The Persistent Nose of Memory

This is a piece I had published in PineStraw Magazine. So here it is, with a few of my own edits:

Scent: One of the most producing of senses, it embodies the world of memory, the forgotten love notes and arguments, the precious moments we chose to remember, the ones we chose not to. Every so often a scent is so overwhelming that it feels as if the world has shifted and you are experiencing an elapsed moment of time—a rare gem of history. And it’s so surprising, this shift, that it seems to light you from within and seems to heal you in ways that you never even knew needed healing.

Italy has a distinct scent: the garlic that settles into the fleshy fingertips of our hands, the smell of cold stone in a hushed chiesa, the musty air that hovers over a family run augriturismo, the sliced sweetness of a melon. The scents of Italy linger above our heads like the strings of a puppet show, waiting to draw the curtain and reveal a memory. In one fluid motion, our minds are filled with the aromas of Italy and flooded with reminiscences.

~

On a recent trip to Todi, I was overwhelmed with a scent from my childhood. It began when I walked past an ancient gate, a gate that may once have been used to protect a small garden or foster a young love. The metallic makeup of the gate was enveloped in a lanky plant. Not having a background in botany, I couldn’t identify which plant encased the entrance. But despite my lack of botanical knowledge, I still took away a granule of insight from the plant. This granule of familiarity, this crumb of memory was produced by the scents of Italy.

The plant smelled like my father’s workshop. It is a complicated scent, a mixture of burnt leaves and sandalwood aftershave, of freshly laundered clothes and bold coffee. I remember watching my father haul a bag of mulch over his shoulder, bearing the weight against his body, the pungent scent of manure mixing with the brackish smell of sweat.

I can recall lying in the garden, this fragrant smell covering my body like a blanket. To simply pass the afternoons, drenched in this smell felt like heaven to me: watching the trees shift in the wind, the sky turning from pale to blue. We, my brother Jack and I, would while away the hours, re-enacting civil war battle scenes, dozing in the hammock, saturated in the scent of the workshop.

At this moment of recognition, I felt my eyes water: a familiar scent in Italy gave my weary foreigner heart a chance to rest. It soothed me to know that I was 4,000 miles away from home in Italy yet only mere seconds away in my memory.

~

Someone wise once told me that there exists in the human heart, a great propensity to hope in tandem with a voracious desire for the times gone by. They claimed that as human beings, we are presented with an immense amount of longing—an insatiable appetite for days of the past, the yesteryears, the golden moments of flimsy photo albums. These moments recapture instances we’ve lost, figments of history. They are rivulets of memories rushing lazily through the course of a lifetime.

Do we ever truly lose sight of the past? We may try our best to forget, move on, attempting to let go of our previous history, but the problem with letting go of anything is that theory rarely matches reality --life isn't lived on paper. It's lived in the day-to-day world of personal memory and unexpected emotion. Like a closet full of things, its jumbled and untidy. Nothing is ever really forgotten, and even if you “let go” of everything, it will eventually find it’s way back to you. It seems to me that with the world constantly presenting us with smells and fragrances, the past is simply sitting in the piazza just around the corner.

~

When I was a child, I used to think that Italy was God’s footprint. That like my father in the garden, with weeds intercepting his precious plants, he would get so angry he would stamp hard at the ground, angry dust circling his boots. I had figured that God was so fed up with Europe and their lackadaisical time system, their capricious artists, who tended to flee on the job, that he stamped his boot so forcefully on the European ground, thus creating Italy.

I used to imagine Leonardo da Vinci holding hands with Michelangelo, dancing through art galleries, singing praises to fellow artisans. I pictured heaping plates of pasta, spilling over cities, overtaking houses, like the pages of my favorite childhood book, Strega Nonna.

Fourteen years later, I’ve traversed many continents to be in Perugia, Italy, living in a large apartment for four months with the taste of last night’s wine still stinging my tongue. In my initial first few weeks here in Perugia, I had felt a little lost, a little weary of this country and it’s wonderful customs. The constant search for food other than Italian had started to grate on my nerves. The inconvenient transportation system that seems to only run when wanting to made me long for the simplicity and personal clutter of my own car.

My life at home has been so entwined with family and basic comforts, that it doesn’t seem all that shocking I had encountered the feared homesickness. But, as these past few months have worn on I feel as if I’ve found solace in the unanticipated uplifting moments of kindness or the granules of familiarity, the crumbs of memory that seem to sprout unexpectedly throughout this Umbrian hill city.

