Wednesday, September 7, 2011
The smell is back
I have been frantically gathering information for my upcoming speaking engagement next Monday in Ohio. I pulled out three large white boxes and a large blue plastic bin, the one that housed my Red Cross Disaster Services aprons, my respirator, and my hard hats from 9/11. As soon as the lid was cracked open, the pungent odor was released into the air and slammed into my nostrils. I paused, Really? Could I really still be smelling the smells of 9/11? I kept thinking it was impossible. This has to be all in my head, how could this smell still be recalled so quickly? Is it because of the ten year anniversary and all of the media blitz? I don't know, but it has permeated my olfactory senses today and has no desire to go back in the bin.
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"When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered· the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls· bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory" -Marcel Proust "The Remembrance of Things Past"
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