smelling the past

"...that quiet crack and pop. It's the sound of still moments in tranquil places." (Wilkins, 2004)

"A smell from your distant past can unleash a flood of memories that are so intense and striking that they seem real...called a "Proustian Memory". It's named after Marcel Proust, one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century...We humans smell with a yellowish area in the roof of each nostril, just underneath and between the eyes. This yellowish area is called the olfactory epithelium....Once the nerves leave the olfactory bulb, they're sent to two main destinations...one of them is...the limbic area of the brain, an ancient region that deals with emotion, pleasure, motivation and types of memory associated with food...according to Professor Rachel S. Herz, 'the ability to experience and express emotion grew directly out of the brain's ability to process smells.'" (Kruszelniki, 2001)

"...limbic brain. This is where the soul physiologically lays down its memories of experience...its developed sense of the past peppering the present with anticipation, with expectation..." (Restall Orr, 2004)