It is as if Italy has renewed my sense of the past—and for that I am hopeful. I am hopeful for those moments of pure nostalgia and pure reminiscence, because I know they will surface again. Italy is constantly inundating me with the fragrances of my life history, my own homemade powerpoint—the rich smell of espresso invokes the image of my father brewing coffee as we habitually watched the early morning news broadcast together. The sharp scent of gas, emitted from a Vespa summons a cool fall evening out on our boat, navigating the Maine Sea. The persistent culinary fragrances that drift through my neighborhood, escaping one window and floating into the next, remind me of my mother’s cooking; all of them soothing me.

James Salter once wrote, “Life is weather, life is meals.” The veracity of this statement is undeniable; meals are the prelude to love, the sorrow in a goodbye, the joy in a lifetime. They are the elastic that binds a meal, the glue that holds a day and the human life together. Without them, life would be but nothing, for our entire history has at times been conducted over a dining room table, across a cup of tea, through the steam of a rich Cassoulet.
Like the many before us and many that will ensue, the act of partaking in a meal will be ingrained in our culture for as long as we exist. Celebration is in our nature, and what better way to celebrate than to indulge in the fruitfulness of the earth—the sweet kernels of corn that only grow in the summer time, the bucolic, milky Mozzarella di Buffola, the acidic yet unreservedly sweet Maine blueberries.
It fascinates me how intricate meals are: The preparation for a meal alone is cumbersome: who to feed and what to feed them with, how to create and when to do it, our instinctive methods vs. instructional ones. But the art of dining together or of eating alone, the remnants of domestic family dinners, of raucous drunken evenings, of quiet solitary breakfasts give breath to ours lives.
I have found solace in the habitual Italian culinary lifestyle—meals are valued here. There is no sense of rushing, no sense of haste. To take the time to enjoy a mere morsel of truffles is to take the time to enjoy life. The simplicity of eating together, the intimacy of preparing a meal for others is not something to brush aside but instead something value deeply, for as Virginia Wolf once wrote “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well if one has not dined well.”

I recently threw another dinner party in my apartment at a table built for eight. We fit twenty-five of us around the old mahogany set-up, elbows squeezed into sides and knees careful not stray in the web of legs. A mixture of languages lingered liltingly through the kitchen as my roommates and I prepared multiple dishes. Our Italian friends mingled with our American friends, bridging the cultures together, both relating over a common cultural rite: eating.
The meal had been prepared with a great propensity of eagerness. As I chopped the red onions, sautéed the garlic in oil, bathed the mussels in white wine, questions plagued my mind. What if our newfound guests despised our take on the Italian classics such as Mussels Al Fresco or a Pasta Carbonara? What if the conversation came to an abrupt halt, the language barrier baring its true colors? Would they like the wine, the cheese? Would there be an immense amount of awkwardness that comes with the territory and reality of being a foreigner?

But as I simmered and stirred, I glanced out the kitchen door towards our guests and looked at their faces: The preparatory beginnings of the complex dinner trickled out of kitchen, adorning the table of the dining room. The scents danced puckishly around the hungry noses of each passerby, prying open eyelids, widening nostrils. The conversation had grown so loud that our older neighbor had “shushed” us, muttering something about “Polizia”. All of my fears had dissipated.

As soon as the food was placed in front of our guests, they dug in with the fervent enthusiasm and uninhibited joy, every cook hopes for. Of course it’s entirely plausible that in some dishes the sauce was too thin or too burnt, the vegetables too mushy, but no one seemed fazed. Voices echoed throughout our cozy, barren apartment, ricocheting off empty platters and bouncing about the room. Hands brushed reaching for more wine, conversations went from platonic to romantic in seconds, cheeks flushing with contentment.

It seemed and seems that here in our stark and cold Italian apartment, and thus in Italy, that life is more than the food that decorates our plates, more than the hunger that dictates our tummies. It is the conversations that stem from good company, the enjoyment of a rare bottle of wine, the purely delicious, briny mussels, the resolve of a fight, the makings of a future. Here in Italy, the meal is life. It is the most significant, vital part of the day, the epitome of existence, the love poem to living.

I have two dining room tables. Each one is fashioned out of wood. Each one embraces a family. One table sits in my mother’s house in Maine, the other traversing many states, is placed in my father’s home in North Carolina. Although the faces at their respective tables vary greatly, the climates wholly diverse, the food and it’s recipes hailing from separate regions on the world, there is one thread that ties each of these tables together, one theme that is a constant in these dining rooms: my family.

I love Thanksgiving for two reasons: The first one being that my family draws closer together on this holiday, our busy lives pausing for one day, one night, one meal. The other, much to my chagrin, is the canned cranberry sauce my parents so lovingly and possibly begrudgingly buy for me.

