Sunday, August 07, 2005
Opening up a tub of The Body Shop's passion fruit body butter - which I have not used in awhile - I was hit by a wave of familiarity that I couldn't quite pinpoint. Perhaps it reminded me of several months back, when I used it on pretty much a regular basis. It brought to mind the act of trying on different items of clothing till I had settled on the right outfit; of attending classes in school; of coffee joints and girly conversations. Random things.
It is common knowledge that smells trigger memories. Of course, visuals work in the same way. But somehow, prompts by way of scent seem to be much more powerful, in my opinion. I think we're more likely to forget a physical object than a particular smell. Like a perfume reminiscent of someone, or a whiff of a pot of lip balm that leaves me feeling nostalgic.
Maybe the appeal is in the intangible nature of it. It is there, yet not quite. You can grasp it not with your hands, but only with your mind. It goads you to mentally unearth the memories, and connect the imaginary dots. And in the end, you are left with a picture constructed entirely out of compartmentalized memories in your head. All that, from something that could possibly be as utterly mundane as a bar of cheap soap.