al Mustaqbal St.; Aesop Tacit during summer and my addiction for clementines; Burberry Her for the first year I lived in this city; Stronger With You for my old wardrobe; Bal d’Afrique for that summer in Bali; Lime Basil and Mandarin for my last year in college; Lord of Misrule for October 2022 where I was fading from a sound healing class as the sun sets naive for what’s about to happen the next night. Apres L’Amour for the person I am now.
V.
Our nose senses fear too, it senses unfamiliarity. The first time I smelled figs and roses was on a waffle cotton shirt. The silláge of Thé Noir 29 was intoxicating, it was gentle, yet with an intriguing depth in its warmth —it felt like safety. It’s agrestic, green, earthy yet at the same time, light and floral. It was as confusing as the person who wore it. At that moment, I felt unfamiliar and scared. Every time I got a whiff of it layered with sweat and the musk of his skin, the more it imprinted on my memory. The silláge when it mixes with his skin is different. All of it is different.
It felt like the light after a tunnel. I was reminded of how capable my soul is to register something new, and like it this much. Something safe and consistent that even with its unfamiliar pace and lightness still made my body relax in its presence.
The thing about episodic memories is that most of them are not real. It is a figment of our imagination —of what we want to believe and what we want to remember laid on top of our actual reality. It is found in many studies that our olfactory skills decline as we grow older. Meanwhile, some of us grow deficient in it due to PTSD, anxiety, bipolarity, and schizophrenia.
Episodic memories are one of my life pleasures, it hits differently from daydreaming because of how real and ironically tangible the moment felt. It wastes my time but it reminds me of the memories I care about, and it grounds me back to reality after. It reminds you of how fleeting good things can be. No matter what happens, relationships break, our personalities change, we grow for the better or worse, we lose family to death, or we move home towns—we simply cannot stay in our memories forever. Some memories can register stronger than others. Weaker memories for moments we didn’t pay attention to. Stronger, of those we held dear. So we choose what memories to bask ourselves in, and then we learn to let go, as naturally as possible. Episodic memory reminds me that even with big fallouts and grief that comes with it, it doesn’t erase that what you’ve had was objectively good. That love and the promises shared within that season may be broken now, but it was still created and developed with intent and honesty back then. It is just as real, it’s just not permanent. Just like fragrances, it evaporates.
Note:
To be honest, I may be just hallucinating from the raw materials and the amount of sniffing I do at work and I end up romanticizing a lot of it.