Sense and Memory

Back in the spring semester of 1999 at college, I remember experiencing my visual memories in a unique way. At the time, I liked to say that I saw my memory in technicolor, which I guess could still apply.

But now, after having my attention directed toward Super 8mm film from our wedding videographer, I think a better description would be that during that semester at college, I saw my visual memories in Super 8mm film with the color heavily saturated. I think the stronger the memory, the more saturated the color became.

And the strange thing: remembering that semester of college presently, I think the visuals have a lot of shadows and it's very dark. I haven't had visual memories in color saturated Super 8mm film in a long while, though. At least, not of anything else other than my wedding on my TV at home.

I wonder what influenced me to see my memories in that way back then. A lot of those Super 8mm film memories were some length of time previous of the time I re-experienced the memory. So long before, in fact, that the events in the memories felt like they came from a whole other life or the life of someone else.

And kind of sadly, I haven't really experienced such vivid memory recall for a long time now. Well, maybe I did today, but it involved smell, more specifically, the possible smell of cats and dogs. Since the wife and I adopted Max and Miriya, the brother and sister cat, I've been surprised that our apartments hasn't acquired an overwhelming stench of animal.

Today, I remembered an old friend who had cats and a dog, and his family had that animal stench smell in their house, all the time. That smell just wouldn't leave my olfactory sense. Plenty of memories about that friend flooded me after the sense of cat and dog, but those are kind of private.

Smell and memory reminds me of a time that a girl "broke up" with me (long story. . .that will not be broadcast on the Internet). After she broke up with me, I couldn't get the smell of her perfume out of my nose for weeks, and while I had that smell in my nose, I couldn't get rid of the desire to be around her. This whole thing would occur more when I was alone and trying to focus on something else. The strangest thing, though, the smell of her perfume annoyed me!

Funny enough, accidentally capturing this girl's perfume in my nose happened during the same semester that I saw my visual memories in Super 8mm film. Suffice to say, it was something of an intense semester.