Sense of Smell

I stepped across a doorway today and transported myself fourteen years into the past. I had to drop off some plans to be copied. It was a smaller set, 12 sheets of 18"x24" paper. I only needed two copies of the set. I had meant to only hand them to the man I'd only met once before and come back for them later. I had meant to stay but a minute on the drop off and a mere two or three on the pickup. Or better yet to have someone else pick them up for me. But it was a smaller set and this nice man said he'd have both copies ready in ten minutes or so if I'd just wait. I couldn't even make it back to the office in ten minutes so I agreed to patiently browse.

I was in Southern Photo in Durham, NC. It's been in the same location for fifty years, I know because I asked today. But I didn't need to ask to have an estimate of how long the store had been the same. It has a feel of days gone by and yet a sense of timelessness. At Southern Photo they make plan copies in a back room but up front they sell a variety of items. They have surveying supplies such as stakes, paint, ribbon, wheels, and equipment. As well as engineering items like scales and other measuring devices. There are also multiple shelves of paint, board, paper, colored pencils, charcoal, and other assorted art and architecture supplies. All of these items, along with the wood shelves, walls and flooring that have seen fifty years of weathering, all emit their own scent. Those scents then flow together in the air to form an intoxicating perfume all it's own.

As I browsed, patiently waiting as the first ninety seconds ticked by in my ten minute wait, I was overwhelmed with feeling. First I felt powerful feelings of love, of both being in love, and all the joy that brings, and feeling loved. I also felt a rush of hope and inspiration as if anything in the world was possible and all the best was yet to come. Finally, I was crushed with an unbearable weight of hopelessness and despair. I had tears well up in my eyes as stood there glancing at colored pencils and I was perplexed, slightly embarrassed - even though I was completely alone and unobserved - and curious as to where this all came from. Until it dawned on me that it was the smell, it was triggering these emotions.

This concoction, this indescribable scent of it's own, is from another time in my life. I fell in love for the first time in college, with an architecture major, and we spent many hours in places such as this one. He'd be picking out supplies he needed to complete a project and I'd be browsing behind him wishing I had classes that used such interesting and creative things. I'd be soaking in the smells and colors and waiting patiently. He'd still be looking at something but make a point to touch my hair or grab my hand. It was also a smell I couldn't escape because a corner of our home where his old wooden desk and supplies were kept also smelled the same way. We lived in an older building and the same co-mingling of old and new scents would create the smell. I would often drift over to his desk and just stand there and breathe in the scent when he was not home. It was in so many ways the smell of unconditional love and possibilities for the future. It was a time in my life when I struggled day to day for the bare necessities, like food and rent, but was still unbelievably happy in my everyday life. I felt very loved and believed that anything was possible. I was certain the best days of my life lay ahead of, and not behind, me. But things went awry, as life often does, and this smell became not only the trigger of those positive emotions but also of the negative.

The brain is a funny thing, it seems to have a music player in it that can be triggered by smells. As if the smell would flip a CD in my mind and the first track would be "falling in love for the first time." Followed by "unconditional acceptance", "love and feel loved", "anything is possible", and "the best is yet to come". Then the CD flips to another genre and the very next song is "life doesn't work out how you planned." Followed by, "why bother to believe", "people leave you", and "life is sad." This was the soundtrack my brain was playing all because of my nose. How interesting that my brain took information received from my nose and turned it into a powerful emotional playlist. I was able to observe my emotional response and delve deeper into what I might learn from it. I've been practicing Buddhist meditation lately and it's made this duality easier. I considered how much I used to love this smell and how I seemed to avoid it. I also realized that I wanted to dash in and dash out of Southern Photo because the first time I was in there last week I was uncomfortable. I now knew why. I also knew I have avoided places such as this over the years even though I enjoy wandering around and looking at the different things.

Why? Why had I done this? Because I believed more strongly in the negative emotions that this smell made me feel than I did in the positive emotions it made me feel. I thought about this for a while and realized that this assumption on my part, the one I've apparently held in my subconscious for the past fourteen years, is not true. What has happened, or has not happened to me, in the past fourteen years has been a direct result of my holding on to that negative belief system. It's a self fulfilling prophesy. I've rarely glimpsed the happiness I had back then because I believed it was lost to me. I've also been unable to sustain those rare glimpses because I thought them to be fleeting. I was certain they would end and thus they did. As I waited for my copies I drank in the smell with a purpose of trying to recapture the positive and leaving out the negative. Could I truly believe with such nakedly naive optimism again? I'm optimistic but am I too hardened by life to truly believe anything is possible?

My rational mind started to tell me things such as "fourteen years is a long time", "but if I live as long as the average woman I have far more than fourteen years to go." Plus, the past fourteen seem to have passed with the speed of crossing the threshold into this store. Why shouldn't anything be possible? Why should I limit what my life will hold? Why should I assume that the greatest love of my life has already passed me by? Just then my plans were ready. I took them, thanking the kind man for his help. He had no idea that he'd given me more than plan copies, but I did. Then I stepped out of the store and into the next, greater, chapter in my life where anything is possible.