It seems to me that as I have gotten older, the concept of family has faded from lead actor on stage to extra in the background. The ties that were once strong between my siblings and me are replaced by tentative “Hello’s” as we timidly try to find common ground between us, the imaginative, inventive games that once dictated our relationships long since grayed with time.

But this isn’t a bad thing. I see it as a phase that will pass when we all reach similar life checkpoints—when our financial worries are paired with our relationship problems and the leak in our apartments that has still yet to be fixed by our lazy super.

Then we can talk. But in the mean time, the dining room tables and the annual holiday season seem to bring out our loquacious sides, the garrulous and happy mouths that harbor insatiable appetites, the family bond that can only stem from kitchen angst, hectic preparation and the excessive expenditure of money. It’s what I love most about Thanksgiving.

My roommates and I have resolved to have our own Thanksgiving feast. A newsletter was sent around to American students informing us of the limited ways to obtain a turkey in Perugia. With a turkey only costing 40 Euro, we’ve decided to buy a bird and shove it in our non-functioning oven and see what comes out.

I will admit that I am completely in love with Perugia, Italy. I adore the locals, the food, the sporadic bursts of sunlight in November, the exstatic exclamations of life. But part of me is impossibly sad to be missing my favorite holiday. Part of it is the food because truly, there is NOTHING better than salted, sage turkey topped with cider and shallot gravy. There is nothing comparable to the lolling lumps of garlicky mashed potatoes or the steaming butternut squash and parsnip puree.

But the other part is the family. So, I guess this post really has no point, as most of my post never do. But I just want my family to know that I will miss them and their laughter and their stories on Thanksgiving. Though I’ve got Italy and pretty shoes and good smelling perfume and delicious Italian food, there really isn’t anything that I love more than you all!

Sorry for the delay, I've been sick!

It’s funny how quickly you fall in love with a place, it’s rustic characteristics and it’s unusual quirks. I feel as if my heartstrings are completely attached to Perugia, they tug with adoration and loyalty.

I met a girl at the bar last night, who said, “Perugia is the drabbest and ugliest city” she’s ever been to, with the exception of Glasgow and New York. First of all, I was clearly the wrong person to be saying these things to for I love New York and I’m Scottish, most of my family originating from Glasgow. But beyond that, obviously this girl had absolutely no idea what she was taking about, no ground for this argument (weather doesn’t count) and I’m positive New Yorkers, the fine people of Glasgow and the gracious Perugian citizens would all agree.

I feel like it’s a slight against my quaint Perugia and me when I hear harsh words used to describe this sweet little Umbrian hill city. No one talks about my wobbly, cobblestone alleyways, the gloomy and somewhat unpromising clouds that seem to have settled down atop Perugia in winter, with disdain and detest.

It isn’t that I can’t relate to the annoyance at the constant damp weather pattern. Nor am I oblivious to the increasingly frustrating lackadaisical sense of time.

But I know the grocers by their names and vice versa. I can name all of the homeless dogs that wander the streets looking for abandoned scraps of food. I know what delicacies come from Umbria and what do not. I get complimented on my Italian.

When I first arrived here I was incredibly homesick, missing the United States and it’s simplicity—I felt like I had no connection to Perugia, that if I had to pack up all my things and return to Vermont, there would be no reservations. But it seems to me, that I’ve accidentally fallen in love with Perugia. As with many things in life, time and immersion tend to cure all hesitancies. I seem to have fallen head over Prada heels in love with this city.

In a country that respects the fundamental and simple pleasures of taking time to live life, it is inherently touching to experience the unanticipated audible drama of excitement that seems to explode from within the Italian people. The slowness of time, the indelible passage of it is respected here, but it is intrinsically clear that the Italians relish in the sweet and at many times poignant moments of life.
A few weeks ago, as I walked back home through the regaling streets of Perugia, lethargic from too much chocolate, I experienced one of these charming moments of life fully lived, a theatrical burst of joie de vivre.
Through the entrance of Via dei Priori, a crowd began to heave and mold into a circle, enclosing a band of musicians. It was as if the band of cheerful men had activated a magnet, for the crowd began to swell and draw nearer to these beguiling gentlemen, bedecked with cumber buns and disorderly tuxedos, their stately dress and boyish demeanors indicating a show for the record books.
With the abrupt pulse of a drum and the undeniable blasts of a trumpet, the mass yelled out with enthusiasm and sang

along with the liltingly raucous music. The band grew increasingly giddy as they passed around an unlabeled bottle of wine,

their lips stained burgundy with energized inebriation. The explosion of laughter from the crowd in tandem with the ebullient

music reverberated against stonewalls and arch ways of Via dei Priori. One cannot help but feel happy at these rare and bizarre

moments of sheer togetherness, of warm camaraderie.