Clove Cigarette

A bittersweet mixture of Knott’s Berry Farm at night, ripe with the promise of cruising, anonymous teenagers (although I was usually the “friend” in that scenario), and the disastrous Halloween party I attended in high school, when what I didn’t know about the guy I’d been giggling with in the corner all night blew up in my face, in the form of his late-arriving, angry, tear-stained girlfriend. I fled the party in shame, remorseful and angry that I wasn’t able to resolve what I felt was an innocent misunderstanding.

Today, the sweet smell begs to be inhaled deeply, even as the warning that “smoking cloves makes holes in your lungs” claxons away in my head. The mixture of youthful insouciance, anticipation, and hyperintensity is a heady one–practically worthy of reformulating as incense, except that the accompanying entwined emotions of excitement and remorse aren’t really a combination I’d willingly seek out for very long.

Milk Monitor Carrier

The handled wooden box is always dark and moist on the bottom, glistening with milk that seems to always leak out of the supposedly sealed half-pint cartons. I enjoyed the freedom that came with the job, the daily escape from the classroom a few minutes before lunch, but I always hated the sour milk smell that permeated the small windowless room at the end of classroom block. My very infrequent memories of the scent still make my nose shrivel with distaste.

Milk monitors in Great Britain and Australia had the additional responsibility of monitoring their peers’ consumption of sometimes sour or curdled milk. Fortunately, I only had to pass it out to the kids whose names were included with each day’s delivery.

Underground Parking Lot

Not quite dried concrete, combined with humid remnants of exhaust from all the cars and people that have been here previously. If it weren’t for the chemical smell, the close, warm air would feel luxurious, almost tropical. Since it also smells a little like certain Paris metro stations, there’s also a shiver of that thrilled excitement of being somewhere completely unexplored, with nothing to do but go forth and discover. As quotidian as the environment seems to be, it reminds me of a time when everything felt new, and so it seems to be again.

Modeling Clay

Bill found a package of old Will Vinton Studios Claymation clay in a small side table in the garage this evening. There’s a years’ old fingerprint that reminds me of a crime scene, and even though I’ve been thinking about scent and memory for a long time, I was still surprised by what came up.

One part chemical/plastic, one part earthy, one part grade-school art class, and one small part fear. It smells different when you warm it up – friendlier, but I can’t exactly say I like it, it’s more that I can’t stop smelling it.

I’d been playing around in my room with some blue modeling clay, and went out to talk to my parents about something. I’d been rubbing my eye and my mom took one look at me and freaked out, demanding that I look at her and then hustling me to my dad who took me in the powder-room for a better look. In the wall-wide mirror above the sink, I saw a dark blue bit of clay about half the size of my iris on the white of my right eye – it didn’t hurt so much as it just looked wrong. I started crying from the fear of it, but I don’t remember how exactly the situation resolved. One whiff of the clay Bill found today, and I was back staring wide-eyed at my face in the mirror, vision tunneling to the blue smudge whose irregular shape was the only thing I could see.

Microwave Popcorn

It’s usually around 3pm that the smell of microwave popcorn drifts from the “kitchen” down the hall. In every office environment I’ve worked in, someone, some time has entered the codes that yield the unmistakable odor: a plasticy, semi-burnt, definitely artificial butterish smell that is simultaneously appetizing and revolting. Different in category from movie theatre popcorn, the wafting of microwave popcorn represents the desperate for anything at all to eat triumph of expedience over care. It permeates the environment for hours—if only the taste were as powerful as its overbearing presence.

Bikram Yoga

Heat shriveled my nostrils, but the stale sweat had a physical presence that was almost enough to knock me out. After breathing through my mouth for a few minutes, the smell became somewhat bearable, but only until I was facedown on the floor, nearly gagging from exertion combined with my overactive imagination. Overlooking the practically visible vaporous emissions of hundreds of yogi feet that had walked and sweated on the carpet in the weeks and months before the class I attended wound up being more of a challenge than the physical transformation I was there to undergo.

Now that the rains have returned I may reconsider, but I will probably have to try a different studio. Recommendations welcome!