We're part of such a sight and sound driven society these days that we tend to forget that there are three other sadly neglected senses waiting to be as fully engaged as well. In the world around us and in the media, images and sound bytes are thrust at us haphazardly at every moment of our waking lives. Since I am blind as a bat these days and the hearing appears to be diminishing as well (the television volume slowly inching up higher and higher--my God, we ARE becoming our parents!), I have come to embrace, once again, my finely honed proboscis.

To this day, there are certain smells that I immediately and fondly associate with my formative years. I recently purchased a rather expensive bottle of Jo Malone cologne with an orange blossom scent. What compelled me to part with my hard earned cash was not the sickly sweet pleasure of this odiferous
tonic, but the fact that it really smelled like an orange tree in lush full bloom basking in the hot sun in an orderly orchard. Yes, I could smell the heady whiff of the blossoms as they erupted into their sensuous being. But I could also smell the sharp citrus leaves and the bark of the gnarled trunk and even the smell of the freshly tilled soil gathered up around the base of the tree to hold in the precious moisture. It reminded me completely of my childhood in the Central Valley.

I grew up in Fresno and while you're quick to make the jump to fumes of cow shit, that's really oversimplifying. Yes, there was plenty of manure, but there was also the acrid scent of eucalyptus from the century old giant trees that dotted the city. There was the intoxicating scent of night blooming jasmine that would waft you off to the sweetest sleep on a hot summer evening. There was the dusky richness of grapes spilled out on sheets of brown paper in long fields as they started their transformation into raisins.

There were so many vivid scents that remind me of home that I can conjure them up deeply as I type these words: Root beer. Oleander blossoms. My mother's Chanel No. 5 that she wore for special occasions. Lipton tea. My father's secret London Broil seasoning. Wood shavings for a hamster cage. Bonnie Bell lip smackers. Salt pork. The wood burning stoves at Camp Fresno.

Wonderful smells associated with wonderful memories: The savory smells of the kitchen in MaryCatherineFullofGrace's house where her large, hospitable family would usher me in with a jovial hug and foist a plate of good old Southern food at me. My first real boyfriend whose neck smelled like his father's Aramis cologne and who taught me how to make out on my parents' couch. My grandmother's kitchen when she boiled a chicken carcass all day to make her famous soup. My dad's wool fishing jacket which smelled like my dad, which I still have it (and thankfully, still smells like my dad).

Of course once you leave the nest and you start to become worldly and less cognoscent of the small details, the memory of scent leaves you. I thought it was all but gone till recently.

When I moved to New York, the first thing I realized was that it smelled. I mean, it really smelled. Initially, I was revolted, but now I realize what a mixed blessing it was. I came to appreciate the riot of odors this city contains and how much this cacophony of scent makes Manhattan as distinctive to me as Fresno was. It's creating a blueprint of memory.

A case in point can best be summed up in an airless, hot, humid summer day. Walking down one city block, I documented the following series of scents, some interspersing with one another, some a brief staccato only to waft away, but all combined to create an oddly hypnotic blend: coffee, bacon, sweat, Michael Kors perfume, vomit, Papaya dogs, urine, bagels, dog feces, last nights' beer, baby powder, bus exhaust, paint, a errant fart, leather, ice cream.

And me, awash in orange blossoms.